Please assess my initial results

Ok so my new 350D , EF 100 f2.8 usm arrived today so I went out for a bit of a shoot.

I didn't quite get the results I was hoping for, the viewfinder showed great focus & colour but the stored image had too shallow DOF and poor colour. This occured in all images I made of macro stuff.

Maybe I was expecting the 100 to provide a wider DOF?

Can it, and at what Working Dist?

Any tips greatly appreciated.

EXIF data intact I believe.

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Colour looks fine- good shot and the limited DOF works well.
Welcome to macrophotography where limited DOF reigns. Only thing you can do to increase the DOF is to reduce the aperture to around F11/F13 or cheat a bit as I often do and use focus stacking.
Often you will find the limited DOF has it's uses and you can produce rather "arty" looking results as in your pic.
Only other thing you can do to increase apparent DOF is to choose the camera angles carefully so the maximum amount of subject is in focus.
Brian V.

I do quite a bit of nature photography and am lucky enough to have read a lot about the EF 100 f2.8 USM and purchased one. Can't believe how quick it is!

One of my favourite subjects is mushrooms and other fungi. I was hoping the 100 would enable me to focus the entire cap, say 5cm deep - it is essential that the stem and cap rim are in focus for scientific purposes.

Perhaps I ought to stick to the 18-55 for the greater DOF?

The image quality will be much higher from the EF 100 so you could just step further back and take the same image size as you would with the kit lens- at the same aperture and magnification the DOF should be the same no matter what lens is used. For something like fungi focus stacking would also be useful.
Brian V.

Lord_V: do you have any info on methods used to focus stack? This is software controlled right, usign PS or similar product?