Typically when I purchase a new piece of gear I have a particular use case in mind. With my Canon 24-105 F4 L I wanted a great all around lens that could shoot portraits as well as landscapes with relative ease. However, I found that it’s excellent at taking macro photos. The true purpose of the trip, from which I snagged all of the wonderful bird photos of the last set, was to investigate some tide pools. My partner loves tide pools, and having grown up in the famously salt water rich state of New Mexico, my tide pooling experience was minimal. In this post I’ll talk about this surprising little lens and it’s ability to make the smallest places in the world look remarkable.

       This lens is branded as a macro lens and does have an entire “macro” section listed on its focus ring, but that’s not why I bought it. I was looking for an L series lens that could zoom to 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm for portraits. What I failed to account for is that I’d need a much larger aperture than f4. While this lens does make for an exceptional portrait lens, it comes into its own when taking photos of miniature things at a remarkably close distance from the end of the lens.

       The incredibly shallow depth of field at less than a foot away while suddenly exploding out when focusing at a more reasonable portrait distance is a physics problem I’d hate to see on a final exam. This lens manages to solve it without issue. In this shot we can see intricate detail in the white muscles while quickly fading into bokeh territory when reaching not more than a foot into the background. Thankfully the California sun was in full effect so I could shoot wide open while keeping a fast shutter speed.

       As a testament to this lens’ usability, Mollie babysat my camera while I was using the restroom and managed to snag this rather remarkable image of a rock overlooking the beach. I really enjoy the scale tricks this image is playing on your mind, I would halfway expect a small sheep to come trundling along the green space.

       As always, thank you for reading. I hope to continue to post consistent and interesting blog posts. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to drop me a line. Best, -Ben