Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Reviewed on dpreview

Everybody waits to read reviews about lenses and cameras on dpreview.com. Today Andy Westlake has reviewed the Canon EF 100mm F2.8 L IS USM macro lens, and I'm eager to see how this lens performs in lab tests. If you don't know already, the Canon EF 100mm F2.8L IS USM is a new macro lens from Canon, which should improve the quality of the older 100 mm macro lens, it's an L (luxury) lens with Canon's new hybrid image stabilization, which compensates camera shake and tilt camera shake.

It doesn't say that the older 100 mm macro lens wasn't good, in fact, it was very good, but some macro photographers wanted Canon to release an image stabilization macro lens for outdoor nature macro shooting including portrait shooting. The image stabilizer which was implemented inside the lens is supposed to give a 4 stop advantage when shooting with lung focal range. This macro lens allows 1:1 magnification for your life macro shooting. The Canon 100mm f/2.8L IS fitting Canon EF mounts, both for full frame DSLR cameras and cropped sensor ASP-C DSLRs. On an ASP-C DSLR, this lens equivalent to 160mm (1.6 crop sensors). It has nine rounded diaphragm blades ,ultrasonic motor for fast focusing and the focusing is internal.

The Canon 100mm F2.8L IS Macro uses a hybrid image stabilization to allow up to four stops at regular you, three stops at 0.5x magnification, two stops at 1.0x magnification. So as you can see the image stabilization drop when the focusing closer to the object at 1.0x magnification, but in comparison to Nikon micro lenses, which don't have an effective image stabilization act 1.0x magnification, this is really a great achievement from Canon.

The lens weights 625 g, has 15 elements in 12 groups with one UD elements and takes 67 mm filters, the front element does not rotate on focus. So as you can see we are starting with very impressive specifications. However, can this lens provide a higher optical quality than the previous 100 mm macro lens? - let's read dpreview website's Canon 100mm 1:2.8 L IS USM Macro lens review and find out how good this new macro lens is.

First of all, Canon's auto focusing mechanism is very fast and nearly silent. The editor also says that its auto focusing system is faster than the older 100mm F/2.8 Macro USM lens. Also, the manual focusing works very well in this are very important for macro photography. So as you can see, very good marks for the focusing system which is very good for the start, let's continue reading.

Canon 100mm f2.8L IS USM Macro lens comes with at ET-73 lens hood, which is supposed to minimize the reflections of stray light, and for some macro shots it is very important, and we are glad to see that Canon has supplied a lens hood together with this macro lens, and he did separate. Take, for example, the Canon 10-22mm ultra-wide angle lens. This lens doesn't come with a lens hood, which is a must for wide angle shooting, and you should buy it separately.  However, as you know, we are talking about an expensive 'L' lens, and therefore, you're getting what you paid for.

In terms of sharpness, dpreview's editor says that this lens is very sharp wide open and the best results were achieved using f4-f5.6 Aperture, but on f16 you will get extremely soft results, and that's a pity. In terms of chromatic aberration, this lens performs pretty well and the falloff is negligible. Furthermore, the distortion of the lens is negligible, and because it is a long focal range macro lens and not a wide lens or
ultra wide lens, we expected this lens to behave like this.

The image stabilization feature works very well, and you will be a clearly evident advantage when shooting hand-held close up macro photographs. You can read more about the results on dpreview.com review.

Dpreview.com says the optical quality of this lens is superb, and it is well-built but very expensive when in comparison to the alternative non-stabilized lenses.

For more information visit dpreview.com Canon 100mm f2.8L IS Macro Lens review.