A Little Different Macro – Canon MP-E 65mm

I went out to The Celery Farm Natural Area to photograph very small dried wildflowers. I took along my Canon MP-E 65 mm 1-5X Macro. This is a very specialized macro lens that starts at 1X and goes to 5X magnification. It is more like a lens with a variable extension tube zooming out for the increased magnification. I decided to add a 1.4X teleconverter to add a little more working distance. This adds just a little bit more working distance, in some cases the front element is less than an inch away from your subject, but every bit helps. With the 1.4X Teleconverter it makes this a 91mm f/4. I was using a Canon Macro Ring Flash MR-14 EX to light these subjects as I was shooting handheld. My camera body was a Canon 1D MkIV camera body, so with the 1.3 crop of the sensor, this also adds to the lens, making it 1.3X to about 6X. For the wildflowers I left it at 1.3X for most, then later I shot some areas of the wooden lookout tower at various magnifications to show the different magnifications. I used aperture priority for some where I wanted to get some background detail, while the ones I have with dark backgrounds I used Manual exposure to darken the background and let the flash light the subject.

Full image for an idea of scale and subject