Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM : First Impressions

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Shooting with the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM is like delving into another world. A world of tiny things made large, hair thin focal planes and immensely sensitive focus rings. It’s as close to ‘Honey I shrunk the kids!’ as I’ve ever been and funnily enough, every time I focused upon a leaf, blade of grass, flower or a grain of salt, that’s exactly what I thought of. . .but without Rick Moranis. . .he always scared me.

Ok, first up, let it be known that macro shooting is seriously awesome! I’d seen shots from the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM before, wanted that look and knew what I was getting. What I didn’t know, was how much joyous, childlike fun I would have shooting with this lens, peering at things very close up through the live view and then gazing transfixed at them on the iMac. Initially I thought this lens may be very limited in application, but now having seen the results I’m inclined to think otherwise.

But obviously you’ve seen how close in you can get with this thing, as no doubt you’ve watched the video before reading this literary masterpiece. So enough, let’s get to the bigger picture.

What I love about the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM, aside from it’s amazing image quality and ability to focus so close, is it’s focus ring. Being a lover of manual focusing, the nicely damped focus ring is a dream. It feels really great in the hand and the stops, although they are not hard, are sufficient for my style of shooting. I can see how purist “my lens will have hard stops or die” types may frown at it’s easy going ways, but for me, it’s not a huge problem. As well as feeling good, it’s nice and wide since we’re not sharing the barrel with a zoom ring, which means you can get a comfortable grip on it any which way when you’re shooting handheld. Speaking of shooting handheld, as you may or may not know, I’m a pretty big fan of shooting handheld with the IS on. This lens is no exception, I did have quite decent results shooting handheld video and photo’s with the IS on, but it does not feel like as good an implementation as it does on the Canon 70-200 f2.8L IS USM. The IS on that lens seems to perform a lot better, especially when shooting video. It just seems to have more room for movement.

The AF is super fast and super quiet and despite having switches to limit the focal range (and hunting) I didn’t make use of them this weekend. I’ll let you know how they go a little way down the track.

I like that it comes with a soft case to keep the outer plastic shell from scratching too badly and that it also comes with a lens hood. Speaking of the plastic shell though, that’s one thing I don’t like. Although it probably is, The Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM, does not feel like a tough and sturdy lens. Sure it’s nice and weighty in the hand, but the plastic construction of the outer shell does not inspire a lot of confidence. I’m not rough with my gear, but I do like it to have a solid feel to it’s construction, and given the L Series classification, I was surprised to find this. It doesn’t feel like it’s about to fall apart or anything, but it is missing that tank like build quality of the other L series lenses. We’ll see how it holds up over time.

On the camera (I have used it on the Canon 5DMKII and Canon 7D) it feels nice, not too heavy and if I’m to be a complete wanker, looks quite cool with the lens hood on. Of course how it looks doesn’t affect the images, but hey, some people like cars. . .I like camera’s. . .don’t we all? That’s why you’re here! But I digress. What’s it like to shoot with I hear you clamouring, get to the bloody point!

It’s good! Real good! And when shooting video or photo’s, very closely, wide open at f2.8, insanely difficult to manual focus. Now I’m sure I’ll get used to it, but this is seriously a whole new ball game. I pride myself on being able to rack a pretty decent focus when I need to, but this is unbelievable. The focal plane is literally hair thin. At the minimum focus distance, wide open, a grain of salt is deeper than the focal plane. That’s some pretty shallow depth of field. Moving the focus ring a little actually does quite a lot at this stage and even the usually imperceptible swaying of your body can mean the difference between a keeper and a dud. The bokeh it produces is just gorgeous and the out of focus highlights are beautiful perfect circles at f2.8 thanks to the 9 blade aperture diaphragm. For the best result when shooting super close you’re going to have to use a tripod. I found my Glidetrack to be a great help, moving the camera instead of the focus ring. You’ll see examples of that in the video with the shot of the eyes. That’s not a racked shot, that’s a Glidetrack push.

The difference the 1.6x multiplier of the Canon 7D‘s cropped sensor makes to the perceived focal length is quite astounding. Effectively turning the Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM into a 160mm Macro Lens. I didn’t do a full test of this, just putting it on there briefly to see what it looked like in the live view. But at minimum focus distance the difference I saw was significant. The shot of the eye at the beginning of the video. On the Canon 7D, that shot would have been mostly iris, in other words, really bloody close! I’ll do a full test of this in the coming weeks and share the results. I’m looking to seeing what it can do that’s for sure.

The Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro IS USM is super sharp wide open, and obviously it gets a bit better as you stop it down, but I didn’t notice too much of a difference. Even wide open it’s still really impressive to me and I used it like this mostly.

All up, this is a lovely lens. Not only is it a cracking 100mm lens, it’s also got that macro ability which is really something else. Having not shot Macro stuff before, it’s been really interesting, and really refreshing being able to get that up close and personal with any subject and see it like you’ve never seen it before. To be able to pick a subject, no matter how close and not worry about your minimum focus distance, is really refreshing. What I love about shooting is freedom, and despite the limitation of it being a fixed focal length lens, the macro ability more than makes up for it. So get out and give it a go if you have the chance, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

Anyway, I reckon that’s about enough out of me for now I’ve only used the lens for about 3 hours or so and will get a bit more up here once I’ve had a couple of weeks of time behind it. Some things you only notice after extended use and I’m interested to see how I can incorporate this lens into my daily shooting and just how many applications I’ll have for that extreme close up. Only time will tell.

Now if you haven’t already, get you butt back up the top of the post and go and watch the test footage as it’s supposed to be watched. . .in 1080P. Nothing else does it justice.

Until then. . .

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