Its boxing day and my first chance to give it a good test ,i cant go out to shoot landscapes today due to a party this afternoon/evening and being middle of winter there are not many bugs out , But Springtails can always be found if i am lucky, being so tiny, usually under 4 mm in length and quite often under 1 mm !
After a quick hunt in the garden i have found a few on the wooden table sides of the barbecue , a couple of tiny Globular springtails and a couple of the common cylindrical ones and loads on the window sill of the conservatory
Putting the mpe-65 macro lens on and shooting at its maximum x5 magnification , its quite difficult to actually find these tiny bugs in the viewfinder! This camera has a larger viewfinder compared to my 5d mk2 and its quite a bit clearer making manual focusing easier :)
This one is a single frame, shot on window sill at f7.1 with diffused off camera 430ex flash
Entomobrya intermedia
The flash fall off seems less than on the old camera , with more light reaching the background which is making exposure a little easier , i am using +3/4 FEC shooting against the white background for these. The detail is very impressive on these huge files from what i have seen so far. the RAW files are averaging 53 mb each!
Now to the wooden side panels on the barbecue to see if i can shoot one of the Globular Springtails i found earlier.
Found one :) i have to shoot level with the wood surface to get within an inch of the subject at maximum magnification, This way i can get a good side on composition. The subject needs to be within 2 cm of the wood edge to be in focus. This one is so tiny ! well under 1 mm in length. at this magnification approximately 4mm fills frame width of full frame sensor.
This image is Uncropped . the background Bokeh is beautifully smooth from this new sensor , especially considering i am shooting with flash :)
This species is Katiannidae Gen1 nov Here is a crop from above image. Detail is very impressive in this big crop , this is 5 frames focus stacked to increase the very limited depth of field at these high magnifications.
Another image of same individual, single frame
After a few more shoots with the springtails , i truly love this new camera for macro with flash, seems more forgiving when shooting macro compared to older 5d mk2. Need to find some larger subjects now .
This is the quality i am now getting after a few practice shoots , cant wait to find some larger subjects! as at these high magnifications there is always greater diffraction softening compared to shooting at say 1-3 x magnification. this was shot at f6.3 5 frames focus stacked,slight crop
Conclusions so far , in a different league to my 5d mk2! Everything so far is better apart from a rubber thumb grip that is too proud for my small hands when supporting the heavy weight of mpe at full extension , getting a sore thumb lol
Picture wise its everything it is supposed to be , amazing detail, smooth oof areas , shooting with flash at iso100 i cant comment so far on its high iso performance which is supposed to be not so good, but i rarely shoot above iso 400 anyhow so that wont be a problem .
Tomorrow we are going to Snowdonia so will see how it fares on landscapes :)
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