Focus problem?

I have two main lenses I use for macro, the Tamron 90 and the MP-E65.
With the tamron I am sure if there is a foucs problem on a shot then it is down to me.

100% crops of 1:1 images taken on the Tamron/450D are sharp.On the MP-E, at lower magnifcation, the same applies.

At higher magnification the MP-E shots do not look good when cropped.

This is the non-cropped picture taken at 5x of a kitchen knife.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/basandrews/6964​282545/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/basandrews/6964​335219/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/basandrews/6964​335003/

Don't think it's a focus problem - most likely just a good example of diffraction softening when you shoot at F11 @5X mag. That's equivalent to shooting a normal lens at F66. Try opening up the aperture to F5.6 and try again
Brian v.

Thanks as always Brian.

I'll give it a go later.

+1, I use f8 above life size and often f5.6 at 4X and 5X.

Bas, in my still-limited experience with the MP-E, I have found that even at f/5.6 the sharpness at 100% still kind of sucks at 5:1, and that includes shots taken from a stable tripod with good lighting. I think another thing to consider is that good post-processing skills can help improve the appearance of sharpness and contrast of a lightly-cropped or not-cropped 5:1 shot (not much you can do if you're viewing it at 100%). I am no expert by any definition of the word, but I have found improvements by messing around with the settings in DPP for the RAW file and then doing some additional work in GIMP with unsharp mask and a touch of line sharpening after exporting the RAW file to an 8-bit TIFF. My 5:1 shots still don't look as sharp as my 2:1 shots, but they look much better after spending some quality time on the processing side of things. I have pretty much given up the idea that something can come out of the camera perfectly sharp at 5:1 no matter what aperture you use.

Your problem is vibration. Does not matter if you have a cast iron tripod or not. Nothing short of a solid mount will prevent vibration unless your camera can do second curtain shutter sync. That means you have to use live view with the shutter open and a camera that trips the shutter after you have recorded what the sensor is seeing. The 450D can't do that.

That's why I sold my 1D MkIII and bought a lowly T1i.

Thanks all for the help.

Ryan, I do use USM in DPP, but it tends to be the same settings for most shots. Mitch, I thought the 550D and 450D supported second curtain sync, but I shall check that out too.

I keep the MPE on the 550D, which I didn't make clear in my intro.

I believe the 500D was the first body to offer SCS. It's also called silent mode, so some other cameras have it to, but I don't have the list.

You can get too carried away with trying to achieve maximum sharpness. I see plenty of great macros taken at f16 and smaller where the subject/lighting is more interesting than many ultra sharp but run of the mill subjects. For PC viewing and normal printing the MP-E65 does a pretty good job at high mag/small apertures and personally I don't make large prints.

racketman wrote in post #14052623
You can get too carried away with trying to achieve maximum sharpness. I see plenty of great macros taken at f16 and smaller where the subject/lighting is more interesting than many ultra sharp but run of the mill subjects. For PC viewing and normal printing the MP-E65 does a pretty good job at high mag/small apertures and personally I don't make large prints.

Excellent point. For my part, I waste a lot of time thinking about sharpness instead of composition, and I think it's generally not a good trade off. I have a Flickr contact who primarily photographs birds and uses archaic equipment that is physically incapable of producing a tack-sharp image by today's standards, and yet he consistently produces great-looking photos due purely to great light, composition, and timing. I've seen many a 7D/400L bird shot that is pretty lame by comparison despite being much sharper.

I don't think I am aiming for perfect sharp shots over composition. At my stage in the learning process I would be happy with either.

If you look at the shots taken at high mag by Brian V and many others here, the details of small bugs are there, but on mine they are not. I lose some clarity that even shows at non-cropped levels.

Apart from a few lucky shots I still haven't mastered compsition, but that is my next goal. If I can do that while understaning the limitiations of the equipment, it should help.

OK the diffraction issue does seem to be the main reason for my perceived lack of focus.

Shots taken at F2.8 and 5.0 seem to give the better quality at pixel peeping levels.

I could see if there is improvement with mirror lockup and/or second curtain sync, but for now I at least I know why I have these issues.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com/​photos/basandrews/6966​661341/