Peter Truman Photography

I promised not to turn this website into a technical playground. Furthermore, I promised to restrict commentary to technologies that have a useful impact on the photography included in this website. Canon have just released details of a new lens that I believe will have such an impact. I have had a Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens for some years and has seen a lot of use for close up and macro work, particularly of flowers. It has performed really well and helped me create several of my favourite pictures. It has, however, had one shortcoming and that is its lack of image stabilisation.

Canon have just addressed that with their new 100mm f2.8L IS lens which incorporates their new Hybrid IS that I commented on recently. This is claimed to provide up to 2 stops stabilisation at 1.0x magnification which, in practice, means that the lens should be usable handheld more often when getting close to plants. If this works well, and I have no reason to suggest it will not, then getting detailed close ups of plants should be a little easier and not need the tripod quite so often. This will be particularly useful when photographing plants that are awkward to get at with a tripod. Now that really does have the potential to make a difference.