After a ton of research and working with the lens some, I had decided I truly wanted to get a 1:1 ratio like the lens is advertised to do. One of the firs things I noticed at with this is the extremely short depth of field.
I won't go into a huge amount of detail on this because most of you, if you are already doing macro photography, know that the closer you are to your subject the field of view is directly related, so the closer you are the less it will be, and when you step into macro it is extremely short.
I noticed that as I have been taking pictures with this lens, some of my images appear to be sharper and some not so much. I have read a lot of information about macro photography and decided the best way to know for sure is to test my lens in a controlled environment and see exactly how it handles itself.
The information in this blog is information regarding my lens and its set up. I am shooting a Canon EOS 5D MK III with the Canon 100mm Macro at is closet focusing distance to the subject. In my case for the controlled test, it will be a tape measure. at a 45 degree angle from the front plane of the lens and the distance from the lens is right at 5". That is as close as I can get the camera to the subject and focus manually. (it should be noted the camera when on auto focus, liked it to be 5.25 inches away., But I achieved Crisp focus at 5" away manually)
I am attaching a few of the images from my test here in this blog. I know what I perceive the best to be with this set up and I know how I will strive to shoot in the field for the best focusing on the stuff I can.
I will let you decide what you think and you can see, is there really any difference in depth of field between say F9 and F16 besides a significant amount of Light loss at that close of distance.
I won't give you my opinion, because it is just that. But feel free to look this over and if you enjoy macro photography, make time and do this same experiment with your equipment and see what you can come up with at the ideal sharpness for your lens versus, the degradation of the image due to being run at either extreme end.
