CANON EF 100mm f/2.8l MACRO IS USM

£660/$850 This upmarket lens is the best of the Canon bunch, with high-tech IS and focusing

Better built and with more advanced features than the other Canon lenses in the group, this L-series optic is also the most recent design. Compared with the older EF 100mm, it adds weather seals, an extra blade in the diaphragm for betterrounded apertures, a threeposition autofocus limiter that can lock out both the long and short ends of the range, and a ‘hybrid’ image stabilizer.

Most image stabilizers can only correct for angular vibration, or wobble, but the hybrid stabilizer that was designed for this lens can also correct for axial shift (vertical or sideways movements). This gives a potential advantage for handheld close-up shooting but, even so, Canon’s claims of four-stop correction shrink to three stops at 0.5x and just two at 1.0x. Ultimately, image stabilization is no substitute for a tripod in extreme close-up shooting.

Like the other Canon lenses on test, this one boasts a fast and quiet ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system. The full travel of the manual focus ring is again less than half a turn, but very precise adjustments can still be made. Fully internal focusing maintains a comfortable distance between the front of the lens and the subject at full magnification, this time 13.5cm.

Performance

We saw great results for sharpness across the whole frame when shooting test charts from a standard distance, but noticed a drop in sharpness when using the lens for macro photography, at or near its closest focus distance.