An RF mount L macro lens will be announced alongside the high-megapixel EOS R camera

Hm, i have the 100mm 2,8L - I use it mostly for some portraits and occasionaly Macros for product shots. I must say that I actualy enjoy the lense. Is there something particular wrong with it, that I miss?
However, of course its very important for canon to include a good macro lense in the R lineup.


In my opinion 90% of the average photographers work can be done with a 24-70 F2,8 IS. However, I think for a truely unique lense lineup, Canon has to release this selection for the R mount, before it truely holds up to a professionals needs:


8mm Fisheye
11-24mm Ultra wide
16-35mm f4 Wide angle for travel
16-35mm f2,8 Wide angle
24-70 f2,8 general lense
24-105 f4 general lense for travel
70-200m f2,8 light tele
70-200mm f4 light tele for travel
100-400mm f 5,6 tele
200-600mm f5,6 sports and wildlife tele
800mm high end sports tele
24mm f1,4
35mm f1,4
50mm f1,2
85mm f1,4
135mm f1,8
50mm f2 Macro
100mm f2 Macro
60mm TSE
90mm TSE



In my opinion this is a perfect lineup to truely support pretty much any kind of professional work :)
Not my professional work...
that list would stymie 75% of my paying work ;-)

Missing from my POV are:
8-15 zoom fisheye
wide TS-E (24)
very wide TS-E (17)
MP-E65 equivalent
 
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Jul 21, 2010
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The problem is that as you increase magnification, the degree of actual tilt of the plane of focus becomes smaller, to a point of being pretty useless for the added complexity. Shift can be of use at strong tilt to reduce some vignetting effects, but that depends on lens design and usage.

I've tested all Canon TS-E lenses including with extension tubes and they all work well, but the movements become much less effective as you increase magnification.
Agreed. My point was that between the shorter flange focal distance and not incorporating a shift mechanism, a greater degree of tilt may be achievable than with EF TS designs.
 
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What distortion?
Indeed - I hear of this and very rarely see it in my architectural and interior work.

I guess I must be using it wrong... ;-)

If you stitch images over the full image circle I do see a bit of barrel distortion, but that's easily fixed. The edges of the image circle fall off in detail, needing f/11 if there's any detail in strongly shifted areas.

Yes, it could be improved, but it's still a damn fine lens...
 
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koenkooi

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[..]

If looking for something 'different' then some of Laowa's designs show what a bit of more original thought can lead to - I've looked at quite a few of their lenses at http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/category/articles-and-reviews/laowa/

I've been considering the Laowa 100mm lens as an alternative for the 100mm and MP-E I have. It finally has electronic aperture control and lens info which saves me from faffing about with exiftool to satisfy my OCD.
I also noticed the Laowa 65mm EF-M rumour, but that seems to lack electronic aperture control again :(
 
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Indeed - I hear of this and very rarely see it in my architectural and interior work.

I guess I must be using it wrong... ;-)
Its there, I promise I’m not making it up. ;)

I suppose it depends on your style. I like balance and use straight lines in my interiors a lot (walls/floor transitions/stairs etc) and used this way you see the distortions.

While I know there are small for a lens this wide I’m hoping an RF design would eliminate it completely.
 
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While I know there are small for a lens this wide I’m hoping an RF design would eliminate it completely.
From what I’ve seen, the RF lens designs to date fail to offer better distortion performance than their EF counterparts, and in some cases it’s worse.

Personally, I don’t find it to be an issue on the TS-E 17 – it’s minor to start with and easily correctable.
 
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Apparently these magic numbers really matter to some people. One guy called the EOS R substandard, and one of the reasons he gave was that it had less DR than the 5DIV (according to DxO, the difference is a whopping 0.1 stops).

Some people have trouble grasping the notion of significance.
 
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That’s still macro.

Not really. Though to be fair common usage has bastardized the term and even camera companies have for marketing purposes.

Websters:
Definition of macro-
:
large : on a large scale


Something that is 1/2 it's original size is not large or on a large scale, it's small, it's reduced in size.
For most, macro means life size or greater, 1x and higher. That range would be large in scale.
 
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Not really. Though to be fair common usage has bastardized the term and even camera companies have for marketing purposes.

Websters:
Definition of macro-
:
large : on a large scale


Something that is 1/2 it's original size is not large or on a large scale, it's small, it's reduced in size.
For most, macro means life size or greater, 1x and higher. That range would be large in scale.
I have to be careful with this when people ask for macro photography - my personal definition may be 1x or more, but I've had numerous clients where it just meant close-up.

In the interests of paying work, I'm happy to adopt the 'close-up' definition and not try and 'explain' why they are wrong ;-)
 
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MadScotsman

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Apparently these magic numbers really matter to some people. One guy called the EOS R substandard, and one of the reasons he gave was that it had less DR than the 5DIV (according to DxO, the difference is a whopping 0.1 stops).

History strongly suggests that the numbers do not meaningfully affect camera buying decisions.

Shpeck-nerds. They live in their mom's bashement and talk like they've got a mouf fulla shpit.

Sony's customer culture is crawling with 'em.
 
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Not picking on you but quoting since you brought it up. I am amazed a the number of people who buy or not based on sensor performance test charts. I can't imagine a full frame camera produced recently having image quality issues. What is the application for the camera? This is coming from someone who has no interest in Sony cameras. I am genuinely curious.

My 5DIV works fine for all purposes but apart from portraiture I'm shooting landscapes and night/astroscapes and concerned about the dynamic range and noise. I'm not a full time pro and photography for me is a side business, although I'm making some little money from it. In 5DIV there's also very annoying banding at high ISOs and/or long exposures. I'm pushing the camera to its limits all the time and I wouldn't mind an improved dynamic range. MP count is also important.

5DIV lags behind A7RIII but not enough for me to make a switch. I thought A7RIV would be a leap forward but apparently it's not, it may happen to be a step back even. So I guess I'm just waiting for what Canon offers with this prospective RS.
 
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I hope it's not just a LED. I have the EF-S 35mm f2.8 STM, and whilst it's better than nothing, the power is too low to be of much use.

There is plenty of scope for better macro lenses. As a long time field macro photographer I find it frustrating that you have to continually work around the use of most supposed macro photography equipment, which is clearly not designed by an experienced macro photographer, or not an innovative one. I find it odd that with other photography equipment the manufacturers consult expert photographers, and yet with macro photography equipment we just get what some generalist engineer came up with.

Here are some features all macro photographers could benefit from, not just field macro photographers of insects.

1) Greater than life-size magnification, whilst retaining infinity focus. If it wouldn't focus to infinity ideally it would have less than life-size as the MP-E 65mm can be a bit limiting, because 1:1 is often too much magnification. As there is no overlap between a normal macro lens and the MP-E 65mm it means you constantly have to switch lenses, and especially when there's a lot of pollen around you soon get a dirty sensor. Covering the most used range of 1:5 to 2.5:1 with a single lens would be ideal.

2) Not such an unnecessarily bulky front of the lens which limits your ability to get close to small objects on a flat surface.

3) Some sort of clip on front bracket, which bayonets on to take a small flash. It could use a multi-purpose bayonet which also takes a lens hood. Large and bulky macro flashes are not necessary, and you can get similar lighting with an ordinary small flash. If you are using a large twin flash on a pro type body it can get very heavy and hard on your wrists, as in field macro photography you often have to hold the camera in one hand for long periods.

4) A long focal length macro lens like a 300-400mm lens. Or rather a 300mm f4 or 400mm f5.6 with a close focus function, say at least 1:2, but 1:1 would be nicer. My 100-400mm mk2 is nice, but often 1/3 life size isn't close enough and it's a bit heavy. Also there is a fair bit of focus breathing, focal length shortening at close focus.

5) A macro lens of 150mm to 200mm with a max aperture of f5.6. These could be much lighter, and Sigma in fact did make a lovely little 180mm f5.6 years ago (although it only went to 1:2). Such a lens would be great for photographing butterflies and dragonflies.
 
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Unique? How about a tilt/shift Macro lens. That would be unique, but perhaps quite useful given the shallow DOF that wider apertures give us. Being able to move the focus plan around a bit would be beneficial.
See earlier for more on this - the issue for me is that for macro use 'a bit' really isn't very much at all
 
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dtaylor

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Meanwhile, while I was thinking whether or not I should get a A7RIV, this test chart was published https://www.dpreview.com/articles/9306199729/sony-a7r-iv-added-to-studio-test-scene-comparison and it doesn't look good for Sony! Basically it produces a stronger noise than A7RIII even after normalising the samples to the same size.

Once again, I don't know why people think there are significant high ISO differences within a format, or why they hope that a new model will bring significant high ISO improvements. 15 minutes browsing the DPReview Studio Scene tool set to RAW, a high ISO value, and equal view size will disabuse any such notions. There are only a few outliers such as the A72 which turns in a particularly poor FF performance, or Fuji's crop sensors which are relatively good.

DPReview repeatedly says that the A7r4 has the first "new" FF sensor from Sony since 2015. (Sony reuses sensor tech? I thought only Canon did that. Sony is doomed!) So the A7r4 has the very latest tech Sony can deliver. And high ISO is not only roughly the same as the A7r3, it's roughly the same as the 4 year old 5Ds in my closet.

Heck, looking purely at noise (gray and color patches) and not at noise versus detail, the A7r4 isn't even 1 full stop better than the 5D mark II! Naturally the A7r4 records a lot more detail than a 5D2 throughout its ISO range, and you can trade between detail and noise using NR in post, so it's going to be a better high ISO camera. But not by the leaps and bounds people imagine.

Today's sensors are incredibly efficient photon counters and there are no easy gains left to be made. Not unless you want to strip the color filter array completely or use active cooling. If you're shooting crop and want better high ISO the next shiny new model isn't going to do it. Go FF. If you're shooting FF and want better high ISO, better start looking at recent MF systems.
 
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If it is released with the high megapixel mirrorless camera, it will likely be pretty special, and very expensive. Maybe a zoom? Realisticly, how long could its focal length be and still have an aperture wider than f2.8? What about a very short focal length for lots of depth of field?
Macro zooms are a bit of an anathema, most macro Primes focal breath so much that they effectively become focus controlled zoom lenses any how. Which is why it's often easier to move the subject in / out of focus than it is to actually move the lens focus point...then re-frame...then re-focus...etc.
 
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The 17mm TS-E shows some barrel distortion and a total pig for flare which I'd love to see eliminateed in an RF version (shorter fange distance).
You may have damaged the front element on your TSe 17L...sure I can make mine flare but it's probably the lowest amount of flare I've seen on a lens and very easy to fix. I find the TSe 17L remarkably low in flare considering how much the front element sticks out.
 
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