100/2.8 MACRO

I need a macro lens for medical photography and the 100/2.8 seems to be the most highly recommended. Can this lens be used for other purposes such as sports photography, portraits, etc?

It can be used for any purpose you like where a 100mm lens is ideal.

Cheers,

Mitch

Like Mitch says, it can be used for anything you like. It might be a little long for portraits, but that just means you stand back a little It's a very sharp lens, probably my sharpest.

Great lens!! I think this is L quality glass and yes, you can use it for more than macro photography. Actually, I am using it for portraiture and haven't even played around much with its macro capabilities. Here's one of my daughter Julia taken with the 100F2.8 Macro.........enjoy the lens!

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Actually ... sports and action in general is not a good idea. Inherent in the 100 macro lens design is a lot of focus ring rotation from one extreme of focus to the other (even with the distance limiter switch set). Thus the lens hunts under any conditions. This is not a problem with macro photography since you're manual focusing or manual-assisting the autofocus much of the time. (The lens has full-time manual focusing.)

I've never seen a sportsshooter recommend this lens. But it is a wonderful lens in terms of image quality -- superb for portraits if you have the working distance.

Make sure you get the USM version and not the older non-USM version, unless you always want to focus manually, as the autofocus on the non-USM version is very, very slow and very, very noisy.
Depending on your requirements for medical macro photography, you could consider the MP-E 65mm f2.5 1-5x macro, giving you a 1:1 to a whopping 1:5 magnification compared to the 100mm macro's 1:1. However, this lens is not suitable for any other photography.

I just recently got htis lens.. it seems superb! Supired it does not have an "L" in ti (except it is much lighter weight than most L)

Indeed it's draw back inherent in a macro is slow focus... but it's not too bad,. and it does have a limit switch which will halp some.

My next choice, just got a 50mm f/1.4 and this would make complete set for me.

Sweet picture, schmoelzel.