beginners advice on macro lenses.. canon 100mm f2.8

[tikigod19]

Hello all,

I have a canon 60D which I use for photography and also a panasonic GH1 which I use for video via an adapter.

I have the 50mm 1.4 lens which I love and when filming I'd like to use exclusively primes if possible. I therefore thought that a 100mm prime might compliment the 50 nicely (I also have a 20mm f1.7 on the panasonic) so do you guys think that all 3 would work well together?

I then stumbled upon the 100mm f2.8 macro which people seem to really like and I'm torn between that and the f2 prime. I know that macro allows closer focussing but thats about it.. could one of you very knowledgeable helpful people explain what effect this has on depth of field? I find my 'keeper rate' is quite low with the 50mm f1.4 if I'm photographing active kids but I suppose thats my fault for using such a low aperture. I often find that knocking it to f2.0 works well so I think a 100mm f2 would be used quite a lot but not sure if gaining macro is worth losing the f2 in exchange for an f2.8.

I hope that makes sense, would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks

 

[SamHH]

If you know that you want a 100mm lens and you don't want it to zoom, then it's simply a case of whether closer focussing or a wider aperture is more useful to you. I don't think anyone else can really answer that for you.

As to what effect closer focussing has on depth of field: the closer you focus the narrower the depth of field (all else being equal). Simple as that. You can try this with you current lenses.

 

[tikigod19]

thanks Sam. So would you say that by moving in close with the 2.8 I'd get the same sort of level of depth of field as if I were slightly further back with the 2.0?

nice bokeh is the most important to me so I assume I'd get that slightly better with the 2.0 compared to the 2.8 no matter whether I'm close or far?

 

[SamHH]

thanks Sam. So would you say that by moving in close with the 2.8 I'd get the same sort of level of depth of field as if I were slightly further back with the 2.0?

Yes, but you'd almost certainly not do that because you would get a different composition. If the composition was how you wanted it to be standing 5 metres away from the subject, you wouldn't move to 4 metres away from the subject just to get less depth of field because doing so would ruin your composition.

If your concern is to get the narrowest depth of field possible at your desired focal length, choose the fastest lens.

The reason to choose a macro lens is if you want higher magnification.

nice bokeh is the most important to me so I assume I'd get that slightly better with the 2.0 compared to the 2.8 no matter whether I'm close or far?

Not necessarily. I don't know about those two lenses, but it isn't simply a matter of the faster lens always having a nicer quality to the out-of-focus areas.

The f2 lens will make the out-of-focus areas more out-of-focus than the f2.8 lens (all else being equal), but whether the appearance of those areas will be nicer is a subjective judgement to do with the optical design of the lens.

 

[tikigod19]

Fast lenses are important to me, I have recently found a 2.8 is not fast enough when shooting video so I suppose whether it does macro or not this is not going to improve with a different 2.8 lens.

I suppose I need to ask myself whether I'm going to actually use the macro function and then decide between the two, but I think the 2.0 will be the one for me for slightly better low light performance and blurrier backgrounds.

Thanks again