The Quiet Picture

I’ve had another day to play with the Canon 100mm f2.8L IS macro, but the pictures are few and far apart – not sure why but I’m just not coming across any subjects I like. The picture of the very pale heath spotted orchid is getting close to the closest focusing distance of the lens, but it’s nothing that my 150mm macro couldn’t have done. The wood cranesbill though, it would’ve been tricky to pull off with the long macro. I was shooting straight down on it and there wasn’t a lot of light in the forest, so the shutter speed was 1/80 at f2.8 (ISO 100). In order to get the flowers the same size in the frame I would’ve had to stand up straight, go to a higher ISO to get a fast enough shutter speed so I could hope to get something sharp. I’m not sure if it would’ve been possible to set up the tripod in such a way that I could angle down the camera, while still being able to see through the viewfinder!

So that’s definitely one for the shorter IS lens, I think that this is the best wood cranesbill picture I have. Just because the flower grows everywhere doesn’t mean that I have lots of pictures of it!

But no, I’m still not even considering of trading the long macro for this shorter IS macro. Maybe it’s not possible to take exactly the same pictures with these lenses, but who needs that anyway? If it’s not possible to take some particular picture, then you just come up with another one and don’t dwell over the might-have-beens. You work with what you’ve got!

I was fortunate enough to get to borrow the new Canon 100mm f2.8 IS macro lens this weekend. I’ve always wanted a macro lens with IS and a few years ago I had the 100mm macro without IS, which I then traded for the 150mm macro. I’ve never regretted getting the longer focal length, but using a long and heavy macro lens requires good support, so the tripod or the beanbag has to go wherever the lens goes. Shooting with this setup is very rewarding, but there’s something to be said for spontaneity as well – enter image stabilisation.

So now I’ve been out with this lens, sans tripod, and I must say it really works. I won’t be reviewing the lens because there’s nothing to review, I mean it’s tack sharp (anything else would be shocking) and issues like vignetting or barrel distortion are never a problem with macro (I doubt this lens has either anyway). So the only thing that’s interesting for me is what I can do with 100mm and image stabilisation and that’s what I set out to find out.

Having had the 150mm lens for a few years now, I had my doubts about the depth of field of the 100mm lens. I like using diffused foregrounds when possible and I also like completely feature-less backgrounds. I struggled to get both when using the 100mm lens in the past, but now that I had it again, I started wondering if part of the problem back then was that I was just not very experienced as a macro photographer. Either I’m better at choosing my subjects now or I am handling the situation in a different way, but background control wasn’t nearly as difficult as I remember it was. But having the lens for such a short period, it’s not possible to test it in all situations and I reckon the background would come into play when shooting in tight spaces where the background is closer to the subject than in the above picture.

The IS of the lens is great. It’s the new generation IS which is so quiet that I had to check a couple of times that IS really was on because I’m used to the sounds of my 300mm and 24-105mm lenses. The picture of the moth was taken with a 1/40 shutter speed, it’s marginally soft but completely acceptable. It would’ve been impossible without a tripod using a non-IS 100mm or 150mm lens (impossible for me anyway, I know some people are better at hand holding the camera than I am). So if I want to take a similar picture with a non-IS lens, I would have to start setting up the tripod and hope that the moth is still there when I’m ready to take the shot. Shooting without a support setup is very liberating, the threshold of taking a picture is lower because sometimes I just simply think if a subject is worth setting up the tripod, instead of thinking if a picture is worth taking at all.

It’s been nice trying out this lens, but when I give it back I won’t miss it. It’s a great lens for the macro photographer on the move, but I’ve developed such a good relationship with my Sigma 150mm f2.8 macro that I can’t see myself ever parting with it. Yes I still definitely want a macro lens with IS, but I’m fairly sure that in the long run I would miss those additional 50mm if I traded the Sigma 150mm for the Canon 100mm IS. So now I’m just waiting for a long macro lens with stabilisation!

Internetworld har gjort en webbhotelltest, och det visade sig att mitt webbhotell Cliche fick sämsta betyg. Jag har kanske haft tur då för jag har inte upplevt några som helst problem. Hur många år har jag haft minnak.net nu… fyra? Under den tiden har jag behövt kontakta supporten två gånger och fick snabb svar både gånger, först när jag behövde MySQL aktivering får att installera WordPress och sen när jag reggade en ny domän och ville peka om den. Fast ompekningen gick inte som jag ville, men det var mitt fel – det stod ju i klartext hur de kan peka om, och det jag ville göra var bestämt nånting annat. Så nu äger jag en domän som gör ingenting… tror inte jag förnyar den… Hursomhelst alltså, trots dåligt betyg från Internetworld så skulle jag ändå kunna rekommendera cliche.se. Kanske hjälper det att jag jobbar med IT så det här att man inte får något hjälp med att installera WordPress osv gör mig inget, och kontrollpanel har jag faktiskt inte saknat heller – jag tänkte inte ens på saken tills jag läste om det i testet. Uptime tycker jag får godkänt också.

Jaja, kanhända att har jag alldeles för låga krav då.

OBS! Jag har ingen annan knytning till cliche.se än att vara kund… tyckte bara att det var lite småroligt att se hur cliche misslyckades med nästan vartenda delmoment i testen. Your mileage may vary!

P.S. Titta jag lyckades med att skriva (nästan) hela inlägget på svenska, borde kanske prova på finska också nån gång får att se hur det känns!

Try out your colour vision at FM 100 Hue Test! When I was using film, I used to have a lot of problems getting the colour balance right in the scans. Now with digital, Lightroom does a great job with white balance and if I’ve needed to adjust WB manually, I seem to get it quite nicely in the ballpark. Maybe experience does help. Anyway, considering these problems I used to have and still sometimes do, I had been thinking that my colour vision is seriously impaired. But apparently not, because I got a perfect score on this test! Can’t believe it.