( 12 reviews )
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Posted: Apr 19 2009
Over the years I have owned both Canon's 50mm and 100mm Macro, they are excellent lens and substantially less expensive. If you want to shoot insects and other small, shy creatures outdoors the 180 mm Macro is the lens to get. Optically the lens is excellent in every way. The 'slow' focus is a function of the huge focal range of the lens, typically manual focus is used for macro photography - for general photography the focus limiter can be used to improve focus time. Construction quality is excellent - although the included lens hood is a rather cheap plastic design, however it functions fine. I use this lens on a tripod almost all the time - with Macro work you are normally are working a smaller apertures (f8-f16), so relatively slow shutter speeds are the norm - the tripod ring makes transitioning from portrait to landscape very easy. Additionally this quality of this lens allows the use of canons 1.4x teleconverter with minimal loss of quality - significantly increasing the 'reach' of this lens. This lens is a good general purpose 'short' telephoto - but not suitable for sports or action photography, Canon's EF 70-200 lenses or 200mm f2.8 lens make better alternatives. Image stabilization is not available for this lens and would make a very useful addition
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Posted: Mar 30 2009
If you ignore the lack of image stabilization, this is a five star lens. Colors are deeply saturated, and sharpness is on par with Canon's best super telephotos. Want to stop spending all of your time in Photoshop? Get this lens. The only thing I ever do in software with this lens is crop. Period. The long focal length of this lens gives 1:1 magnification while staying a decent distance from the subject. I live in Texas, and this comes in handy with all kinds of subjects, like snakes and scorpions. It also enables you to use a standard tripod (with the legs collapsed) and still get good magnification. Thanks to an eight blade circular aperture, the bokeh from this lens is dreamy. At f/3.5 and 180mm, there is a razor-thin focus area, and distractions in the background just melt away. You can take a picture of a daisy and make the stem disappear. Simply awesome. At 180mm, this is basically a telephoto lens with macro capability. As such, it could really use image stabilization (IS). I have not taken too many sharp shots handheld, but I have taken some amazing shots with a monopod. IS would make this a no-brainer lens. As is, I would strongly recommend bringing a tripod along.
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Posted: Nov 23 2008
Regarding the suggestion that one instead get a 70-200 and extension tubes... yes, that would be more versatile than the macro alone, but I have a 70-200 and extension tubes, and they can't compare to the 180 macro.
