Hebrew character (Orthosia gothica)

Also titled "OMG I forgot how to macro"

So its been a while since I had my MPE 65mm out, so long in fact that I've half forgotten how to use it! So there I was shooting away thinking "hey this high magnification stuff isn't had hard as I remember".
Only to then zoom in and go "hey wait why is this all soft.... oh." Because in high magnification macro one thing you have to keep in mind is as your magnification goes up, so too does the aperture. Which means you have to turn the dial to open the aperture up more. Otherwise your effective aperture becomes so great that you lose all your resolution and detail to diffraction softening.

All photos of a Hebrew character (Orthosia gothica) moth.

Sigma 70mm macro

Canon MPE 65mm macro at 5:1

If the wiki page is right then the effective aperture for this shot was f78
(a result of f13 camera setting times the magnification +1) So 13 x (5+1)

Canon MPE 65mm macro at 5:1

Now this is a much sharper shot of the scales that make up the wing, and also focusing on the most clear marking that makes this moth out to be a Hebrew Character . This was shot at f4 which makes for an effective aperture of f24, still really small, but far sharper.


Of course this can be hard to tell at these internet sizes. Resizing with sharpening typically increases sharpness quite a lot. Plus for the first photo I did add a lot of sharpening at the first stage.


Here we see two parts of the above photos side by side at their original size. Here you really can see the dramatic difference in sharpness and overall resolution of detail.

Tips for next time - practice and have breakfast before starting photography!
As always any hints/tips/advice/crit​iques are most welcome!