In early 2014 I spent a large amount of money by my standards to get high quality kit as used by some of my macro heroes who produced images of superb quality that I admired. I bought a 20 megalpixel Canon 70D APS-C camera. Unusually for a dSLR, and important to me, it had a fully articulated screen and a good live view implementation, which meant that I would be able to use the LCD screen for invertebrates and botanical subjects. I also bought a Canon 100L 1:1 macro lens, a Canon MPE-65 1X to 5X macro lens and a Canon MT-24EX twin macro flash. As a bit of a side issue I also bought an EF-S 18-55 kit lens, an EF-S 55-250 lens and a Canon fit Metz 58 AF2 flash unit. What happened next, and over the subsequent four years or so is documented in huge detail in a long thread that got pinned in the Macro and Close-up forum at TalkPhotography.co.uk.
Long story short - the top quality kit didn't help. To my great surprise and disappointment it almost immediately became apparent that, given the approach I was taking, using very small apertures, I was not going to get better image quality from this kit. I didn't want to use the new kit just to get similar image quality to what I was already getting because the new kit was much more difficult to use. I returned the most expensive bits of kit (100L, MPE-65 and MT-24EX). I decided to keep the camera and less expensive lenses.
I hadn't really thought much about the other bits and pieces. The 18-55 never got used much, but the 55-250 turned out to be a gem. Used with close-up lenses and the Metz flash with a home made diffuser it was fairly good for invertebrates. It turned out to be not quite as good as the Panasonics, but it took me some time using it to be sure about that. However, I very much liked some of what I got from it for flowers and other botanical subjects. Used with and without a mild Canon 500D close-up lens I quickly came to think of it as my "flower camera". I liked the tonality it produced, and with the 55-250 it was easy to use and not too heavy (unlike with the lenses I had sent back).
There turned out to be a totally unexpected surprise with the 70D and 55-250. I was doing a lot of experiments and comparisons and one day, looking for subjects to experiment with, I went to the local boating lake. For want of anything better to photograph I tried photographing the gulls that were flying around. To my surprise it worked, and when I got home I found that I quite liked some of the images. Since then I have visited the boating lake and also the marina from time to time to photograph the common birds mainly in flight, mostly gulls but also occasionally geese, ducks, pigeons, crows and swans in flight. I also used the 55-250 occasionally when I had it with me and came across common birds (not in flight) in our garden or (just once) at a local nature reserve).
Late in 2014, nine months after purchasing and sending back the Canon 100L along with the other expensive macro kit I decided that I had been rather hasty and had not given a fair trial to a macro lens on the 70D. I bought a Sigma 105 macro as this was probably more or less as good as the Canon 100L optically, and was less expensive. I have tried using it on and off since then, but have not found it any better than the other setups I used, with the 70D and with other cameras, for either invertebrates or botanical subjects.
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