New to macro

[Hali]

I remember reading about an 'effective' aperture vs the actual aperture size. So even though the physical aperture size does not change the effective aperture does. It basically was saying that the effective aperture was equal to the actual aperture times (1 + the magnification). This is due to the physical aperture being further away from the sensor at higher magnifications. So an aperture of f/8.0 if used on a 5x mag would equal f/48.... 8 X (1 + 5). I've also read that once you get above f/20-ish diffraction starts to get bad enough that there's benefits to backing off. This is all new to me so I'm still playing, reading, learning. I read, I try, I see the results and come to my own conclusions with all that in mind. Since I have little experience I'm still on the steep end of the learning curve.

I think you are doing pretty darn well. I think that you can absorb all the theoretical information, but until you put it to work in the field you don't "really" know how it works. You are definitely doing that. The one thing I do know about the MP-E is that I focus stacked everything I shot with it. I used the widest aperture because it gave the best results, even though it took lots of work. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Where in the US are you? If you are in the southern New England area, I could loan you my MP-E!

 

[RonaldSill]

I think you are doing pretty darn well. I think that you can absorb all the theoretical information, but until you put it to work in the field you don't "really" know how it works. You are definitely doing that. The one thing I do know about the MP-E is that I focus stacked everything I shot with it. I used the widest aperture because it gave the best results, even though it took lots of work. I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Where in the US are you? If you are in the southern New England area, I could loan you my MP-E!

Thank you for this. Yes, I'm diving headfirst into this rabbit hole. I have 35+ years experience with photography in general, landscape and wildlife mostly, so am very familiar with the inner workings of all the trade-offs with settings, etc. I appreciate the offer to borrow the lens, it's very generous of you. However, I am in Arizona. But I have been talking with a fellow birder photographer recently who also has offered to let me borrow his MP-E so I may take him up on it. Although now that I've cobbled together my own microscope objective with bellows/tubes/diopter that seems to be working well I'd be hard pressed to buy into getting an MP-E for my collection. I'd rather spend the money on an automated rail at this point. Do you shoot with a rail? If so which one? I have Manfrotto I believe. I've been looking at automated like StackShot but have not ruled out others yet. Really just starting to look. Not sure what the differences are yet.