Why does only Canon have something like the MPE 65?

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ChrisLilley
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Why does only Canon have something like the MPE 65?

Post by ChrisLilley »

This thread was prompted by a comment in a gallery thread:
sonyalpha wrote:WAAAAAA!!!

I want an MPE 65 that fits my Sony A300: :cry:
Why is it that Canon offer a 1-5x zoom macro, the 65mm f/2.8 MPE 65

Image

while other camera system manufacturers (Nikon, Pentax, Sony(/Minolta)) and lens manufacturers (Tamron, Tokina, Sigma, Zeiss, Cosina Voigtländer) do not?

Have they previously offered such a lens and it failed in the market? Do other manufacturers under-estimate the interest in macro (by which, along with Nikon, I mean greater than 1x magnification) photography?

Craig Gerard
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Post by Craig Gerard »

Chris,

Under-estimation of potential market could well be a factor or a reality.

If a photographer finds a desire for the features the MPE-65 offers, then it is reasonably inexpensive to find a good Canon body to use with the lense.

Minolta did have an AF 3X-1X Macro Zoom (discontinued):
http://www.mhohner.de/sony-minolta/mzoom.php

Olympus produced a few items in the OM range; specifically the Bellows Macro Lenses and the Telescopic Auto Tube 65-116:
http://www.alanwood.net/photography/oly ... 38-28.html

http://www.alanwood.net/photography/oly ... -tube.html


Craig
Last edited by Craig Gerard on Sun Jun 20, 2010 5:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

ChrisLilley
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Post by ChrisLilley »

Craig, thanks for the link to a thorough review of an interesting lens. Do the Sony DSLRs retain compatibility with these older Minolta lenses?

Nikon makes a zoom micro lens, the AF 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6 D Micro, but the max magnification is 1.32x and the max aperture is pretty slow.

Image

I would be interested to hear from anyone who uses another camera system but added a Canon body, or moved to Canon, specifically to use that lens.

Craig Gerard
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Post by Craig Gerard »

Chris,

Our posts crossed-paths. I added some additional information regarding Olympus OM gear to my previous post.

However, at current prices (lenses) from the OM Macro range (the last time I looked) you could very well buy an MPE-65mm or near enough; plus the MPE-65 is at home on a Canon DSLR.

Craig
To use a classic quote from 'Antz' - "I almost know exactly what I'm doing!"

sonyalpha
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Post by sonyalpha »

Thanks all : I am so pleased that my Cry didn't go unheeded: :)

Avery useful discussion... I hope that Sony reads it:

Sonyalpha
Retired but not old in spirit:

Fairly new to photography........keen to learn:

The BAT
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Post by The BAT »

ChrisLilley wrote:
Nikon makes a zoom micro lens, the AF 70-180mm f/4.5-5.6 D Micro

I would be interested to hear from anyone who uses another camera system but added a Canon body, or moved to Canon, specifically to use that lens.
Hi Chris,
One small correction: Nikon "made" a zoom micro!
That lens now commands S/H prices that are a lot steeper than when new and I was under the impression that it doesn't quite make 1:1 on a full frame camera?
To answer your second part, if you take a look at FM forum, macro section, you will see a thread running currently about an American photographer who has just received his new MP-E and purchased a S/H Canon 20D to power it; this after many years of being a Nikon user/abuser. He keeps the Nikon outfit as a back-up to his 'new' system.
His name is Kenny.

Bruce

ChrisLilley
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Post by ChrisLilley »

The BAT wrote: One small correction: Nikon "made" a zoom micro!
Ah, yes. Since most of my lens purchases are second hand, the distinction between current and discontinued Nikon offerings can get a bit hazy in my mind.
The BAT wrote: That lens now commands S/H prices that are a lot steeper than when new and I was under the impression that it doesn't quite make 1:1 on a full frame camera?
Oops. My source was Roland Vink's site. He gives 1:1.32/1:1 as the max magnification for this zoom. I misread that as 1.32:1. So it gets to 1:1 at one end of the zoom. Sorry.

http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/s ... l#70-xxPro

(also, magnification does not depend on sensor size).

ChrisLilley
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Post by ChrisLilley »

sonyalpha wrote:Thanks all : I am so pleased that my Cry didn't go unheeded: :)
Didn't want to derail the original thread, but also thought you made a valid point that was worth some discussion.

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

Generally speaking to be a commercial proposition mass market lenses need to be made in large numbers, or for a niche market at a very high price. Therefore it is a matter of balancing production numbers against what those wanting the product will pay. The larger production run you can get the cheaper you can produce the product, but there has to be sufficient numbers wanting the product for that level of production.

As soon as you produce a niche item the price has to rise, then though there may be a demand for the product there may not be enough at that inflated price.

Nikon and Canon both produced exotic lenses in the 1970's-80's that have now been dropped from their inventory. In the old days such firms were largely run by optical engineers and it was often a case for some more exotic items of "look what we can do" or "vanity" production rather than being a sound commercial proposition.

In the 1990's with recession, reality bit in most industries and the former engineers or tradesmen then running the firms and deciding what the firm produced in the past were superseded by outside managers and accountants who decided if it does not make the maximum return possible from the production line and factory space it takes up we will drop it and produce something more profitable. So a lot of less profitable items were dropped by lens manufacturers.

As we know today, most firms are now often run by managers and accountants brought in from other industries whose aim is maximum revenue for the shareholders, rather than being steeped in the industries traditions through having come up from the shop floor, so I suppose they do bring a bit of reality to what it pays to produce.

Nikon dropped its 70mm-180mm macro zoom due to limited demand, plus its 5T and 6T close up lenses. Probably the Canon MPE-65 is a hang over from the old days pre-accountants in charge, but is kept in production because its development costs etc have now been recovered, or written off years ago. The question is would Canon produce it today if it started from scratch again? I doubt the market would be large enough, coupled with development costs, for the accountants now in charge to OK it.

In future it may not be why don't the lens manufacturers produce this or that macro equipment, but what else will they drop as uneconomic to produce for such a limited market?

http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-a ... est-report

http://www.bythom.com/70180Macrolens.htm

As has been said, there was little demand for the 70mm-180mm Micro Nikkor at its price when in production, so Nikon dropped it and now it goes for more secondhand than it did new in its declining years.

DaveW

g4lab
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Post by g4lab »

Wild later Wild Leica made IMO the definitive system for this purpose in the form of their M400 and M420 systems.

People have taken the objectives from these and applied them directly to cameras. They are sometimes available separately. The semiconductor industry seemed to like to put them on cameras for machine vision. The Wild MakroScopes that these came on had a 1.25x tube factor and sometimes more. Yet Wild still sold regularly with these lenses oculars of 10x 15x 16x 20x 25x 32x and even 40x I myself am prejudiced against any ocular over 20x but to see a very conservative company who is concerned about their reputation for crisp images sell a 32 AND a 40x to go with this lens (after a 1.25x tube magnification) tells me they must be rating the NA conservatively.

This guy has lowered his price and has make offer. The unit has some camera attachent pieces and something on the front. (usually a vertical illuminator)

Here is another that looks cleaner and is the lens itself. Also make offer but "needs cleaning" which means there needs to be a solid returnability. Its in Singapore.


Here is one that seems to have a vertical illuminator in front of the lens. Almost always easily removeable

List member Dr. Savazzi has very extensive downloadable info on these scopes. The prices in the above auctions are hallucinatory. You can buy the entire scope for what they are offering the lens for. Those prices might be correct if you could find an example of the ApoZoom objective which has six to one rather than five to one zoom range and an NA of 0.115.

I have bought several of them for in the $400 range but not lately.

They weigh a lot so I don't know how good they would be hand held.

That Minolta goodie is something I never heard of before that looks like a thing of optical and mechanical beauty. I just love this forum.

Gene

The BAT
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Post by The BAT »

Hi Guys,

I would also like to know why we can't get an electronically capable adapter for Canon lenses onto Nikon cameras. Seems that there are a couple of different manufacturers who make the opposite in Nikon lenses to Canon bodies. These companies, Novoflex seems to be the main one, produce quite a variety of different adapters for all sorts of camera body/lens combinations. Why is the Nikon mount left off the list, or am I missing something in the nomenclature???
If this adapter/mount was available, then we could happily purchase the MP-E and stick it onto our Nikon bodies ???

Bruce

ChrisLilley
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Post by ChrisLilley »

The BAT wrote: I would also like to know why we can't get an electronically capable adapter for Canon lenses onto Nikon cameras. Seems that there are a couple of different manufacturers who make the opposite in Nikon lenses to Canon bodies.
The Nikon register distance (front of mount to sensor) is 46.5mm. The (current) Canon mount is 44mm.

So a Nikon lens to Canon camera adapter can be 2.5mm thick and a Canon lens to Nikon camera adapter has to be ... minus 2.5mm thick.

Or alternatively, doesn't let you focus to infinity.
The BAT wrote: If this adapter/mount was available, then we could happily purchase the MP-E and stick it onto our Nikon bodies ???
For a macro lens yes, that would work, assuming the lens has such things as an aperture ring, manual focus option, and doesn't totally depend on electronics to do everything.

The BAT
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Post by The BAT »

Thanks Chris,
Betcha Nikon did that deliberately. . . :roll:

I knew that there would be a logical reason, trouble is that I spend too much time shooting pics and not enough time studying the background details. . .not a bad thing really. :wink:

Bruce

DaveW
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Post by DaveW »

As Chris says the Nikon lens mount to sensor distance is greater than for other cameras. The other reason, as I said above is demand and cost. In this instance there may be many more in the market for adapters that allow the lenses to focus to infinity and therefore be used in general photography, which is why adapters are made to use Nikon lenses on other makes of camera. But as soon as an adapter only allows the lens to be used for macro work the demand obviously shrinks. Manufacturers will not cater for minorities unless they are prepared to pay high prices for low production items.

Many general photographers would like a 600mm or 1000mm telephoto, so the demand is there, but generally most cannot afford what it costs even for a longer production run, so though the greater demand exists it cannot be satisfied at a price they could afford, therefore remains a high priced limited production item.

Did Nikon plan this deliberately? Well Nikon lenses are being used on other camera marques but theirs cannot be used on Nikon, so the conspiracy theory exists. Also one professional photographer is once said to have stated years ago that his ideal camera would be a Canon body with a Nikon lenses, but that's harping back to when Canon started and did use Nikon lenses.

It's a pity that standardisation of lens mounts did not continue from the fairly universal M42 screw when bayonet mounts came in so we would now be able to use any lens on any camera.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M42_lens_mount

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_mount

DaveW

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Post by enricosavazzi »

DaveW wrote: Did Nikon plan this deliberately? Well Nikon lenses are being used on other camera marques but theirs cannot be used on Nikon, so the conspiracy theory exists. Also one professional photographer is once said to have stated years ago that his ideal camera would be a Canon body with a Nikon lenses, but that's harping back to when Canon started and did use Nikon lenses.

It's a pity that standardisation of lens mounts did not continue from the fairly universal M42 screw when bayonet mounts came in so we would now be able to use any lens on any camera.
I believe that one objective reason for the mostly one-way compatibility (Nikon lenses tend to work - manually - on others' cameras) is simply due to the fact that Nikon has kept its lens mount (the Nikon F bayonet) longer than virtually all other SLR/DSLR manufacturers.

Historically, whenever a camera/lens manufacturer has adopted a new type of lens mount, there has been a tendency to decrease the registration distance and offer an adapter for using older lenses on the new camera bodies (not the opposite). Pentax did this when they changed the M42 mount to Pentax K bayonet. Canon and Olympus followed the same route. Therefore, registration distances for modern DSLRs are consistently lower than those of older types, which precludes the use of new lenses on old types of cameras (which include all Nikon DSLRs because of their use of the old mount). No real conspiracy, just a natural process of cause and effect.

The process of reducing the registration distance seems to be accelerating. Four-thirds and micro four-thirds cameras have very low registration distances because of the lack of mirror and pentaprism. In principle, a digital camera with interchangeable lenses needs to provide only a minimal registration distance, sufficient to accommodate the thickness of the shutter and anti-aliasing filter. An electronic shutter built into the sensor or an LCD shutter built into the antialiasing filter are real possibilities, so we should not need registration distances in excess of a couple of millimeters.

Solid state shutters offer interesting advantages, by the way, like truly vibration-free operation, truly simultaneous exposure of the whole sensor with very short flash synchronization speeds (mechanical focal-plane shutters provide instead a travelling slit than moves across the sensor surface for about 1/60-1/125 s), a virtually unlimited operating life (at least millions of cycles) and probably a lower production cost and failure rate once fully developed.

At this point, I should expect that a camera body could be one centimeter thick or less (for mechanical stiffness of the body, rather than to house thick components), with the sensor placed almost flush within the lens mount. It would be a dream come true for tinkerers, too, since it allows the use of practically any lens type (including radical designs with rear elements almost in contact with the focal plane), extreme amounts of tilt and shift, and a seamless merging of still- and videocameras into just one type of device.
--ES

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