Canon’s L-series lenses are designed to the highest professional standards and have a reputation for optical quality. Not surprisingly, this means they’re more expensive, and at a whisker over £1000 this Canon 100mm macro lens costs £400 more than the standard non-L-series 100mm macro and £650 more than Canon’s 50mm macro. In other words, it had better be good!

Canon’s revamping the cosmetic appearance of its L-series lenses, replacing the glossy black coating with a more sober matt finish. Opinions might vary about whether the new finish looks or feels better than the old one, but this lens does feel pretty well put together. It’s a big lens, even for a 100mm prime, and at 625g it’s quite a weight, too. It’s not really an issue, since Canon’s full-frame cameras are pretty weighty in themselves, and much of the time macro shots are going to be taken on a tripod anyway.

Not that it’s strictly necessary with this one. For the first time, Canon’s incorporated Image Stabilization in one of its macro lenses, and this should help cut camera shake considerably. It’s not the sole solution, though. The bigger problem with handheld macro shots is that the shallow depth of field means the subject drifts in and out of focus however firm your stance, and Image Stabilization can’t do anything about this.

The autofocus is smooth and quiet, as it always is with Canon’s USM lenses, though the extra-long focus travel of a macro lens means it can take longer than usual. In fact, Canon offers three focus ranges selected via a switch on the lens barrel: full, 0.5m-infinity and 0.3-0.5m. It should speed things up when you’re working over a specific distance range but there’s also the danger of forgetting or leaving it on the wrong setting and wondering why it’s not working.

The manual focus action is smooth, and it’s not too highly geared, so it’s possible to make large but precise focus adjustments quickly. But while there is a distance scale, there are no depth-of-field markings, which is a bit of a surprise. These aren’t practical on a zoom, but on a prime lens used in conditions where depth of field needs to be precisely controlled, there seems no reason not to have them.

But there’s no faulting the Canon’s optical quality. In fact, we had to extend the vertical axis on the resolution chart to accommodate its peak resolution figures. Topping out at just below 3000 line widths/picture height, this lens can only enhance the reputation of Canon’s L-series lenses.

It’s extremely sharp both at the centre and the edge of the frame, and even wide open at f2.8, though it won’t always be easy to achieve these results in practice. The shallow depth of field at these distances means that comparatively little of the subject will be exactly on the plane of focus, and if you stop right down to maximise the depth of field, you risk losing definition to diffraction effects, shown in the chart as a dramatic drop in resolution beyond f16. That’s a bit of a disappointment since you’ll often want to use very small apertures to get as much depth of field as possible.

The Canon 100mm f2.8L Macro is an exceptionally sharp lens, but there are a couple of caveats. First, it’s twice the price of an independent lens like Tamron’s 90mm f2.8 Macro and a lot more than other Canon macros. Second, the lack of depth of field markings and the drop-off in performance at small apertures does limit its effective aperture range. It’s good, very good, but it’s not perfect.

Final Verdict This is an exceptionally sharp macro lens but with a price tag to match. It’s the first Canon macro lens to incorporate image stabilisation, though with macro photography depth of field is likely to cause more problems than camera shake. OVERALL

Our lens reviewer, and technical expert, Rod is a veritable photographic encyclopaedia. His illustrious CV has seen him write for many mags, websites and journals.