Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM Lens

Hello, My name is Bill Ward and I'm a degreed, commercial photographer with over 30 years of expeience. I've used a wide variety of professional equipment including 4 x 5 cameras. I've had the pleasure of working with some of the finest camera equipment.

This particular lens is one of my all time favorites. I've taken thousands of pictures with it and find it to be extremely sharp. Before I bought this lens, I read technical reviews that were later confirmed by my use of this sweetie.

The Canon USM 100 Macro is critically sharp from f 5.6 on up. It is very acceptably sharp wide open at F 2.8. The color balance and handling or blurring of backround when close focused is fantastic. I have owened and extensively used 4 marcro lenses and this one is head and shoulders above the other macros I've owned. It really showes on prints larger than 13 x 19 where shots taken with this lens remain critically sharp to the most critical eye.

If you do macro photography you won't find a sharper, better made lens. Canon's MR 14 Ringlight Flash coupled with this lens are together the best flash / lens combinations available. I would highly recommend this lens to professionals or anyone who likes the best when it comes to optics.

I love love love this lens. I use it on a 30D. Its fast and focuses quick. I have a 50mm f/1.4 prime as well. These 2 lenses make up the dynamic duo.
This is a must-have lens for your Canon DSLR.

One of Canon's best lens for the money. Images are sharp with high detail making it an excellent value Macro lens. To do better you will have to move up to an L lens at 3x the price.

The detail in macro from a distance is good. Wildlife detail from a distance was the main reason for the purchase.

The Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM Lens has an outstanding reputation - deservedly so - as one of the sharpest lenses in the whole EOS lineup, rivaling many of the more expensive L-series lenses. I bought it mostly with aquarium photography in mind, and had been used to a 100mm macro lens on a film camera (full frame). I am using the EF 100mm macro on a Rebel XT; that is an APS-C format camera with a 1.6x crop factor, which means that the lens acts like a 160mm lens on a film body. For me the extra reach comes in very handy.

The main reason I chose the EF 100mm macro over the EFs 60mm macro was that I already had the cheap but outstanding EF 50mm 1.8. Since macro lenses are also useful for non-macro applications, I figured 60mm would be very close to 50mm, and I preferred to have another focal length covered by a prime lens.

Other than the Canon 60mm, the main competition for the EF 100mm macro are Tamron's legendary 90mm macro, and a whole lineup of excellent macro lenses from Sigma, covering various focal length. Solid performers as all of these lenses might be, the Canon is simply outstanding, and in my opinion considering 3rd party alternatives would only make sense if they were significantly cheaper. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case.

In summary, I would wholeheartedly recommend the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens to anybody who is looking for a macro lens for the EOS system. If you can find one with the original lens shade included, this is a big plus, since a new Canon lens shade costs about $40!

We're anything but professional photographers (we're learning!), but we at Embassy Emeralds needed a good macro lens to capture the fine details of the gemstones and jewelry we work with. We tried a handful of other lesser cameras and the lenses that came with them, but this one clearly beat them all. Gemstone photography can be tricky, but this lens makes the desired result much more attainable. The emeralds found on our ebay store were shot with this lens and many of the shots came out great. Any others that did not were due to lack of experience on the users part. For a novice (or pro) I highly recommend this excellent macro lens.

This lens is my favorite now.

The Canon USM 100 Macro is sharp from f 5.6 on up. It is very acceptably sharp wide open at F 2.8. The color balance and handling or blurring of backround when close focused is fantastic.It really shows on prints larger than 13 x 19 where shots taken with this lens remain critically sharp to the most critical eye.

If you do macro photography you won't find a sharper, better made lens. I would highly recommend this lens to professionals or anyone who likes the best when it comes to optics.

I Love it in low light situations too. i shot a show the other night for the first time with this lens and all I can say is ... where have you been all my life!

I tested many macro lenses on my eos 1 DS MkII ... this is a great choice. excellent details and sharpness untill the border, only very little loosing of lightness on borders if used very open.
better is only the 180mm3.5L macro, but is longer focal and much higher costs.
if you want more then this, try the pentax 67 100mm macro (not 135 macro) adapted to the canon. that is the max to get on a canon with macro-