MPE-65 owners, this one is for you

[airdima]

i signed up for a macro shooting course and we had our 1st lesson yesturday, a very basic one where the lector basically went over the equipment and covered different methods of macro shooting, basically everything that can be found on these forums.

the most interesting part for me was when he pulled out the MPE-65, i got to hold it and get a feel for it for the first time. at some point he spoke about the problems in shooting macro with small aperture, when every dust specle can be seen on the sensor.

now we all know that dust can make it's way to the sensor even without ever swapping lenses, mostly because of the pump effect made by lenses that extend during focusing and/or zooming. he demonstrated us just how much air the MPE moves when extracting and mentioned that in some cases it can be really frustrating when you have to clean the sensor after just a few shots

so, the question is, have you experienced such problems with your lens? is that true that the MPE is the lens equivalent for a vacuum cleaner?

btw, on a side not he mentioned that he heard of some PS addon that allows you to clean all dust specs on your image with 1 click of a button. what you do basically is before every shooting set you shoot a blank white page with the smallest aperture possible, so obviously all dust specs will be clearly visible. then you upload the image to the PS addon which maps all the specs and then can automatically remove them all at once from the following images with the same dust pattern. have you ever heard of such a thing? if so, what is it called? (he couldn't remember)

[LordV]

I have heard about the marvellous pump effect of the MPE-65 before (I suspect all lenses with large barrel movements do this), have even heard of someone who uses the mpe-65 with a TC attached to prevent the lens pumping air into the camera chamber.

Can only say that I do not get any problems with this- I use the MPE-65 on a dedicated body (no lens changing) and only sensor clean around once every 6 months when the number of visible spots gets greater than about 15.
Brian V.

[Greg_C]

I've never found the MPE-65 to be a dust pump, but then I've never noticed a major problem with my 100-400 pumping dust onto the sensor either.

I only have one body and am always changing lenses. I blow the sensor with a rocket blower about once a month. In the 15mths or so that I've had the 40D I've never wet cleaned it.

[Lester Wareham]

I can't say I have noticed a big deference between my lenses in terms of dust ingress.

To be honest dust is something people new to digital SLRs worry about. After a while you just deal with it routinely a few times a year, just a part of caring for your equipment.

If you do get dust bunnies on a shot (and it can happen in landscape too where apertures tend to be small) it is easy to click it away with the clone tool. I can assure you it is much easier with digital than having to retouch prints in the film age.

[John_B]

airdima,
I haven't noticed more dust on my sensor using my MP-E 65mm lens then I do with my other lenses. ;)

[orionmystery]

At 2X and above...the dust spots become really obvious...i have to spend quite a bit of time to heal them :(

[macro junkie]

5X its a joke..i bought what lordv uses(sensor clear lens pen) but i cant get my senser as clean as iv seen his..

[Lester Wareham]

I just use a Rocket blower and a sensor brush now and again. I don't obsess about it, and only take moderate care changing lenses (make sure I have the breeze behind me) and I change lenses a lot.

Generally one or two spots might show and I clone them out but I agree above 2:1 or 3:1 things get more obvious, I tend to be opening the lens up by then to avoid diffraction which reduces the problem a little. One I get to 5-6 dust spots, a particularly big one, or a clump I give the sensor a puff and bush which gets rid of 90%. (PP tip, temporarily turn up the image contrast and brightness when spotting to make the dust bunnies easy to find, I have a Photoshop action to do this for me on an adjustment layer).

I tried a wet swab method once but found it fare to easy to use too much solution, I'll have to be desperate to try that again.

[airdima]

thanks for the replies everyone :)

[ron chappel]

er..why are some saying that dust is more noticeable at larger magnifications?
Sure, smaller apertures will make sensor dust show more but what possible difference can lens magnification make??

airdima , you have that so called 'PS addon' built into your camera.It's called 'dust delete'.Youll find it explained in the owners manual

[LordV]

er..why are some saying that dust is more noticeable at larger magnifications?
Sure, smaller apertures will make sensor dust show more but what possible difference can lens magnification make??



Ron think this is simply the effect that high magnification system have on apparent aperture making the apparent aperture much smaller than that set. You wouldn't believe how much dust shows up on an MPE-65 at 5:1.
Brian V.

[ron chappel]

Thanks,i kind of understand that :)