100mm Macro (Macro/Portrait/Sports)

I did some searching on this and found that this lens is excellent for the obvious and portraits. What I didn't find was any pictures of this lens used for sports. I was curious if anyone used this for that and can share some pictures. I love to take macros and portraits (kids and family) and would like this to triple for kids sports. Thoughts?

Scotty O

AF with this lens is very slow so it's not so great for sports. Fabulous lens for portraits though. And superb for macro obviously. For not much more you could buy a 200 f/2.8L II. That lens would be amazing for portraits and for sports.

Can someone link a page where focusing times were tested for different lens? Not sure if something like this is out there?

The AF on the Canon 100 2.8 Macro USM is most certainly not slow. Of course it's not the fastest AF in Canon's line-up, but with the focus limiter on I'd say it's faster than my 50 1.4 and Tamron 17-50.

It's perfect for macro, very good for portraiture and usable for some sports. It wouldn't be my first choice for shooting Hockey or Basketball though.

Here you go. My 200 f/2.8 was in the shop, so I put a Tamron 1.4X on the 100 macro and took it to the game. It did really well, most shots were in focus. It's a USM lens, and as long as you're not wildly out of focus it is quite snappy. If it gets lost and has to focus all the way down and back up again, that can take a while.

The macro is a fantastic and versatile lens, I will often choose it if I'm only taking 1 lens.

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Jarrad wrote in post #2082506
The AF on the Canon 100 2.8 Macro USM is most certainly not slow. Of course it's not the fastest AF in Canon's line-up, but with the focus limiter on I'd say it's faster than my 50 1.4 and Tamron 17-50.

Maybe there's some inconsistencies with this lens? The AF on mine is very slow for anything more than .5m away. The USM itself even seems a bit slow compared to other USM lenses, but to me the real slowness comes from it's hunting. Even with the focus limiter it takes forever to regain focus if it starts to hunt. This is my experience with it on a 20D body.

It's one of my favorite lenses, but it's gotten to the point where I never even use AF on it anymore.

It's not that the AF is so slow that makes then lens not a good choice for sports, but that the range of focus is very large compared to most lenses. That is to say, that the lens elements have to move quite a distance to focus from near to far, so it can't react as quickly. That puts a finite limit on its usefulness as a sports lens.

Mark

It's great for macro, great for portraits, great for most outdoor sports, and very mediocre/poor for most indoor sports. The 2.8, while not slow, will not give you consistent enough photos for fast indoor sports, usually played in medium to poor lighting. I tried using my EFS 60 2.8 macro once for professional basketball. While I did manage to get a few decent shots, overall it couldn't handle the action (at least from where I was sitting). I've always found that 2.0 aperature and below is needed for indoor sports unless you happen to be in a very very well lighted place.Take it to some of your indoor events and experiment with it. In my opinion excellent indoor sports lenses are the 85 1.8, 100 F2, and 135L F2.