Effectiveness of IS on 100L Macro?

How effective is the IS on the 100L macro for extreme close-up and macro photography? The lens is supposed to have "hybrid IS" to make it more effective. Does it work?

Second question - at 1:1, what is the distance from the front of the lens (without shade) to the subject?

I'll tackle the second question. The term you are looking for is "working distance". And it is 5.9", which is slightly less than the non-L macro at 6.0". In general if you want to increase working distance, you need to go to a longer macro such as the 180 which has a working distance of 9.5".

RodneyCyr wrote in post #17709965
How effective is the IS on the 100L macro for extreme close-up and macro photography? The lens is supposed to have "hybrid IS" to make it more effective. Does it work?

Second question - at 1:1, what is the distance from the front of the lens (without shade) to the subject?

I don't use IS when I'm shooting extreme close-up or macro. For those activities, my camera is always on a tripod. I do use IS when I'm using the lens as a general purpose hand-held lens, and the IS works very well for that.

I use IS for when I do macros of bugs and flowers, because usually I am running a small enough aperture that shutter speeds are pretty low, even if I push the ISO. Early morning when insects are a bit lethargic works best for me, but that means lighting is quite a bit lower than during midday, but then insects are more alert.

IS is all about trying to remove your own shake due to slow shutter speeds when handholding, so any time you are shooting with this lens where that is the case, stabilization always seems to have a part.

RodneyCyr wrote in post #17709965
How effective is the IS on the 100L macro for extreme close-up and macro photography? The lens is supposed to have "hybrid IS" to make it more effective. Does it work?

I initially bought the non-IS version of this lens, and after shooting with it for a couple hours, returned it for the IS version the next day. The IS is a big benefit, and for me that was admittedly mostly at lower magnifications than 1:1. I was a bit surprised at how much I used the lens at the lower magnifications.

Still, the IS is effective at 1:1 too, even if it is less than 4 stops-worth. It helps to steady the image in the viewfinder. For closeup work, that is very useful.

At 1:1, many if not most of us use flash, which freezes motion, so the IS is not an advantage in these cases for preventing motion blur in pictures.