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gedmerson wrote:
I have been doing landscapes and portraits for a few years. I decided I wanted to try my hand with Macro Photography. I am a canon shooter and would like to know recommended macro setups. Not sure if I need an extension tube or an extender and a macro ring light. Any help would be appreciated. I currently have a Canon 5D Mark III and a 100Lmm Macro lens.
The 100L is a very good macro lens. It is sharp, adn the IS is quite handy. It's worth noting that the practical benefit of IS decreases as you approach 1:1 macro distances.
The main difficulty with macro is getting enough light on your subject in order to shoot at a narrow enough aperture to get a sufficient amount of your subject in acceptable focus. As you would expect, shooting at narrow apertures requires either additional lighting, or long exposure.
If you have a stable tripod, then you can shoot natural light macro of static subjects.
If you have a flash unit, then you have everything that you need to start shooting handheld macro. The links posted above will give you some useful ideas for flash rig setups. Easy dedicated solutions are using Canon's MR-14EX Ringlite or MR-24EX macrolite units. I have the MR-14EX, which is not the ideal for artistic shooting (it tends to act like a beauty dish in giving all around frontal light), but it is great for poking your camera into foliage chasing insects and having the light available at the end of your lens where it is needed.
It's also perfectly acceptable to handhold your general off camera flash unit at an angle, but this can get a little trickier, requiring one handed shooting (unless you are using a tripod).
Extension tubes work well with the 100L to increase your maximum magnification to almost 2:1. Unlike with non-macro lenses, adding extension tubes to the 100L doesn't decrease the MFD of the lens. It does, of course, reduce the working distance by the length of extension tubes added.
You can't use a Canon extender with the 100L. I guess you could interpose an extension tube between the extender and lens, but I haven't tried that.
Focus rails are another very useful addition to your macro kit, but far from necessary. They are necessary if you want to focus stack - take multiple images while varying the focal plane, and then combine the resulting images in post - so as to get sharp focus on a subject from front to back.
Good luck.
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