100% crop of duck shot with 100L Macro

Took the rather new 100L Macro out on a walk today, and got the first (mandatory) duck shot with it. What can I say... this baby is SHAAAARP... attached is a 100% crop of the duck shot. The lens was mounted to the 5D Classic, and it was shot wide open @ f/2.8... 1/400, ISO 100... IS on. Shot in RAW, imported into Lightroom 3 Beta 2, no extra sharpening done, just cropped and exported. This was taken under pretty harsh direct sunlight from camera right. I'm impressed!

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Curse this picture. It's making me want to replace my regular 100mm f/2.8 macro...

Seriously, it's lovely quality.

I truly loved the old 100mm f/2.8 macro, but this is even better... and I'm especially fond of having IS on it, even though it didn't help in this shot. Anyway, considering I also do some post processing to my photos, being able to start at this image quality level, it's really superb! I'm also less scared of cropping a bit more.

Yeah, the 100L is crazy sharp. Love it.

love it

Well, the 100L is undoubtedly sharp, but let me counter that with a 100% crop taken with a 70-200/MkII and a 7D. ISO 320, 175mm, f/2.8, 1/1000s. Lightroom 3 Beta 2, standard settings, no additional sharpening added. It was also taken under harsh direct sunlight, hence the sharp shadows.

Atsumi wrote in post #9975089
Curse this picture. It's making me want to replace my regular 100mm f/2.8 macro...

No point. As far as image quality goes the 100L is virtually indistinguishable from the non-L 100 macro. The difference is the image stabilization and weather sealing of the 100L.

denoir wrote in post #9975296
Well, the 100L is undoubtedly sharp, but let me counter that with a 100% crop taken with a 70-200/MkII and a 7D. ISO 320, 175mm, f/2.8, 1/1000s. Lightroom 3 Beta 2, standard settings, no additional sharpening added. It was also taken under harsh direct sunlight, hence the sharp shadows.

Now remember, the original 5D is a 12.8 megapixel full frame camera while the 7D is an 18 megapixel crop. So the 7D puts more demands on the glass and a per-pixel comparison is unfair to the 7D (i.e. 12.8 vs 18 megapixel). Still at least to me my crop is equal the OP crop in sharpness.

Here is the same duck, 100% and 70-200/II with a 5DMkII. ISO 100, 185mm, f/2.8 1/1600:


Now if we compare it to the OP image, it's FF vs FF but 12.8 vs 21.1 megapixel.

I think that in the case of glass like the 100L or the 70-200/II, the limit is the camera and not the glass.

I have to disagree. Even though the new 70-200/MkII looks extremely sharp for being a zoom, I still think the 100L looks sharper, at least from these examples. Of course, these are not perfect examples to judge this… possibility of just a tiny bit of miss focus can change the 100% crop a lot.

I am a bit surprised of the amount of noise for the 7D though. I know it was shot at ISO 320, so that’s something you have to take into consideration, but the 5D Mark 2 looks so smooth compared to the 7D sample.

denoir wrote in post #9975455
No point. As far as image quality goes the 100L is virtually indistinguishable from the non-L 100 macro. The difference is the image stabilization and weather sealing of the 100L.

Again I would have to disagree. I think the IQ of the older 100mm macro is outstanding, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying it’s indistinguishable from the newer 100L. I agree in most prints it would be impossible to see a difference, but I do see a little improvement in contrast and colors, and as you said... the biggest difference is IS and weather sealing.

That is one sharp duck.

Tks.

fi20100 wrote in post #9978945
I have to disagree. Even though the new 70-200/MkII looks extremely sharp for being a zoom, I still think the 100L looks sharper, at least from these examples. Of course, these are not perfect examples to judge this… possibility of just a tiny bit of miss focus can change the 100% crop a lot.

I don't see it. To me the 7D sample looks as sharp as the 5D+100L sample. The 5DII sample looks perhaps not as sharp but I think it mostly depends on the subject being smaller in size in the picture. What is worth noticing here is that we're comparing a 12.8 Mpixel FF camera to a 18 Mpixel crop - at pixel level and, to me at least, the sharpness is virtually identical.

Having said that, here is a proper comparison. The 70-200/II is slightly sharper at 200mm and slightly softer at 100mm. Really slightly.

Yeah, I don't know why there was so much noise in this case. It's not typical for ISO 320. Anyway, the striking difference to me is the color reproduction with the 5DII showing much more subtle color shifts than the 7D. That again could be a change in light.

I've had both and I can't honestly tell the images apart. I know that dp review stated that there was a slight improvement in image quality when both lenses were tested under laboratory conditions. It's however below my own threshold of detection.

Just to make clear - I'm not arguing against the 100L - it's a fantastic lens. My point was that with such good optics you are basically limited by the camera and not by the glass. Another indirect point that was that with good enough glass a crop camera with significantly more pixels can produce images of equal sharpness as a FF camera that has less pixels. We're comparing per pixel here as we're looking at 100% crops and by common convention the 5D should have produced images significantly sharper than the 7D. The reason for this result was that top quality glass was used in both cases and limitation was the camera - even on the high pixel density crop.

denoir wrote in post #9979624
I don't see it. To me the 7D sample looks as sharp as the 5D+100L sample. The 5DII sample looks perhaps not as sharp but I think it mostly depends on the subject being smaller in size in the picture. What is worth noticing here is that we're comparing a 12.8 Mpixel FF camera to a 18 Mpixel crop - at pixel level and, to me at least, the sharpness is virtually identical.

Having said that, here is a proper comparison. The 70-200/II is slightly sharper at 200mm and slightly softer at 100mm. Really slightly.


Yeah, I don't know why there was so much noise in this case. It's not typical for ISO 320. Anyway, the striking difference to me is the color reproduction with the 5DII showing much more subtle color shifts than the 7D. That again could be a change in light.

I've had both and I can't honestly tell the images apart. I know that dp review stated that there was a slight improvement in image quality when both lenses were tested under laboratory conditions. It's however below my own threshold of detection.

Just to make clear - I'm not arguing against the 100L - it's a fantastic lens. My point was that with such good optics you are basically limited by the camera and not by the glass. Another indirect point that was that with good enough glass a crop camera with significantly more pixels can produce images of equal sharpness as a FF camera that has less pixels. We're comparing per pixel here as we're looking at 100% crops and by common convention the 5D should have produced images significantly sharper than the 7D. The reason for this result was that top quality glass was used in both cases and limitation was the camera - even on the high pixel density crop.

Well, whether the 100L or 70-200 Mark II is sharper when we’re pixel peeping, I have to say that the 70-200 Mark II really look amazingly, almost scary sharp for a zoom. Just thinking that we are splitting hairs here to tell a L zoom and a L macro prime apart is quite mind-blowing.

The difference (and again, I know they were shot at different ISOs) I see between the 5DII and 7D samples remind me a lot of the difference I see between the 5D and 40D. Perhaps it’s just the difference of FF and crop sensors.

Talking about the 100 macro vs 100L macro, I must say purely for IQ, there is no need to go for the L. I owned the 100 macro for 2 years, but sold it one week before getting the L, so I never compared them under the exact same conditions (not that it’s something I would have done anyway). However, I would say that IS is giving me a lot more keepers under more challenging conditions. Also the slightly snappier AF seems to help a little bit.

fi20100 wrote in post #9980191
Well, whether the 100L or 70-200 Mark II is sharper when we’re pixel peeping, I have to say that the 70-200 Mark II really look amazingly, almost scary sharp for a zoom. Just thinking that we are splitting hairs here to tell a L zoom and a L macro prime apart is quite mind-blowing.

Agreed, no point in arguing between these two lenses based on sharpness alone as they are both among the best.

fi20100 wrote in post #9980191
Well, whether the 100L or 70-200 Mark II is sharper when we’re pixel peeping, I have to say that the 70-200 Mark II really look amazingly, almost scary sharp for a zoom. Just thinking that we are splitting hairs here to tell a L zoom and a L macro prime apart is quite mind-blowing.

The difference (and again, I know they were shot at different ISOs) I see between the 5DII and 7D samples remind me a lot of the difference I see between the 5D and 40D. Perhaps it’s just the difference of FF and crop sensors.

I agree. And there are differences - I almost always prefer the look that the 5DII gives but I have a hard time describing what it is. It has something to do with the colors and the micro contrast but it's difficult to quantify. Then of course you have the shallow DOF and the fact that some lenses really work best on FF. I find the 135L to be a good, but not spectacular lens on the 7D but magnificent on the 5DII. It's a combination of field of view and DOF that really makes it special on an FF camera.

I never tried them side by side properly but I had the non-L before I upgraded to the newer version. The thing is that I use it exclusively for macro (something that I do rarely anyway) so I'm using it in manual focus and with flash. So in essence I'm just getting the benefit of the weather sealing. The IS is a good feature but for portraits and other general photography I have the 135L which is a stop faster and the 70-200/II which is its match in IQ and with somewhat better IS. So I end up using the 100L just for macro. What is worse, I'm currently considering getting a Zeiss 100/2.. I must be nuts.

denoir wrote in post #9975455
No point. As far as image quality goes the 100L is virtually indistinguishable from the non-L 100 macro. The difference is the image stabilization and weather sealing of the 100L.

Thank you. My money can be spent elsewhere(ish) now.

why are you coming into a 100L thread and tossing your 70-200 pictures in here and then arguing that you think they are just as sharp?

are you trying to justify your purchase?

congrats OP on the lens, looks nice.