# Canon MP-E 65mm photo's



## FarCanal (Mar 12, 2008)

I bought the Canon MP-E 65mm lens in October last year mainly for taking crypt photo's like these. I posted a few insect photo from the garden not long after I got it here. I've recently decided to try it out on Aquarium photography. These photo's are taken on a Canon 400D with a macro twin light flash set as master and a 580EXII as a slave. I've just had the manuals for the flashes out reading up how to do this, these are my first photo's with that configuration.




























Prior to taking those photo's I was using just the macro twin light as a flash, I was getting some OK results, well I thought so, here are some examples. I had to use a wider aperture setting to keep the colours looking OK.





































The beautiful thing about the MP-E is the ability to get higher magnification. I will need to try some more photo's like this with a slave flash as well so I can get a better DOF.




























I put off trying this lens for aquarium photography because I had heard it was hard to use. I've found it a great lens, but I think the macro twin light flash has made it far easier to use. All these photo's have been taken in the last month so I'm fairly new to aquarium photography, but I think now I'll be trying it out a whole lot more.


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## rjfurbank (Jan 21, 2008)

Great shots! I'm no photography expert so can't really comment on your configuration, etc. Love your crypt shots too -- I have a couple of emersed set-ups an enjoy your other posts in the crypt sub-forum.

-Roy


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## bigstick120 (Mar 8, 2005)

Nice looking photos.
Im confused how opening up the aperture is helping your colors?


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## FarCanal (Mar 12, 2008)

Sorry bigstick, I'm probably not using the right terminology here, I'm learning photography the hard way, from my mistakes. What I meant is that opening the aperture up allowed me to get much better photo's straight off the camera. Everything I was reading about macro photography was alway saying that I had to use a narrow aperture for good shots, I found my shots were always coming out dark. Whenever I try fixing photo's like that with photo edittors to get close to what I saw with my eye the photo's were always coming out grainy and the colours were never as vibrant. I just didn't have enough light for what I was trying, the histograms were at the dark end, so opening up the aperture with the light I was using was giving me much better photo's in terms of grain and colour. I hope that makes sense.


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