Longing for a true 60mm macro on Canon RF or EF Mount

[Adventurer]

Hello everyone,

 

I want to report back on the LAOWA 2:1 60mm manual focus and aperture lens for usage on Canon RF bodies.

 

The motivation behind this was the nice flexibility that MacroToWide MWL lenses from Nauticam, Kraken and Weefine offer plus the extreme good performance the original and cheap Canon EF-S 60mm macro showed in the past.

 

So here are the downsides, if you also ponder with that idea:

 

1st: The Canon EF-S 60mm will instantly switch to 1.6x crop mode once mounted via RF EF Adapter. You cannot switch that of via in-camera settings and I would be very happy if Canon would open this up via a firmware update, but I doubt this will ever happen. The AF with USM Motor is awesome fast and fun to use. However the 1.6x crop will eat up your megapixel resolution, which is not that much of an issue on R5 bodies, but with R6 & R6 Mark II it is an issue. So in conclusion this will still be great for video shooting but you have to decide if approx 15mpx are enough for you in photos on R6mk2 and R6.

 

2nd: I was willing to go all manual focus and even manual aperture. If you can live with that, the EF-S 60mm will give it to you if falsely injected to bayonet mount and having set your aperture prior upon detachment. Long for a true 60mm and intrigued by the native 2:1 magnification I ordered a LAOWA manual lens. I new that this lens would contract and expand upon focus and is just hiding in a shell aluminum construction for that. So de facto it is not an inner focusing macro lens. Land based testing disqualified this lens. Fully extended it has its maximum magnification and is not at the focus to infinity point nor the hyperfocal distance. It has to contract back almost fully for that leaving you with a vignette for MWL ( macro to wide ) type lenses.

 

So overall the Canon underwater community is needing a true full frame & innerfocussing macro lens for the RF or EF Mount. Let‘s hope they bring something next to their premium RF100mm.

 

The Nikon Community has the wonderful 60mm for which the MWL lens types where originally designed.

 

The Sony shooters can utilize a compact and very fast Canon EF-S 60mm on FF with sigma or metabones adapters. However the AF performance is slower than on any RF EF mount with Canon.

 

If you have news or ideas about a good 60mm FF macro or adaption to RF mount let me know here.

 

thanks