Today’s Post by Joe Farace
Macro lenses are different. Conventional lenses are optimized to focus at infinity not for close-up photography but true macro lenses are not only corrected for close focusing but can also be shot at infinity. Canon’s EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM, for example, has a floating optical system that lets it focus to life-size (1:1) magnification at four-inches from anything allowing you to fill the frame with a subject the size of a penny. The lens has internal focusing and autofocus is driven by a ring-type USM (Ultrasonic Motor) so overall length never changes during focusing.
Canon’s EF-S lenses are designed to cover their DSLRs that have the smaller APS-C sensor and feature a rubber ring around the rear element that sets deeper into the camera than an EF lens typically does. If you try to mount an EF-S lens on a full-frame Canon DSLR, it will hit the mirror.
The EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM is one of the shorter focal length macro lenses that you might find but with the 1.6x multiplication factor found in Canon’s APS-C cameras, like the EOS50D that I used to make the above image, it creates the equivalent (field-of-view) of a 96mm lens. Not bad for macro work.
How I made this shot: Every blog post on macro photograph has to have what I call the SOB (semi-obligatory bug) shot so here it is, even if the bugs I typically photograph have four wheels. This particular image was made by accident while testing Canon’s MR-14EX Macro Ring Lite in E-TTL mode. My original subject was the flowering ground cover near the front of my former home but this bee decided to land on it! I said “honey” he smiled, and I made one of my few bug shots. Exposure in Aperture Priority mode was 1/250 sec at f/16 with plus 1/3rd stop compensation at ISO 400.
Outdoors or in less predictable environmental conditions, using autofocus is the only way to use this lens. When attached to my EOS 50D, which has a nine-point AF system arranged in a diamond-shaped array, the most accurate focusing was achieved by using the camera’s multi-controller to select a specific focus point.
This EF-S 60mm f/2.8 Macro USM is a wonderfully multi-purpose lens that’s equally at home capturing macro images or making portraits and is an useful addition to any Canon system that includes an EF-S compatible camera body.
Interested in photographing insects? Beyond Extreme Close-Up Photography by Julian Cremona is available from Amazon for $24.99, as I write this. It’s the perfect guide on the subject and compliments his other book, Extreme Close-Up Photography and Focus Stacking.