Lens Impressions

Try to find a bad thing said about this lens. You won't.

As I was paying for mine in a shop in Bangkok, another customer complimented me on my purchase. Such is its reputation that everyone seems to think that all it lacks is some white paint, a red ring, and an 'L' designation. I had wanted this lens for some time and was excited when I bought it.

I was looking forward to doing some interesting close-up work, and I had also heard it was an excellent portrait lens. Apart from its image quality, I had also read good things about its bokeh quality. When you consider that the lens isn't that expensive, and that it will work with all EF mounts, it seems like an absolute bargain.

I found it to be a frustrating lens. It was indeed capable of the fantastic image quality I had heard about but I had lots of problems with soft images. It could have been user error but I have been using SLRs since 1982 and I have never had the same kind of problems with other lenses.

On soft images I checked the focus points and exposure settings, and there was nothing to indicate it was user error. My shutter speeds were fast enough, and my apertures small enough to get the required depth of field without camera shake for sharp images. But they just weren't sharp.

My conclusion was that it must have been an internal focusing problem. I owned this lens while I was using a Canon 10D. The 10D never had a fantastic reputation for AF but my one was spot on and never caused me any problems with my 17-40mm or 70-200mm lenses.

On one occasion while taking photos at a Thai Buddhist temple I came across an amazing-looking dog. I got shots but they were very soft. A little later, a monk asked me to take his photo and he requested a print.

The shots I took were almost unusable. In post-processing I had to add a ridiculous amount of sharpening and I felt quite ashamed when I handed over the prints later on.

However, when I reviewed the photos taken with this lens for the photos above I was pleasantly surprised at some of the results. This is what made it so frustrating to use.

The bottom line is that I can't afford to use a lens that doesn't guarantee good results every single time. I could have kept the lens and spent a lot of time diagnosing the problem, so that I knew its limitations and could work around them, but that's not how I want to shoot.

I want lenses like my 17-40mm and 70-200mm that I can just pull out of my bag and rely on 100% of the time. I therefore sold the 100mm Macro fairly shortly after buying it.

I am now faced with a small dilemma because I want another macro lens. I don't know whether to chance my arm with another copy of the same lens or go for the 60mm EF-S Macro.

As a portrait lens, the 100mm was a bit long on a crop body camera. However, with macro work it gives you a bit more working distance. The 100mm will also work on all EF mounts whereas the 60mm will only work on crop bodies.

The 60mm is a more modern design, it's smaller, and I have read that the optics have been specially designed to photograph flat surfaces. With a crop body, the 60mm is probably a better focal length for portraits and this is probably what I will go for next.

Post-Processing

Most original images were shot in the RAW format and converted with Adobe Camera Raw. Noise was reduced using Imagenomic Noiseware Professional. Small amounts of image enhancement were applied using Adobe Photoshop CS2 (curves, levels, saturation) before sharpening using the Smart Sharpen filter (Amount: 30% - 120%, Radius: 0.2px - 0.3px, Remove: Lens Blur).

The large JPG images that open if you click on a thumbnail were saved with a 'High' quality setting of '8' on a scale of 0-12.

Caveat

This isn't a review. If you want MTF charts and comparisons with other lenses, I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. However, there are plenty of excellent sites around that offer this kind of information.

Just as with audio equipment, a list of specifications doesn't mean very much. My old original Quad Electrostatics never looked very good on paper but once fired up they had the ability to make hairs stand up all over your body.

With photography I prefer to look at photos of real things and real people that evoke emotion, rather than look at MTF charts or other meaningless images.