What Macro Lens?

[wozza]

Hi guys, well now i have my new camera on the way im gonna need a good macro lens for it, any ideas?

its gonna have to be about £150/$300 range.

i have found this one what do you think?
Sigma Imaging (UK) Ltd

cheers james

[zhenya]

James,

Can you give me a reason why you chose Sigma over Canon in this focal length? Is it price? Check out this deal:
Canon 50mm f/2.5 Compact Macro Autofocus Lens

[Poseidon]

I agree with Gene, James. Canon makes some of the best glass out there, and that 50mm Gene linked to will be a better investment then the Sigma. 3rd party glass never holds its value like OEM does, meaning if you go to sell later to upgrade into something like the 100mm Macro, you will get more for the Canon then you would from the Sigma. All that AND better optical performance!

[wozza]

i liked the sigma because of the price and it has a smaller min focus distance.
canon=23cm
sigma=18cm

and the sigma gives 1:1
but the canon gives 1:2

how mcuh diference does this make in how big i can make small stuff look?
i wanna be able to fill the whole pic with just one polyp or just a snails head, stuff like that.

if these lenses wont do it can you recomend one that could?
or way of doing that (i.e. extention tubes)

cheers james

[Poseidon]

I don't think either of those 50mm will be able to do that. Also I don't think I believe Sigma in the 1:1. If both lenses are 50mm how can one produce TWICE what the other does. As for the minimum focus distance, 5cm is less then 2", not very much. (Sorry I had to convert to those pesky American units...)

My best suggestion really is to wait untill you can get a 100mm or better lens. That will give you a better working distance, and better magnification to boot.

[wozza]

ok, sorry poseidon now im just confused.

you say a 100mm macro will give more magnification than the 60mm or 50mm by canon?

how can this be, because they have closer focus distances, my understanding of it was, the closer the min focus distance the bigger you can make stuff.

i think i have gone wriong somewere, please explain.

cheers james

[Poseidon]

Yes and no. ;)

The 100mm will give you more working distance, meaning you can be farther away and still use the advantage in focal length to increase magnification. Think of the "getting closer" of your 17-55 zoom. Same principle applies. Canon also makes a 180mm Macro that will bring you "closer" from farther away.

Sometimes you just can't physically be close, so you make up for it in focal length. Have you seen the MP-E 65 yet?

[wozza]

Have you seen the MP-E 65 yet?

yeah thats the lens i would be buying in an ideal world but at £400 i dont think ill be getting that any time soon.
so scrap the 50mm's.
ill go for something bigger.
do you know how gene took the first pic in this link?
Picture of the day...alien invaders...
as he has the 350D so what ever lens he used for that would be perfect.

cheers james

[Poseidon]

We will have to wait for Gene, because the EXIF info was not saved when he converted that one to web res.

I am guessing that was his 60mm Macro though.

[wozza]

ok cheers mike, i guess ill get the canon 60mm then do some saving and upgrade at a later date.
if i used extension tubes could i get more magnification again?

[Poseidon]

Yup! Sure could.

[wozza]

cool thanks for all your help mike.

[Poseidon]

No problem!

[zhenya]

ok cheers mike, i guess ill get the canon 60mm then do some saving and upgrade at a later date.
if i used extension tubes could i get more magnification again?

James,
Regular extension tubes won't accept EF-S mount lenses, I've tried with my Kenko set of tubes but no sigar.

ok, sorry poseidon now im just confused.

you say a 100mm macro will give more magnification than the 60mm or 50mm by canon?

The magnification stays the same but you can achieve 1:1 replication from further away, like Mike pointed out already.
Ideally, if you could afford 100mm from Canon it would be a perfect match with either Rebel line up or the 20/30D bodies, and even 5D with the full frame is perfect with this lens. It;s just exellent piece if glass and the only thing missing on it is that red ring on the front of it...
I have Sigma's 105mm f2.8 lens but I rarely use it now, unless I need to take a macro shot of something deep in the tank. One drawback I have with that lens, aside from optical issues, is that it does not focus internally. What I'm trying to say is that the barrel extends as it focuses ( zooms in) while Canon's lens stays the same length, it's a bit of an issue for me when you trying to shoot against the glass and need to back up. Optically, I noticed heavy chromatic oberrations in higher contrast areas, at least in my copy it is very noticeable, and sharpness no way near Canon's. Something to think about. Tamron's 90mm macro is stellar and highly regarded as well, some people like it even more than Canon;s 100mm.

PS. The picture you were reffering to was taken with that EF-S 60mm macro lens from Canon.

[bguile]

Zhenya/Poseidon:

Would you guys mind sharing your post-processing workflow/s. Besides the nice pictures, you guys always post the cleanest one's I've seen of tanks. Please teach me, oh masters of the photoshop! :eek3:

[zhenya]

Zhenya/Poseidon:

Would you guys mind sharing your post-processing workflow/s. Besides the nice pictures, you guys always post the cleanest one's I've seen of tanks. Please teach me, oh masters of the photoshop! :eek3:

Hi bguile,

I'll be the far, far away from masters of photoshop as one can possibly find.
However, I'll share with what I do in PS. But first, I must add that I try to make sure that I clean the glass and,if possible, turn off circulation for the photoshoot. That will help alot while you post processing, mainly save lots of time.

Usually I start post processing by checking up on the histogram and adjusting levels, do some shapening and crop out sections that I don;t like or intend on keeping. Then I make sure that the colors in the shot are as close to what I actually saw as possible and if not I try to correct it. You can use either levels (RGB) for this or color balance, or if you are really good you can use curves.
After that I resize the image to the size I want and do slight unsharp mask to sharpern the image as the sharpness of the edges will be lost somewhat in the resizing process.
As far as cleaning up images, I do that using either healing brush or clone stamp tools before I resize. You may also use blur tool to blur out some tiny imperfections after resizing the image, it works faster then. That is all I do.

PS. I forgot to add that you may consider getting a book by Scott Kelby on using photoshop. It helps me tremendously and is written in pretty laymen terms, if you ask me. If I could understand it then everyone else can, that's for sure...

[Poseidon]

My workflow is similar to Gene. I usually do a modest bump to saturation, +8 or so, then I do an "Unsharp Mask" of 300% radias .3 pixels. I guess my biggest "trick" is I will use ISO 800 or 1000 and then get a fast enough shutter speed that you won't see any streaks from floating debris. A small white speck is much less noticeable then a white streak.

I am pretty bad about turning off the pumps when I take pictures though, sometimes I will IF I am doing coral shots. (Basement sump, so the power is down there...)

I also use the spot healing brush, or the clone tool for any white specs that do show up. I tried using the paint option to make a background black in one image, and it was just to much work for me.... I'll have to do that optically with light falloff and flash if I want to achieve that look again, I think I may have loaded that image up....

Yup here it is.... This is the image that I did the most work too BY FAR, and I really don't like it that much....

[bguile]

Thanks for taking the time to share guys. I do have a couple books by Kelby in the Photoshop Elements/CS2 for digital photographers and I refer to them every now and then when I want to learn something new or forgot how to do something. Maybe it's me being too critical but even though some may say that a picture I did is nice I'm always thinking it could've been better or it doesn't look as good as someone elses. I learn from reading many books but I think I'm always wondering if there's an improved way to do the same thing and get better results. Ah well, guess I'll keep plugging away at it. Haven't had a chance to get much practice lately as my tank is just fallow and ugly with some algae issues I just can't seem to get past...yet.

[wozza]

Regular extension tubes won't accept EF-S mount lenses, I've tried with my Kenko set of tubes but no sigar.

can you, or mike recomend some that will fit?
am i right in saying they dont have to be top of the range one cause they have no glass in?

cheers james

[Poseidon]

That is correct James, the Kenko tubes will work just fine. Let me do some checking for EF-S tubes....