I love your lens reviews. However, as a very experienced macro photographer, especially with the Canon MP-E 65mm, I'll just make a few observations about the this lens, and using this sort of lens. Longer working distances are not necessarily an advantage for field insect macro photography. Generally when hand holding you will be using a flash, not just for the necessary light, but to freeze motion, as full flash acts like a virtual high speed shutter. Allowing hand holding at high magnification. It's actually much easier to frame a subject and get the right angle on it, and very difficult and fiddly with a tripod. With shiny surfaces like a lot of insects have you need a lot of light modification to avoid specular highlights. I actually invented concave diffusers, both the name and the principle to facilitate this. The greater the distance from the flash, the harder it is to get enough diffusion as the light source has to be large relative to your subject. If the working distance is to short it can prove a problem, but just a few centimetres is plenty. In addition, if an insect will flee because the lens is only 5cm away, then it won't be much easier if the working distance is 10cm. It is possible to get that close, but it is something you have to learn to do. A lens like this with manual stop down is not very good on a DSLR for hand holding. Using the taking aperture gives you a very dark viewfinder (at 5x and f16, the effective aperture would be f96), just to illustrate how dark it would make the viewfinder. Also with auto-stop down such as on a lens like the MP-E 65mm it is much easier to estimate where the plane of focus is when the lens is wide open. With manual stop down a mirrorless camera with an EVF would be better because at least the viewfinder can gain up. If like me you shoot lots of moving or active subjects, you need to use a small aperture and deal with the diffraction softening. This means a combination of noise removal, high pixel radius sharpening, and very soft light to stop the image looking over sharpened. The other approach is focus stacking. The top exponents of this will use the lens near it's maximum aperture at higher magnifications to avoid diffraction softening. Meaning this lenses obvious softness at wider apertures would be problematical. In other words, because of it's manual stop down, this lens would be more suited for focus stacking than single exposure photos, where you ideally want to have the lens wide open for framing and focusing, which is what happens with an auto stop down lens like the Canon MP-E 65mm. Yet it's poor image quality wide open makes it not so suited for maximum image quality. I don't generally do many deep stacks at high magnification (I've done a bit). It is well known that at wide apertures some other options are sharper, typically high quality enlarging lenses or microscope objectives. However, the Canon MP-E 65mm whilst not as sharp wide open as some of the very best enlarging and microscope objectives, it is not really a soft lens wide open, as this lens appears to be.

I enjoy your reviews. You are very thorough and do a great job of explaining, mixed in with some humor. Thanks for doing these videos!

Exceptionally unique & as always the best review for a superb lens.

Thanks so much for this review can't wait to get my hands on one. I think this will work out well for me. Keep up the great work.

Great review Chris, thanks for this new one ;)

Great review Christopher thumbs up. All the best.

Cool to see more of these lenses. Thanks bud

I get to learn more about lenses and cameras because of you. Thank you.

LOVE the apple shot.

It would be interesting to compare it to a high quality 1:1 macro (Sony 90mm, Canon 100mm L, etc) and cropping the 1:1 down. It can often be sharper to use a higher quality lens as a psudo specialized one - similar to how the Canon 400mm 5.6 L is sharper than the Tamron 150(?)-600mm even when cropped to the same 600mm from 400mm.

Thank you for another excellent review!

Pre-order inbound! Excellent!

Thank you for this review. Your speech is easy to understand, even for non-native English speaker.

Thank you!😊 very cool video

Beautiful

Excellent review and if I didn't already have an MP-E65, I'd be after one of these.

Hi Chris! Hope you can make a lens list for macro lens and close up lens as well..always admire your work! Thanks

I enjoy watching your videos and excellent reviews. Thanks a lot Christopher! Did you review the Kamlan 15mm F2.0 lens? In case not, are you going willing to review it?

Sounds like a good lens for digitizing all my old transparencies and negs.

if you do some focus stacking this would be a great lens to have for the price.

Thx bro! And need comparative tests with Canon for picture quality. I have Canon 65mm and I don't know change it or not. And... a great review :)

Probably the only way to assess the sharpness of this lens is creating and comparing focus stacks between this lens and its competition. Focus stacks are the most likely serious use. But Christopher, you already are clearly spending lots of time doing conventional testing of mostly conventional lenses, so the painstaking process of making and comparing stacks is probably going to have to ultimately be done by macro nerds with focusing rails, and controlled lighting and subjects.

Great video and very helpful. Do you know how it compares to the Canon 65nn lens Christopher

Thanks for the review. Does it have detents for aperture, half (or 1/3) stop settings? Clicks for the 1-5x stting ring too? Have you tried the Laowa lens - looking for a comparison. Based on the lack of a focusing helicoid nor any provision for aperture automation, even a good aperture pre-setting lock, it looks like it would be hard to use for serious work. Might be right at half the price...I'm glad they've brought options like these, it is a pretty exotic lens, to so many mounts. Unfortunately, I don't think it's quite ready.

Thank you for posting your review. How did you like this super macro vs the others that you mentioned? I have a couple Macro’s now. Nikon 55 macro and Rokinon 100mm macro. Honestly could just get a $8 extension tube and throw it on a 50mm or 105mm for same or better results for a lot less money spent. But how is this vs the Laowa and the other super macro lenses? biggest advantage is the working distance and the optional light?

Thank you so much for this video. I need your recommendation for an affordable macro lens for sony a7iii please. Thank you once again

VEGA 11U F2.8 one love

Hi, do you know where I can find the light rings only?

Hi Chris, what tripod head and macro focusing rail are you using?

Fuji shooters should try the XF80mm 2.8 OIS first... one of the best macro lenses made, and useful for a lot more.

Awesome review. Have you noticed any CA on this lens? Thanks

Hello chris again! Uh would it be possible for you to review this lens: Tamron SAL 70-200mm f/2.8 SP Di LD (IF) Macro

Hallo Chris. I'm a new follower from Turin, Italy. Thank you for all your precious tips. Would you soon review the new Samyang XP 10mm f/3.5 for full frame cameras? I'm very curious about it but I couldn't get much information so far, Thank you so much.

Sir please make a review of the sigma 30mm 1.4 EF-M

Focusstacking is the way ...

Hallo, es gibt eine Version für GFX aber kann es denn den vollen Sensor auflösen oder stellt man auf KB 35mm um?

很高兴看到中国镜头。画质看上去不错

Hi! What kind of macro flash is in this video?

A number of Nikon, Leica, Sigma, Cannon macros 1:1 objectives are doing better job after cropping.

The Canon MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro was introduced in 1999 and is one of the oldest lenses that is still in production and in the market. It is not autofocus and can't focus to infinity.

The manufacture of this lens have reworked it would you consider testing the new lens in one of your videos.

Which lens is more sharpnest - this Mitakon or Laowa 25 super macro?

Thanks for the review Chris. At these sort of macro reproduction ratios, you are going to have to shoot at much smaller apertures than normal to get sufficient depth of field. The image quality at F2.8 will therefore be irrelevant for most if not all users. Even f8 would be too large in many situations unless one is focus stacking.

Hi Chris, I just got this lens but I can't seem to "unlock" the magnification ring. I'm using a Nikon D800 with the Nikon F Mount. Everything seems to be nominal but I am unable to change the magnification

it looks ok at best

Hey chris!! i'm gonna ask you if you will never gonna review the canon 200 f1.8, 200 f2.0, 300 f2.8 and the 400 f2.8 lenses - ¿?

I’m still waiting for the 90d review buddy. Its been 3 months. Love your content.

Do you know if this is the redesigned version? The first version was actually pretty poor performer.

3rd, dang I missed

I'd like to see the performance on APSC

That's... wow. Simply put, it's quite bad. Not sure if the lens is a bit misaligned or if it's actually that bad. The Laowa has some LOCA but a lot sharper and more resolution. Diffraction becomes obvious after F4 for the Laowa. The lens foot for the Laowa is pretty bad though, but it's so tiny that it doesn't require a lens foot. It's definitely not normal.

Do you own/work In a chip shop in Ickenham Hertfordshire ?

I see that it's being recalled - maybe repeat with updated version?

Can you post a link for the light? I would be interested in that!

ever seen the 65mm mp-e?

Thanks for the review but I don't see it to be worth it. Even if I got it for free, I'd probably use it once to try. The bad IQ at 5x just does not seem to make it worth while and there are way better 1x macro lens.

Did you start putting ads on your videos? No worries, if you did, just not used to seeing them.

Judging by Micael Widell's review ( kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ma-Wq8p3tNu1qWg.html ), quality control might be an issue with this lens with copy variations.

Jesus! At 5x macro it looks like it's going to require a lot of photo stacking. On a APS-C I'll be lucky if I can get a single eye of a insect in the frame. TBH I'm not sure this lens is worth it. I'm not impressed with the quality of the photos. Probably better off reversing a 19mm lens.

The only lens I've ever sold after buying was a macro lens. Too much work and not what I was expecting. All the interesting insects I like are more than fine at 0.5X magnification or less sometimes with a bit of cropping, and there are great all round usable lenses that can do that which are not "Macro" lenses, even stuff as small as a fruit fly can get a nice picture at 0.5X. Something to note is the more you macro in the more depth of field is a "Major" problem, meaning you have to stop down/image stack to get anything usable.

As a professional NatGeo awarded macro photographer id like to test it with FF and Apsc with/without focus stacking. That's how you get the real test i guess

Canon MP-E 65 mm is much sharper.

I can attach a 50ml backwards and get 1:1

You have a nice accent but if I may, "ants today" is a bit too strong (unless you actually mean 🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜🐜)

' oh no... not good len because of bad blur blur focus

Second, just by a second...

No where near as good as my fuji 80mm macro

Thank you so much for this video. I need your recommendation for an affordable macro lens for sony a7iii please. Thank you once again