Dear all,
I am a freshman of the forum and it is only one year that I am in DSLR underwater photography world.
I use canon 50d and I am going to buy a new lens for Macro shooting.
I have to choose between
- ef-s 60 mm
- ef 100 m
both Canon. My doubt comes from the fact that the 100 mm is not stabilized, on the other hand it is a much better close-up lens!
Does anyone of you use the EF 100 mm Macro?
Which is the image quality of the two lenses mentioned?
Is the stabilizing device that important underwater?
What would you suggest me to buy?

Thank you all in advance, and have a nice day!

Alex

Alex,

I would say to go for the 60mm, unless your are planning to upgrade to a full frame camera in the future.
The 60mm lens it’s easier to use and on your camera it will be the equivalent of a 96mm lens, while the 100mm would be the equivalent of a 160mm lens; both lens acheive a life-size magnification, but due to the crop factor of your sensor the real magnification would be 1.6X .... Should you need higher magnification I suggest you buy a Canon 250D diopter.

All the Best ..... Francesco

Frisco - 02 December 2009 12:07 PM

Alex,

I would say to go for the 60mm, unless your are planning to upgrade to a full frame camera in the future.
The 60mm lens it’s easier to use and on your camera it will be the equivalent of a 96mm lens, while the 100mm would be the equivalent of a 160mm lens; both lens acheive a life-size magnification, but due to the crop factor of your sensor the real magnification would be 1.6X .... Should you need higher magnification I suggest you buy a Canon 250D diopter.

All the Best ..... Francesco

Thank you very much for your helpful and prompt reply!

Have a nice day!

Alex

Not so fast on the EF-S 60mm macro as it won’t work with your 50D.  The Canon EF-S lens only work on the 20D and lower level Canon SLRs.  Just read the fine print in the link below if you don’t believe me.

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=155&modelid=11156

Your options are the EF 50mm compact f/2.5 macro and the EF 100mm f/2.8 macro.  We shoot with a 30D and 5D, Mark II and the EF 50mm compact macro and the EF 100mm macro are great lens that give super sharp images.  The only problem we have had with either is the Ikelite port for the EF 50mm compact macro.  When we first used the Ikelite recommended port for this lens we got shadows at the edge of the images.  I used some wide black tape on the inside of the lens and that eliminated the problem as the shadows were caused by flash entering the side of the lens as the end of the lens was to far from the end of the port.

@Wally

Not so fast on the EF-S 60mm macro as it won’t work with your 50D.  The Canon EF-S lens only work on the 20D and lower level Canon SLRs

Sorry Wally you are mistaken (mislead by Canon’s website), i own a 60mm Macro lens and it does fit and works perfectly on the 50D it is also supported on the 450D and the 7D that i own. (have a look at my website http://www.roffel.biz as this is my favorite lens so most shots are taken with this lens)
The sentence you refer to is:

EF-S lens - exclusively for EOS 20D, Digital Rebel XT and Digital rebel (as of March 2005)

However Canon is just lazy with their updates of putting in all bodies that are compatible (consumer camera’s have a rapid update time) all EF-S lenses are compatible with all EF-S bodies, i am not aware of any exceptions to that rule at the moment.

Yes, duikje ist right. The Ef-S60mm Macro lens (just as all other EF-S) works with ALL cropped Sensor Canon DSLRs. From the 300D until the 550D, from the 10D until the 50D and also for the 7D.

The only Canon DSLR they will not fit on are the Fullframes ... and even there you can use them, if you put a Extension in between body and lens.

Apart from this i would also highly recommend you the 60mm to start with as it is more versatile than the 100mm and easier to use.

greets, Serge

I was in my favorite camera store a couple of days ago and you are correct that the EF-S lens will work with the 20 - 50D EOS cameras.  They were kind of sheepish about it as they were the ones that told me they wouldn’t work on them .