Given that the following is a completely personal evaluation and should be considered as such. I want to share my personal experience with a 105mm MACRO autofocus lens. Made by well-known Japanese brand. Used for a few days in nature photography, particularly focusing on flowers and insects.
Considering that the lens was brand new, in perfect condition, and quite aesthetically pleasing, to tell the truth. A high-quality lens highly regarded in the macro lens market. A lens that many macro lens enthusiasts would love to have. Undoubtedly it is of good, if not excellent, quality. The reviews that I have seen and read online are all favourable or highly favourable.
Personally, I had never tried an autofocus macro lens of this focal length before. My previous experience was with a small 30mm F3.5 lens that I sold two years ago. Therefore, all the photographs featured on this website. Or, let’s say 95% of thes, were taken using macro manual focus lens, and mostly handheld.
I must say that I’ve no complaints about the optical quality of the tested lens. Photographs are highly impressive, sharp, and with a color rendering that satisfies me. Undoubtedly, the sharpness of the images is the best quality of this Japanese lens. However, I do have a few negative points to highlight regarding the autofocus performance of this particular lens.
– The autofocus mechanism is slow and noisy.
– The autofocus is imprecise, and achieving sharp focus becomes quite challenging. Even in straightforward and common conditions like photographing a clearly visible bee in the foreground of a flower.
These seemingly two trivial considerations for a lens of this level. Also of this cost (approximately €850) leave me puzzled. Have convinced me that it is completely unnecessary (for me) to have and therefore purchase an autofocus MACRO lens. Essentially, I don’t need it. It is not useful for the type of photography I normally undertake. And even if it could potentially be useful for me, to have an autofocus lens to capture subjects in even imperceptible movement, where the autofocus function should shine. I found this model completely incapable of capturing the photographs I wanted to take.
If the autofocus function doesn’t follow the movements of butterfly wings or the motion of a bee accurately and takes excessively long to focus, often resulting in imprecise outcomes, it doesn’t make sense, in my modest opinion, to utilize this function or this type of lens. Of course, this observation likely applies to all autofocus macro lenses, although it is admittedly a subjective and personal judgment since I haven’t tested other models.
I want to highlight that the lens was tested with three different APS-C and one full-frame cameras. All equipped with an autofocus system considered to be among the best in the market. Which I myself use and can confirm based on direct experience.
When capturing an image of an entire flower, for instance, it would be highly convenient to have a fast autofocus lens that enables me to capture shots from various angles quickly. This way, I wouldn’t need to concentrate on manual focusing, but rather rely on the lens autofocus to handle the “essential” task. Even better, when you want to capture a subtle nuance or a particular detail of the subject, autofocus should assist and make this operation simple, fast, and even effortless.
Manual photo lens used to shoot this “Delosperma lavisiae”
If this feature is frequently unusable or imprecise, I personally believe it is better to use a manual lens. Moreover, manual lenses often come at a significantly lower cost while still providing similar, if not better, optical quality.
In addition, autofocus is influenced by the intelligence that governs the processor of virtually all cameras. In other words, autofocus is set on the first subject framed by the camera. If the subject is located behind a blade of grass, a leaf, or a branch, the autofocus will be on the foreground subject and not on the subject just a few centimeters away (or less) directly behind it.
Certainly, I consider this to be the case for all autofocus lenses, including those that are not macro lenses. But in macro this is an important if not essential capabilities. This is another reason why I prefer to stick with manual lenses.
Last but not least. A new manual focus lens typically has a cost 40% – 50% lower compared to an autofocus lens of the same focal length. Of course, at this point, it is necessary to practice and gain experience in using manual focus. As with anything, practical exercise helps, and I am certain it leads to good / excellent results depending on the amount of practice one puts in.
The used market for manual macro lenses offers several opportunities even for a moderately priced budget. Even better, the search for vintage macro lenses can lead to excellent quality options at truly interesting prices. Sometimes, you can come across special and unique deals, like the case of the SIGMA 50mm F2.8 Macro I bought, review available on website.
