Canon 28-135mm F/3.5-5.6 IS Macro VS Canon 100mm F/2.4 IS Macro

zaroba · May 3, 2018

I have owned the 28-135mm since 2015 and love it. It has become my 'walking around' lens for most photos and seems good for both macro and landscape pictures. It claims a minimum focus distance of 18 inches but it seems to focus as close as 1ft for me, which I can only assume is because it's a full frame lens and my T3i has a crop sensor.

Before getting the 28-135 I had been thinking of getting the 100mm. But hadn't due to the cost differences (3x the price). Better job now and looking at this lens again. But would it be a vast improvement?
Rated with a 1ft minimum focus distance but if the other lens is something to go by may be much closer. Plus since it's a 1:1, I wont even need to be as close to fill the T3i's crop frame so overall this might allow easier photos of smaller objects and not needing to be as close to photo larger things easily. It also has a larger aperture so should do better with less light.

Has anybody used both lenses?
Is there a great difference in them?

beagle100 · May 4, 2018

for macro ... Canon 100mm 2.8 non-L
www.flickr.com/photos/mmirrorless

daveo228i · Dec 7, 2019

Second that

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Derrel · Dec 7, 2019

I used to own the Canon EF 100 mm F / 2.8 macro, the second iteration, the one with internal focusing, and not the first version with the greatly extending barrel. It was a decent macro lens, a real macro lens. The 28 to 135 mm zoom lens is not a real macro lens. The term macro means that it allows you to focus closer than would otherwise be expected. The 100 mm macro lens will allow you to make full one to one or life-size captures. You could go online and find out the maximum reproduction ratio of the 28 to 135 Zoom. I would expect that the maximum macro ratio would be something like 1 to 4 or 1/4 life-size, or roughly thereabouts.

I am suggesting the non L version as beagle recommended above.