Vernon Chalmers Photography: Canon 100-400mm Lens / Canon 500D Close-Up Lens Filter

18 August 2022

Canon 100-400mm Lens / Canon 500D Close-Up Lens Filter

Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens / Canon 500D Close-Up Lens Filter

Small Flower Close-Up Photography : The Paddocks, Milnerton

Small Wild Flower Canon 100-400mm Lens / Canon 500D Close-Up Lens Filter

Handheld small flower photography experiments between f/22- f/11 with my 'Kirstenbosch lens'. It's quite unlike me to use apertures smaller than f/11 without a tripod, but here are four images between f/22 - f/11.

Here are a few samples of close-up subjects in dismal / windy conditions

The objective was to see how far I can push small apertures when using the original Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens with the Canon 500D Close-Up lens filter with Auto-IS0, Autofocus and Image Stabilisation on. Being so incredibly close to such small subjects is challenging (as the close-up lens decreases the Minimum Focussing distance (MFD) of the original 100-400mm focal length (in terms of lens distance to subject) considering that a bigger aperture (i.e. f/5.6) will only provide a small section of sharpness in the image – depending on the focus area.

I don't really do any handheld photography with apertures smaller than f/11 and was quite surprised with the outcome during these images - in using the long lens with close-up lens filter (and Image Stabilisation). In the windy conditions and to minimize camera shake I have also experimented with a variety of different shutter speeds (up to 1/1000's).

Apertures used with the attached flower images