12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
An honorary "L" series lens!
Date of Review: Oct 24, 2006
The Bottom Line: I cannot recommend this lens highly enough
There is a short list of lenses that every amateur photographer should have in their bag-- basically, a long zoom and a short zoom. When I recently purchased my Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L, I had satisfied my desire for a high quality long zoom, and I thought that I had found what would be my favorite lens for quite some time.
Then, I picked up a Canon 100mm Macro.
I have very little experience with Macro photography, and I bought this lens with the assumption that my new toy would inspire me to experiment in this realm. Indeed, I have grabbed some macro shots that I am quite pleased with, and I expect to experiment further. Not only have I been pleased and impressed with the detail and quality of the images I've captured, I have also found the lens to be easy to use with ample creative control at my fingertips. Autofocusing is much easier and more useful then I expected at macro range.
Where my new lens has really made its mark, though, is in more conventional areas-- it has become my 'go-to' lens for shooting portrait-type shots! At a very fast f2.8, nicely blurred fore- and backgrounds are easy, while the subject looks crisp and sharp with great color.
Mechanically, this lens hits it out of the park. Focusing is virtually silent and butter-smooth and the autofocus is FAST! Manual focusing does not require you to disengage the AF, so small adjustments are easy. Build quality appears to be excellent, though I have not owned the lens nearly long enough to see how well it will hold up. It feels quite solid.
Canon lens buffs know to look for the red ring near the front of a piece of glass, indicating the higher-end "L" series hardware. Every "L" lens I've played with is fantastic, both optically and in build quality. As far as I'm concerned, my Canon 100mm macro is of a high enough quality to earn the Red Ring. Since it'd likely cost a few hundred more WITH the L series designation, lets not tell Canon, OK?
