Playing with EF 100mm L Macro last weekend

[ScottyP]

Great excuse for a hike in the state park.

[ScottyP]

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@Waddizzle wrote:

I think your aperture is stopped down way too far.  Stay between f/8 and f/16.  I'm still looking for the sweet spot for the aperture setting with this lens.  So far, I've started at f/8, and haven't budged.

EOS Rebel T5, EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM, 1/800, f/8, ISO 250 - Manual Mode, w/ISO Auto.  One Shot Mode.

Here is a near 100% crop of the same shot, probably around 80%, I'm guessing.  Backing up a little bit, to about just over 2 feet or so, gave me much more DOF.

I love the lens.  It's a great prime for non-macro shots, too.  Here's mallard trying to lead me away from its' young.

EOS Rebel T5, EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM, 1/320, f/8, ISO 640 - Manual Mode, w/ISO Auto. One Shot Mode.

Here is crop, about 80% or so, of the same shot.

All of these shots were processed with LR6, mostly to reduce the noise, White Balance, and Exposure [brightness] adjustments in the dawn light.  The devil is in the details, they say.  Then, this lens is pretty devilish.

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I like the bee shots a lot. Maybe just backing up and cropping is the solution. 

[Waddizzle]

ScottyP,

Thanks for the compliment.  Backing up a bit helped to bring more of the bee's body into focus, but my flowers are no more fully in focus than yours.  

Also, don't be mislead into thinking that 1/800 SS freezes a bee's wings.  This guy simply wasn't flappping.  At 1/800, the flapping bee wings were a fuzzy blur, moving about 1/3 of a full stroke.  I would think you need at least 1/4000 to freeze the flapping bee wings.  I guess this might have been close to what shooting humminbirds must be like.

Personally, I was amazed to get these results with a T5.  I had planned on backing up a bit, and the T5 was the only crop body that i had on hand at the moment.  The keeper rate was 5-10%, depending upon the shot, sometimes as high as 33%.  

I was using One Shot because AI Servo seemed like it wanted to keep "hunting" for something to track.  I was tempted to switch from the manually selected center point to activating all of them len, while in AI Servo.  The T5 only has 9 AF points.

[ScottyP]

I have wondered if having a crop body around for macro would help with DOF, but for reasons that make my head hurt I *think*  maybe the whole thing ends up being a wash somehow if you factor in backing the FF up to the same working distance you get with the crop, or something?  

[Waddizzle]

Maybe this link will help relieve your headaches.

http://www.dofmaster.com/doftable.html

[Waddizzle]

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Have you ever tried focus stacking?  You should give it a go if you haven't.  It can produce some amazing results.  Most of the great macro shots you see in print and elsewhere are done using focus stacking.

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ScottyP,

Focus stacking is meticulous work.  That photo fo a dime that I keep posting took me nearly 3 hours to shoot.  I made half a dozen shots at 10 different focus positions.  But, like Ernie says, you can produce some amazing results.

Stacking photos will test your skills as photographer.  You need a VERY sturdy tripod, and an even more sturdy tripod head.  If you can manually focus the lens while tethered to a laptop or something, then take that route.  I use an older version of Photoshop CS6 to do my focus stacking.   It does a great job, and I don't have to first convert the images to JPEG, either.

[ScottyP]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

Have you ever tried focus stacking?  You should give it a go if you haven't.  It can produce some amazing results.  Most of the great macro shots you see in print and elsewhere are done using focus stacking.

I had the EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Lens for a while (sold it). I quickly learned that the EF 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM Lens would be even better which it was/is.  But I have also sold it.  Macro photography takes a lot of time to do it right.  It is a field unto itself.

The  EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM Lens is an amazing lens.  And, not just for macro.  As a mid-tele it shines too. This lens is ultra sharp at every distance, even wide-open.  It might be the sharpest lens Canon makes.  It is a, you must see it, to appreciate how sharp it is.  I want mine back, now!  

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A good point Ernie. It seems pretty sharp but yes I was concerned about diffraction, only I was more concerned with the DOF.  Only the mushrooms are stopped way down because I used a tripod. The flower and bug shots I took are all between like f/8 or f/11 because they are handheld.

I spent the morning looking at macro rails and at stacking software.  

I have been very much against getting on the Adobe creative cloud software licensing hook. I almost pulled the trigger today though. I plan to get a 6d2 if it isn't too frustratingly nerfed in the autofocus again, and I have read that Adobe have stopped the purchase-and-own model of Lightroom (LR6) to make everyone sign onto the hook, so they may not write a RAW translation for 6d2. But I could use photoshop to do the focus stacking.