Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5X Macro Lens

by Philip Greenspun; revised February 2008

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This is a strange lens that will test your creativity as a photographer. Most people find it challenging to identify an interesting scene when it is right in front of them, at a familiar scale. Some people have developed the skill of finding interesting forms that are getting close to the size of a 35mm negative (see my macro photography primer). But few photographers have ever thought about hunting for interesting subjects that are a fraction of the size of a 35mm negative.

This lens from Canon, released late in 1999, is a hunting license. The world according to the MP-E 65 starts at 1X with a subject the same size as a 35mm frame (24x36mm). Subjects get smaller from there until their linear dimension is only one-fifth the size of a 35mm frame (at 5X, a 5x7mm subject will fill up the photograph).

There are a bunch of mechanical problems with using this lens:

• the viewfinder gets dark as you rack it out to 5X; the nominal maximum aperture is f/2.8 but that is a mythical aperture not even available at 1X. At 1X, the effective wide-open f-number is 5.6. As you rack the lens out to 5X, the effective viewing aperture is f/16.
• focusing becomes critically important when photographing at high magnification and the viewfinder ground glass may not be precise enough; Canon has had to introduce a right-angle magnifying viewfinder to assist photographers. Note that the MP-E 65 is in an autofocus mount and only works with autofocus EOS cameras but has no focusing motor and requires manual focusing. How sloppy can you be? Depth of field at 5X is 0.05mm (one twentieth of a millimeter!) at an effective aperture of f/16. Stopping down to an effective f/64 gives you about 0.1mm to work with.
• illuminating the subject with an external light becomes difficult because the lens is in the way (you're about one inch from your subject); Canon makes the ML-3 Macrolite ring flash to help with this problem
• calculating exposure with external lighting is made difficult by Canon's failure, unlike the Nikon system, to show effective taking aperture in the viewfinder. Furthermore, the lens is not calibrated with exposure compensation for different settings. You'd think that you'd be able to succeed using TTL ambient metering, but the manual that comes with the lens cautions against using the in-camera meter with any body other than the EOS-1n and EOS-1! You have to remember not to use spot metering with those cameras, though, because it won't be accurate. The manual also reminds you to make sure to use an eyepiece shutter or cover if you are metering without having your eye over the eyepiece. According to the manual, if you install a "Laser Matte" focusing screen in the EOS-3, you can use the in-camera ambient meter. The only recommend approach with the average EOS body is TTL flash metering.
• standard tripods don't allow you to move the camera/lens straight back and forth toward the subject; you'll probably need to buy a macro rail to make it easy to achieve the desired camera/subject distance

You can solve the mechanical problems with extra thought or extra equipment. But you'll be left with a deeper aesthetic problem: when was the last time you saw something really really small whose form and color you wanted to record?

Anyway, I've had the lens for four months now and have only exposed one test roll of Fuji Provia 100F. For lighting I used my standard Canon 540EZ flash with a Stofen diffuser connected via an off-camera cord. I kept the setup on my kitchen table and hunted for household objects, then hollered for Domestic Senior Management to come and hold the flash while I squinted and moved the camera back and forth. Here are a few examples from that sample roll:

Update for 2001 (Digital): This lens makes an interesting companion for the Canon D30 SLR. The four images below are (1) low-voltage living room light (3 seconds at f/11), auto white balance, (2) same light and exposure but tungsten white balance set explicitly, (3) 380EX off-camera flash, (4) 380EX off-camera flash plus reflector.

Digital is definitely the way to go with extreme macro photography. You get instant previews that tell you whether you have an exposure problem. If only 1 in 100 images turns out to be interesting, you've not wasted a fortune in film and processing.

With the Canon Macro Flashes

The Canon MR-14EX Ring Lite and MT-24EX Twin Lite are convenient companions for this the MP-E 65mm lens. The Ring light is especially helpful in illuminating objects at high magnifications, where the working distance between front element and subject is minimal. Here are a couple of examples with the Ring Lite, with the lens mounted on a full-frame canon_eos1ds_mark3:

The bottom line

Alex (0.02X)	Alex (2X)

Specifications