I suppose I'm a little late on the uptake, but get what Father Christmas got for me this year? OK, so the thread title gives it away, and the impact for me is rather spoilt by the fact that it was mainly me playing the fat guy in the red coat 
Never mind ... money well spent.
Haven't had that long to play with it just yet, but I'll put down a few first impressions.
Positives:
- I knew how heavy it was from the stats, but it really is surprisingly light! I've only ever handled metal L lenses, but this is built to a similar standard and is a really manageable weight.
- I've never owned the Canon 100 2.8, but I've used one before and to me the build quality of the L is really a big step up. The focus ring doesn't have a mm of play in it and the flush switches are well placed and nice and firm. That's one of the things that really bugs me about my Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS, as I'm forever catching the AF-MF switch on the side by mistake.
- Damn it's sharp.
- It handles very well and retains much of its sharpness with extension tubes. My previous cheapo macro set up was the 50 1.8 with various tubes, and it really was very soft. When you stopped the lens down, it improved a bit, but not massively and you had to then fight with the lighting.
- The OOF areas are great and high-contrast edges are handled nicely.
Middling points:
- The new IS is very effective when using it as a non-macro lens (and it's very sharp in this context), but isn't quite as useful as I was hoping in the macro environment. It's good (and much better then nothing), but even small movements forward or backwards can't be compensated by the IS (as with previous IS systems). Let's face it - these are just as likely as side to side and the angular rotations the new system is built to counter.
- No fault of the lens, but I'm going to have to get a macro slide rail.
Negatives:
- I can't really see a massive need for the lens hood (though I suppose people would complain if it came without one). It's too long to be useful in any macro context and too long to allow you to simply invert it on the lens if you think you might need it when out and about but don't for that particular shot.
- For the price, you'd really have expected them to give you the tripod ring! I mean seriously, that's just blatantly cashing in! It's fairly light, as above, but with stacked tubes, no tripod is going to be able to prevent some sagging - which is a massive pain when doing macros. A lot of the sagging (for me anyway) comes from the grip-to-camera join, which wouldn't be an issue if there was a tripod ring.
Enough waffle ... time for some piccies! 1 and 2 were with 70mm of stacked extension tubes, 3 had tubes but I can't think how many, 4 and 5 are just the lens by itself.
1
2
3
4 - it's a computer monitor, if you were wondering ...
5
Never mind ... money well spent.Haven't had that long to play with it just yet, but I'll put down a few first impressions.
Positives:
- I knew how heavy it was from the stats, but it really is surprisingly light! I've only ever handled metal L lenses, but this is built to a similar standard and is a really manageable weight.
- I've never owned the Canon 100 2.8, but I've used one before and to me the build quality of the L is really a big step up. The focus ring doesn't have a mm of play in it and the flush switches are well placed and nice and firm. That's one of the things that really bugs me about my Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS, as I'm forever catching the AF-MF switch on the side by mistake.
- Damn it's sharp.
- It handles very well and retains much of its sharpness with extension tubes. My previous cheapo macro set up was the 50 1.8 with various tubes, and it really was very soft. When you stopped the lens down, it improved a bit, but not massively and you had to then fight with the lighting.
- The OOF areas are great and high-contrast edges are handled nicely.
Middling points:
- The new IS is very effective when using it as a non-macro lens (and it's very sharp in this context), but isn't quite as useful as I was hoping in the macro environment. It's good (and much better then nothing), but even small movements forward or backwards can't be compensated by the IS (as with previous IS systems). Let's face it - these are just as likely as side to side and the angular rotations the new system is built to counter.
- No fault of the lens, but I'm going to have to get a macro slide rail.
Negatives:
- I can't really see a massive need for the lens hood (though I suppose people would complain if it came without one). It's too long to be useful in any macro context and too long to allow you to simply invert it on the lens if you think you might need it when out and about but don't for that particular shot.
- For the price, you'd really have expected them to give you the tripod ring! I mean seriously, that's just blatantly cashing in! It's fairly light, as above, but with stacked tubes, no tripod is going to be able to prevent some sagging - which is a massive pain when doing macros. A lot of the sagging (for me anyway) comes from the grip-to-camera join, which wouldn't be an issue if there was a tripod ring.
Enough waffle ... time for some piccies! 1 and 2 were with 70mm of stacked extension tubes, 3 had tubes but I can't think how many, 4 and 5 are just the lens by itself.
1
2
3
4 - it's a computer monitor, if you were wondering ...
5