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I wanted to fool around a little bit with macro photography, and being a Canon purist, the following were my options:-
EF 180mm F3.5L USM Macro Lens - Magnification 1x ($1440)
EF 50mm F2.5 Macro Lens - Magnification 0.5x ($340)
EF 100mm F2.8 USM Macro Lens - Magnification 1x ($670)
MP-E65 F/2.8 1-5x Macro - Magnification 1x to 5x ($980)
Extension Tubes EF 25 + EF 12 ($135+$80=$215)
Close Up Lens (Screw In) 77mm 500D ($180)
Close Up Lens (Screw In) 58mm 500D ($110)
Canon makes four common macro lenses and I have listed them in numbers 1 to 4 above. They also make a 20mm F3.5 macro, and a 35mm F2.8 macro, but these have too short a focal length for them to be practical for the general macro photography that I was interested in, so I didn't consider them at all. The prices in brackets are best discounted prices in USD equivalent which I obtained simply by telephoning a few camera shops around Kuala Lumpur. Not a single shop carried them in stock and they all will have to be ordered from Canon with a bit of waiting period involved.
If money was not a problem, what I would really like to have is this Canon EF 180mm F3.5L Macro lens
It's the perfect professional quality macro lens, capable of not only close-ups to life-size, but like most of Canon's macro lenses, it can also be used like a normal lens for landscape and portrait photography. A good friend has this lens and I had the opportunity to play around with it briefly. It's a beautiful piece of glass capable of magnificent macro images. The focusing range is switchable from between half a meter to infinity, and from 1.5m to infinity, which makes it quicker to focus. The lens has an internal floating construction, and therefore it doesn't change it's length during focusing, removing the possibility of touching or frightening away your macro subject during focusing. The 180mm Macro can be used with Canon's 1.4x Extender, which will increase the focal length to about 250mm. With an extension tube, the magnification can be increased to 1.2x. Perfect.
If money is not an issue, the EF180mm F3.5L is the ideal macro lens that I would like to have. But money is a serious issue with most of us. At its discounted price of $1440 the 180mm macro would cost more than my EOS 10D body, so it is simply out of reach for me.
The next two Canon macro lenses I considered buying were the EF50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro, and the EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM.
The 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro is cheap at only $340 after discount. It is capable of half life size magnification, and if you buy Canon's Life size converter for an additional $315, it can shoot life size macro images, just like the 100mm and the 180mm. However, I'm not sure, what happens to the working distance with the addition of the extension tube. The advantage of the 50mm macro is its compactness, and a wider zone of focus, compared to longer macro lenses. Theoretically it should be easier to get more of you subject into focus. The 180mm and the 100mm macros have zones of focus measured only in millimeters at their widest apertures, so you will only get a narrow slice of the subject in focus at the widest apertures. The big limitation of the 50mm macro however is the lens to subject working distance, which is only about 8 inches. This means the end of your lens is only about 8 inches away from your tiny subject - creating lots of problems with shadows, lighting, focusing, set-up, etc. It is a good lens for macro-photography of inanimate objects that doesn't move, but not good at all if you intend to photograph small living creatures. No insect would hang around to be photographed if this lens is shoved into their faces. So I struck the 50mm macro off my list as well.
Relatively speaking, the EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro below, priced at $670, is a much better choice of a macro lens compared to the 50mm.
It is a medium telephoto lens capable of 1:1 life size macro photography. It has a working distance of about one and a half feet, or twice the working distance of the 50mm, but I feel this is still not quite convenient for shooting living tiny subjects. Although the price is quite affordable, I decided I didn't want the 100mm Macro.
Canon also makes another unique and specialized macro lens - the MP-E65 F2.8.
This lens is capable of magnification from life size up to a whopping 5x. That's a huge magnification factor which will probably fill up my 35mm 10D frame with an ant's head. Its an interesting specialist lens, and at a discounted price of $980, it is a lens I would buy only if I am an entomologist trying to illustrate the fine differences between the compound eye structures of a bluebottle and that of a wasp.
The elimination process, driven by money and functionality, has now narrowed my options to buying either a set of extension tubes, or a screw in close up lens attachment for one of my longer L lenses. A set of two Canon OEM extension tubes cost around $220 - exorbitant if you consider that they are simply hollow tubes without lenses. The extension tubes are placed between the lens and the camera. Their function is to enlarge the focused image. The magnification depends on the focal length of the lens. Canon says that for standard zoom lenses, the magnification of the subject is 0.3x to 0.5x for the EF12, and 0.7x for the EF25 Extension Tubes.
You can combine two extension tubes to get an even bigger image magnification but there is a price to pay. Using extension tubes requires you to compensate for loss of light by either decreasing shutter speed, increasing the aperture, or increasing the ISO in the case of Digital cameras. This means your lens becomes "slower" by as much as two or more F stops. Not acceptable by me, so I decided NOT to go the Extension Tube route for my adventures in macro photography. BTW, if anybody wants to go the extension tube route, some of my photographer friends in the UK say Kenko extension tubes are good value for money. A set of THREE extension tubes of various sizes will cost you less than the price of ONE Canon OEM extension tube. I suppose, because extension tubes have no glass in them, it shouldn't matter very much to use non-Canon brands.
Having rationalized away all other macro solutions for various reasons, with money being the factor that stopped me from buying the EF 180mm macro, I am left only with the screw-in filter type close up lens, as a preferred route for my adventures into macro-photography. I went to the camera shop and stupidly bought a well known brand, single element 3x close up lens attachment, size 58mm, to fit my old EF100-300 mm Canon USM zoom. Price $10. Big mistake. The performance was dismal. The DOF was so narrow as to be almost useless. It wasn't quite usable even with my old EF 24-85mm USM lens. I tried using it to shoot flowers and ants etc. but the results are downright poor, with very noticeable red/violet chromatic fringing and very shallow DOF. My advice to anybody wanting to buy these sort of lenses is - DON'T !! The single element construction of these cheap lens attachments makes them nearly useless for acceptable macro photography. You should only buy the double element achromatic design type for maximum optical performance.
Canon makes two double element close up lens attachments - the 250D and the 500D. The "D" indicates that the lens is a double element achromatic design. It is actually two lenses bonded together. In layman's terms, achromatic means the lens is capable of correcting, or reducing chromatic aberration, or "colour fringing" where edges show colour along their borders. The two bonded lenses have different refraction and dispersion characteristics which effectively removes the fringing seen in cheap, single element close up lens attachments like the 30 Ringgit single element close up lens attachment that I initially bought. The double element achromatic design lens is quite heavy and appears well made. The 250 and 500 figures refer to the maximum possible focusing distance in millimeters, from the front of the close up lens to the subject, when the prime lens is set at infinity. The 250D is recommended for attachment to lenses with focal lengths of between 50mm to 135mm, while the 500D is recommended for lenses with focal lengths of between 70 to 300mm.
I bought the 500D, with the 77mm filter thread in order to fit it on my two "white" L lenses - the fabulous Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L with IS, and the Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L with IS. As I already have the 1.4x Canon tele-converter for these two lenses, the addition of the 500D close up lens attachment transforms these two lenses into an incredibly versatile combo lens system. The 500D gives me a comfortable macro lens to subject working distance of half a meter at the macro end, while the 1.4x tele-converter, and the inbuilt digital 1.6x multiplier, gives me an incredible 900mm telephoto with my 100-400L lens (400mm x 1.6 digital multiplier x 1.4 tele-converter). Awesome. All that is now left is only to take good pictures!!
I reproduce below, the first few experimental macro images I shot with the 500D Close Up lens attached to my 70-200mm. They are 100% crops of images shot in RAW, unprocessed except for minor colour corrections, and compressed in JPG only for purposes of posting them here. I’m not looking for critiques. These pictures are simply to illustrate the capabilities of this lens combination during my initial test shooting. When I get a bit more familiar with the lens combinations, I’ll shoot and post a few more sample images. My initial impression is that the $140 I paid for the 500D is an excellent investment - good enough to discover the hidden world of macro-photography at very reasonable cost. Eventually I may want to get the EF180mm F3.5L macro, but for the moment, I think the 500D is an excellent starting point into the world of macro.
Pointing my 500d equipped EF70-200mm at the tiny flowers in my garden, unfolds the unnoticed drama of the macro world. I see a tiny spider lurking behind a flower petal waiting to snare an unsuspecting insect that ventures into the flower to take the gooey nectar. The spider looks like a creature from a horror movie, all hairy and scary. I can imagine the fright I would feel if I were the size of an insect and this tiny spider were to confront me. Really scary. I see tiny beetles chomping away on the succulent petals of tiny flowers. And I can see the beautiful scales which makes a butterfly so colourful. I also see how menacing the sting of a wasp is. Its an exciting unseen world down there. Almost a new area of photography for me.
The picture below was shot with the 500D attached to my EF70-100mm f/2.8L lens on my10D. With focusing distance set at infinity, I noted the working distance for the lens to be about half a meter from the front of the lens to the subject - quite a comfortable working distance. The camera and lens combination feels noticeably heavy. I chose to use a tripod. Image Stabilization and Auto Focus were both switched off . I find focusing to be quite tricky because of the very shallow depth of field (DOF). To establish focus, I had to bodily move the camera and tripod until the subject was approximately in focus. I then used Manual Focusing for fine adjustments. I found that manual focusing gives more predictable results, and at these magnifications, even a gentle breeze will cause fuzziness. I used an EOS RS-80N3 Remote switch to release the shutter to further reduce the chances of fuzziness. The first picture shows a tiny fruit fly barely 3 mm long landing on the inner petals of a Zinnia. This frame was shot at f/13, 1/60sec, Tele zoom at 115mm, and ISO100. The shutter speed was a bit too slow to stop the fly sharply.
The picture is 100% crops of image shot in RAW, unprocessed except for slight colour corrections, cropping, downsizing, and compressing to about 70 in JPG for purposes of posting them here. I opted for F13 to get the complete flower into focus. As I stated above, this is my very first image with the Close Up lens - shot in my garden while I was still in my pajamas, the morning after I got the lens. I'm quite impressed with the performance of the 500D. I am really excited by this cheap route to macro-photography and I couldn't wait to tell you about it. I will try and post better pictures once I get the hang of the peculiarities of the 500D close up lens.
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