CanonEF 100 2.8L MACRO IS U

I've been a Canon fan for many years having owned several of their FD range cameras and lenses back in the very dim and distant past. Amongst those was a Canon FD 100mm F2 lens which could produce some exceptional results. I was half tempted to go back to the Canon FD system when I saw a T90 outfit for sale on eBay. But there was only one FD 100mm F2 lens available (in MINT+ condition whatever the **** that is?!)and the seller wanted almost £500...er no!So I spotted an EOS-3 for sale and plumped for that, I also bagged a PG-E2 power grip and I was away. And of course I then had to have an EF 100mm F2 lens.First impressions were excellent. Substantially built,well balanced, lightning fast autofocus and great handling were all apparent on first examination. With my EOS 3 combo it also fitted very well indeed making for a stable easy to hold package. It proved to be an utter delight to use and I was very happy with it. It also has a instant manual focus option activated by turning the focussing ring irrespective of whether the camera/lens is in AF or MF.And the results?SUPERB! At least with my EOS-3 film camera. All pics were sharp and produced excellent contrast and colour rendering. I would rate the results as good as a (sadly long discontinued) Minolta 100mm f2 AF lens I owned for a short while back in 1990-and that is saying something. Sharpness is perfectly good even at F2 though it improves dramatically at about f 4 reaching a peak at F5.6/8. And another point, out of focus background or Bokeh is excellent.Any drawbacks?I would have liked to have been issued with a lenshood and case. If Sigma can supply them as standard why not Canon?This lens has been around for 20 years or so and is probably due for an update, the replacement being designed for Digital cameras and incorporating a stabiliser. These feature will also add at least £150 onto the price.Overall, I am delighted with this lens. Others might disagree with my title preferring the 85mm F1.2 L, 85mm F1.8 or the 135mm F2 L. But IMHO the 100mm is the perfect overall choice. 85mm is for me not quite there whilst 135mm is just a tad too long.Do yourselves a favour and buy this lens if you are a Canon SLR user. It produces stunning results and deserves to be more than a hidden gem in the rich tapestry of Canon EF lenses.

By golly this lens is sharp!I thought I'd seen sharp optics before, but this lens is in a different league, it's tack-sharp all the way from wide open at f/2.8 through to the point at which diffraction starts to become noticeable at around f/22. You can safely use it at any aperture and be assured of image quality which will exceed almost anything else on the market.Build-quality feels slightly plasticky for a canon L series optic, but it does have metal where it counts along with a weather-sealing rubber gasket. The hood's a little on the large size, and when reversed it completely covers the focussing-ring, distance scale, and focus/image stabilisation switches which is a pain.The IS system seems to operate very well, it's one of canon's latest hybrid systems which is supposed to compensate for both up/down/left/right and tilting movements, and it's very quiet compared to the earlier (3-stop) incarnations of the IS system. Focussing is near instantaneous and as near silent as you can get.It's a big lens for it's focal length, and the elements are large (especially the rearmost element) as it's relatively wide aperture, all of which makes it reasonably heavy but not overly so, and it's nicely weighted.It'll reproduce a 1:1 image, like most true Macro glass, but the 4-stop IS only offers a 2-stop advantage at 1:1 which isn't really a problem as the depth-of-field, even at smaller apertures, is sufficiently small that you'll want to use a tripod to steady the camera.Overall this is a great lens which I'd wholeheartedly recommend for anyone wanting a good Macro lens.

Beautiful lens, makes any shot a bit special. Am using as portrait lens at the moment but looking forward to tryng the macro out...update - having used this lens for a little while now I felt I should expand a little. The image quality is just superb. When I download my pics and go through them I instantly spot ones taken with this lens - even compared to my nice 70-400 f4 L. I guess you'd expect a prime to be very sharp, and it really is, and the bokeh is dreamy. I'm not a pro so don't have years of experience, or a lot of other lenses, to compare it to, but I can say for sure it's my favourite lens. I've heard good things about the non-L 100mm but never having tried it I can't say whether it's worth paying out almost double the money for this beauty... but on it's own merits I'd say it's worth every penny. One note of caution - depth of field is *very* shallow if you're open wide, but I guess you'd expect that.Only played with macro a small amount, but results I got on those occasions were beautiful.A reviewer on here mentioned noisy AF. I haven't noticed that but it's not something that is an issue for me anyway. Sometimes I have noticed the AF struggling to seek, but it has been in situations where I would have expected that from any lens - eg close up of plants with many focus points, at many distances.Buy it!

I thought I'd ordered the macro lens as they are all shown in the same listing. The lens appears of good quality although not to 'L' standard and has no IS. It would be a useful lens for portrait or landscape on a tripod. I do neither of these so it was returned.