Anyone got a good one?

Fancy taking some shots of fly eyes/droplets of water etc.

Got about £200 to spend. What should I look out for?

What camera are you putting it on? For a Canon I'd be looking at either a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM or a Sigma 150mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM for cheap Macro work, but by cheap they're still around a £100 over your budget. Decent Macro Glass will never be cheap. I'm looking for the 100mm myself.

Might be worth looking into extenders if you have any current fastish lenses already? Might work out cheaper?

The Canon EF 180mm f/3.5 L USM would be excellent, but you'll need a spare 900 quid unfortunately :(

If you're not looking specifically at macro shots, a decent high high zoom may give you some results? I have a 75-300mm lens that, while at the top end, means you have to me almost a metre away you can get some impressive background blur and with a tripod and a still subject can get some reasonable detail? Nowhere near the real thing though.

Cheers Mort

Its a Canon 400D so dont want to fork out big bucks. Seen some Canon EF 60mm f/2.8 USM for £170 second hand.

Is it worth the extra for a 100mm?

PS already got an 18-55mm and a 55-200mm so this is purely for arty closeups of insects etc.

Cheers Mort

Its a Canon 400D so dont want to fork out big bucks. Seen some Canon EF 60mm f/2.8 USM for £170 second hand.

Is it worth the extra for a 100mm?

PS already got an 18-55mm and a 55-200mm so this is purely for arty closeups of insects etc.

The 60mm is designed for the 1.6 crop camera and offers an equavalent 100mm. This is a good length for a macro. The longer ones such as the sigma 150 allow you to get further away, but the DoF is tiny.

I think you should get excellent shots with the canon 60mm on your camera (if you use it properly

Looking at the 60mm EF-S lens it's a nice, capable, macro lens. The only downside to it (I can see) from a Macro point of view is the shorter focal length of 60mm You won't get as nice background blur or as narrow depth of field as a 100 or 180mm macro. But for starting out it looks a solid lens. Might have a look into it myself if there's some second hand cheap ones about. Otherwise I'm keeping my eye out for the 100mm; if you hawk eBay then you can usually get them 2nd hand around £200-£250. New on the bay you're looking just under £300. In a shop you're, wincingly, looking at about £350.

Nicked this from the net:

Edit: Hmm, looking at it, The Minimum Working Distance of the 60mm is 9cm. You may have some 'Fight or Flight' problems if you try to photograph insects with your lens that close to them? Then again, think the 100mm is only 15cm though, so might not be an issue really?

I'm glad this has been asked actually, as I'm in the same position. But I wasn't really sure which length to go for. 100mm it is then, it seems to me

Steve

Cheers guys. Lots to go on.

You are right about the fight or flight - i'll just have to use patience to fight back!

The 180mm looks ace...

I've just bought an 85mm f/1.4 lens so that will be great for portraits, but has a bad non-usable focusing distance for macro; I'm on the lookout for a macro lens next too!

It's also worth looking at Pixel-Peeper -- More than 100,000 full-size sample photos from lenses, SLR cameras and digicams.

It links into Flikr, extracts all the EXIF data and builds up a database of photos taken with which lens at which focal distance at which aperture, etc.

Great for giving you an idea what kind of photos lenses give you

For example: Full-size sample photos from Canon 60mm F/2.8

Cool, what an awesome idea

Superb resource that site Xav, is also making me want a 10-22 wide-angle even more too!

Steve

Superb resource that site Xav, is also making me want a 10-22 wide-angle even more too!

Steve

I know. It's a flipside jobby. One one hand, it's really great for looking at shots, the downside is it always has nasty slimming habit on the wallet!

I've had a play around a bit with the 85mm jobby. It's fantastic. But looking at some of those mouth-watering macro shots, it's seriously tempting me to get more glass again

If you're just using it for macro work and don't care about infinity focus or autofocus, there is always the possibility of buying an older manual focus macro lens from an abandoned lens system (which should be cheaper as it's less desirable) and an adapter to fit it to your current camera.

I have the Canon 100mm f2.8 macro and use it on a 20D and a 1DmkII, it's a cracking lens, tack sharp and reasonable focus speed, it's better than the 60mm as it gives you a greater working distance so you don't scare the buggies, what you may find though (with any dedicated macro lens), is you'll tend to shoot at a wide aperture to try and get the largest depth of field so shutter speeds really start to drop in all but the brightest sunlight, so you may find yourself wanting a flash to go with it pretty soon, I know I did !.

Alan