Thoughts on Macro lenses, extension tubes, and practicing what I preach.

About a year ago I made a change to my lens lineup (one of many ). I sold my Canon 100 Macro lens that I was very happy with, and decided to get a Canon 135L and a Canon 25mm extension tube. Since I did use my macro lens quite a bit, but not for what I consider "serious" macro work, I figured that this would give me a lens that would be great for portraits, 1 stop faster than the 100 Macro, and faster AF, and I would still be able to use it for the kind of macro photos I usually take (mostly flowers, leaves, nature stuff).

However, when people ask about macro lenses and/or extension tubes, I, like many others, give the advice to try getting a set of extension tubes to use with your existing lenses before shelling out the dough for a dedicated lens (even though I did not go this route). I still think this is reasonably good advice, but like many well intentioned plans, this did not go so well with me. So now I think people should try extension tubes, but be careful. In my experience, macro photography with a macro lens is (not surprisingly) considerably easier than using lenses with extension tubes.

While I have seen many beautiful macro pictures taken with 85mm and 135mm lenses and extension tube combo's, I found this to be a frustrating experience for me in practice. I felt that with the now very limited range of focus and super thin DOF, composing shots the way I wanted them was very difficult. With a true macro lens, I feel like I can frame the shot pretty much however I want, and not deal with any "oddities".

I will attribute much of my issues with my own impatience, but I would hate for someone else to give up on what I find a really cool genre of photography due to frustrations with extension tubes.

So that's it, I just wanted to share my experience in hopes that it could help someone else. Personally, I am back to using a macro lens, and happier because of it!

Thanks for the info. I too do not use Macros too much but I miss the ability to do so. I'm on the fence on getting the Canon 100mm macro. I wish there were high quality macro zooms out there.

if you can have the patience to wait...

A macro lens is far-far easier to use than working with extension tubes. However most macros are pretty expensive. But, there is a fairly decent 100mm f/3.5 macro which is sold under Phoenix, Cosina or Vivitar brands and which sells for around $100 or so. It is a cheap way to get into macro work but, IMO, not the best way to start in macro photography.

WHAT IS THE BEST WAY???

If you can have the patience to wait; you might be able to find a 90mm Tamron f/2.8 SP macro lens available on the used market. This is the macro lens Tamron offered previous to the present Di model and you can often get it at a GREATLY reduced cost. I got mine on eBay for less than $125 (USD) including shipping and while that was an unusually good price, the lens often sells for $150 to $200 if it is available on eBay or some other used photo equipment site. It is a great lens at a very good price. (Heck the present Di model at about $350 is not a half bad price for a full featured excellent macro lens).

The present Tamron macro offering is designated as a Di which is "SUPPOSED" to mean that it is optimized for digital use. However, my non-Di Tamton 90mm f/2.8 SP Macro lens produces IQ equal to that produced by my "L" lenses.

By the way, there is a Tamron "Adaptall" f/2.5 macro which is not as good and which has problems being used with EOS cameras. Don't get this lens unless you know what you are getting and that it will work with your camera.

Finally, another somewhat less expensive way to get macro capability is to purchase a manual focus macro Nikkor or some brand lens other than Canon and then get an adapter to let it work on your EOS DSLR. The non-Canon manual focus lenses work better on Canon EOS DSLR cameras than will the manual focus Canon lenses using adapters. Of course, you will need to focus manually but, that is usually no problem since most macro photography is done with manual focus.

The 100 Macro really is a great lens, and while the AF is slower than a lens like the 135L, it's certainly fast enough to make it a versatile lens. But, it's worth really thinking it through before you buy it. I think that is why you see so many of them for sale here; it's high quality, but cheap enough that it's within most peoples reach, but once they buy it they realize they don't use it as much as they thought they would.