Chapter 9: Lenses and Accessories

Having a high-quality camera like the 60D is one element of the equation in getting great images. Another element is the lenses that you use on the 60D. Excellent lenses not only deliver the sharpness and contrast that set images apart, but they also broaden your ability to express your creative vision. For most photographers, buying lenses is a gradual process, and over time, the investment in lenses far exceeds the investment in the camera body.

Your investment in a system of lenses is one that will pay excellent dividends in terms of image quality for years to come. The lenses you buy will last a long time. In fact, they will outlast one or more camera bodies. So as much you can, buy the best lenses that you can afford with an eye toward lenses that will serve your needs both now and in the future.

Evaluating Lens Choices for the 60D

With more than 60 compatible Canon EF and EF-S lenses and accessories, you have a wide range of choices, and your options are even more extensive when you factor in compatible lenses from third-party companies. In fact, the sheer number of lens options can be confusing. This chapter helps you develop a strategy for building a lens system that serves you well.

Building a lens system

By now, you have your first lens, and you may be wondering which lens to buy next. A few basic strategies can help you create a solid plan for adding new lenses to your system. A practical approach is to begin with two good lenses that cover the focal range from wide-angle to telephoto. These two lenses are the foundation for your system; you can shoot 80 to 95 percent of the scenes and subjects that you encounter, ranging from landscapes with the wide-angle zoom lens to portraits and wildlife with the telephoto zoom lens.

Because you’ll use these lenses often, they should be high-quality lenses that produce images with snappy contrast and excellent sharpness, and ideally they should be fast enough to allow you to shoot in low-light scenes. A fast lens is generally considered any lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or faster. With a fast lens, you have a better chance of handholding the camera in low light and getting sharp images. And if the lens has Image Stabilization, a lens feature detailed later in this chapter, you gain more stability.

My first two Canon lenses were the EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lens and the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens — two excellent lenses that cover the focal range of 24-200mm. Today these two lenses are still the ones I use most often. And because I shoot with a variety of Canon EOS cameras, I know that I can mount these lenses on the 60D, the T2i, the 5D Mark II, or the 1Ds Mark III and get beautiful images.

If you bought the 60D as a kit with the EF-S 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens, then you may already have learned that this lens provides a good focal range for everyday shooting. While this lens doesn’t have the USM designation for the ultrasonic motor drive, it is a bit noisy during focusing, but it’s a capable lens. Your next step might be to add either a longer telephoto lens to your gear bag, or a wider lens.

9.1 The EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens is one of the first lenses I bought, and it is still one of the lenses I use most often, as I did for this scene of two ducklings in a protected wetland area. Exposure: ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/80 second using a –2/3-stop of Exposure Compensation.

Understanding the focal-length multiplier

One of the most important lens considerations for the 60D is that it has an APS-C-size image sensor. APS-C is simply a designation that indicates that the image sensor is 1.6 times smaller than a traditional full 35mm frame. As a result, the lenses you use on the 60D have a smaller angle of view than they have when used on a full-frame camera. A lens’s angle of view is how much of the scene, side to side and top to bottom, that the lens encompasses in the image.

In short, the angle of view for Canon EF lenses that you use on the 60D is reduced by a factor of 1.6X at any given focal length. That means that a 100mm lens is equivalent to a 160mm lens when used on the 60D. Likewise, a 50mm normal lens is the equivalent to using an 80mm lens — a short telephoto lens on the 60D.

With the cropped sensor on the 60D, an EF lens’s focal length must be multiplied by 1.6 to determine its actual focal length on the 60D. However, in everyday conversation, photographers refer to EF lenses by their focal length on a noncropped (full 35mm frame) camera.

This focal-length multiplication factor works to your advantage with a telephoto lens because it effectively increases the lens’s focal length (although technically the focal length doesn’t change). And because telephoto lenses tend to be more expensive than other lenses, you can buy a shorter and less-expensive telephoto lens and get 1.6X more magnification at no extra cost.

The focal-length multiplication factor works to your disadvantage with a wide-angle lens; the sensor sees less of the scene because the focal length is magnified by 1.6. However, because wide-angle lenses tend to be less expensive than telephoto lenses, you can buy an ultrawide 14mm lens to get the equivalent of an angle of view of 22mm.

As you think about the focal-length multiplier effect on telephoto lenses, it seems reasonable to assume that the focal length multiplier would produce the same depth of field that a longer lens — the equivalent focal length — does. That isn’t the case, however. Although an 85mm lens on a full 35mm-frame camera is equivalent to a 136mm lens on the 60D, the depth of field on the 60D matches the 85mm lens, not a 136mm lens. This depth of field principle also holds true for enlargements. The depth of field in the print is shallower for the longer lens on a full-frame camera than it is for the 60D.

9.2 This image shows the approximate difference in image size between a full-frame 35mm camera and the 60D. The smaller image size represents the 60D’s image size.

Another important lens distinction for the 60D is that it’s compatible with both EF-mount and EF-S-mount lenses. The EF lens mount is compatible across all Canon EOS cameras regardless of image sensor size, and regardless of camera type, whether digital or film. However, the EF-S lens mount is specially designed to have a smaller image circle: the area covered by the image on the sensor plane. EF-S lenses can be used only on cameras with cropped frames, such as the 60D, T2i, and 7D among others, because the rear element on EF-S lenses protrudes back into the camera body.

This also factors into how you build your lens system. As you buy lenses, think about whether you want lenses that are compatible with both a full-frame camera and a cropped sensor camera, or not. As your photography career progresses, you’ll most likely buy a second, backup camera body or move from the 60D to another EOS camera body. If your next EOS camera body has a full 35mm frame sensor, you’ll want the lenses you’ve already acquired to be compatible with it, which means you’ll buy the EF-mount lenses. Of course, if you have EF-S lenses, you can sell them.

Types of Lenses

My photography students often ask me which lens they should buy next. It is virtually impossible to answer that question for someone else. If that’s your question too, then you have to consider the scenes and subjects you most enjoy shooting, your budget, and your goals for expanding your photography.

Then, it is important to have a solid understanding of the different types of lenses and their characteristics. Only then can you evaluate which types of lenses best fit your needs. The following sections provide a foundation for evaluating lenses by category and by characteristics.

Lenses are categorized in many ways, and one basic categorization is whether they zoom to different focal lengths or have fixed focal lengths (known as prime lenses). Within these two categories, lenses are further grouped by focal length (the amount of the scene included in the frame) in three main types: wide-angle, normal, and telephoto. And macro lenses are in a subcategory, serving double duty as macro and either normal or telephoto lenses.

One categorization of lenses is zoom and prime. The primary difference is that a zoom lens offers a range of focal lengths in a single lens. By contrast, a prime lens has a fixed, or single, focal length. Additional distinctions, discussed in the following sections, come into play as you evaluate whether a zoom or prime lens is best for your shooting needs.

Zoom lenses

Because zoom lenses provide variable focal lengths when you zoom the lens to bring the subject closer or farther away, they are very versatile in a variety of scenes. Consequently, if you use them, you can carry fewer lenses. For example, carrying a Canon EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens and a Canon EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II USM lens, equivalent to 88-320mm on the 60D, or a similar combination of lenses, gives you the focal range you need for most everyday shooting.

Zoom lenses, which are available in wide-angle and telephoto ranges, are able to maintain focus during zooming. To keep the lens size compact and to compensate for aberrations with fewer lens elements, most zoom lenses use a multi-group zoom with three or more movable lens groups.

Most midpriced and more expensive zoom lenses offer high-quality optics that produce sharp images with excellent contrast. Many Canon lenses offer full-time manual focusing by setting the button on the side of the lens to MF (Manual Focusing).

Some zoom lenses are slower than single focal-length, or prime, lenses, and getting a fast zoom lens — with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or faster — means paying a higher price. While using zoom lenses allows you to carry around fewer lenses, they tend to be heavier than their single focal-length counterparts.

Maximum aperture refers to the widest aperture of the lens. For the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens, the maximum, or widest aperture, is represented by the f/2.8 designation. Maximum aperture is also often referred to as the lens speed.

Some zoom lenses have a variable aperture, which means that the minimum aperture changes at different zoom settings on the lens. For example, an f/4.5 to f/5.6 variable-aperture lens means that at the widest focal length, the maximum aperture is f/4.5 and at the longer end of the focal range, the maximum aperture is f/5.6. In practical terms, this limits the versatility of the lens at the longest focal length for shooting in all but bright light or at a high ISO setting. And unless you use a tripod or your subject is stone-still, your ability to get a crisp picture in lower light at f/5.6 is questionable.

More expensive zoom lenses offer a fixed and fast, or relatively fast, maximum aperture; with maximum apertures of f/2.8, you get faster shutter speeds, enhancing your ability to get sharp images when handholding the camera. But the lens speed comes at a price: the faster the lens, the higher the price.

Prime lenses

Prime, or single focal-length, lenses, are worth careful evaluation, and they make a great addition to your lens system because they provide sharpness, speed, and excellent contrast. With a prime lens, the focal length is fixed, so you must move closer to or farther from your subject to change image composition. Canon’s venerable EF 50mm f/1.4 USM and EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro USM lenses are only two of a lineup of Canon prime lenses and the prices range from highly affordable to very expensive.

Unlike zoom lenses, prime lenses tend to be fast, with maximum apertures of f/2.8 or wider. The fast maximum apertures allow fast shutter speeds, which enable you to handhold the camera in lower light and still get a sharp image. Prime lenses are lighter and smaller than zoom lenses and they also tend to be sharper than some zoom lenses.

Though most prime lenses are lightweight, you need to carry more of them to cover the range of focal lengths. Prime lenses also limit the options for on-the-fly composition changes that are possible with zoom lenses.

I’ve long been a fan of prime lenses, and I use prime lenses as often as zoom lenses. My prime lenses include: the EF 50mm f/1.2L USM, EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM, 85mm F/1.2L II, and 180mm f/3.5L Macro USM.

The 50mm and 85mm lenses are especially useful in low-light venues, such as music concerts, where I can’t get fast-enough shutter speeds using slower zoom lenses. And the 85mm is an ideal portrait lens. On the 60D, the 50mm lens is an 80mm lens, and the 85mm lens is equivalent to 136mm. And that makes both lenses short telephoto lenses on the 60D, great for portraits and still-life subjects.

Working with Different Types of Lenses

Within the zoom and prime lens categories, lenses are grouped by their focal lengths. While some lenses fall into more than one group, the groupings are still useful when talking about lenses in general. Before going into specific lenses, it is helpful to understand a couple of concepts.

First, the lens’s angle of view is expressed as the angle of the range that’s being photographed, and it’s generally shown as the angle of the diagonal direction. The image sensor is rectangular, but the image captured by the lens is circular, and it’s called the image circle. The image that’s captured is taken from the center of the image circle.

For a 15mm fisheye lens, the angle of view is 180 degrees on a full-frame 35mm camera; for a 50mm lens, it’s 46 degrees; and for a 200mm lens, it’s 12 degrees. Simply stated, the shorter the focal length, the wider the scene coverage, and the longer the focal length, the narrower the coverage. These focal lengths change for EF-mount lenses used on a cropped-sensor camera such as the 60D. Therefore, when I refer to an EF lens’s focal length, the 1.6X multiplier must be applied to get the focal length equivalent for the 60D.

Second, the lens you choose affects the perspective of images. Perspective is the visual effect that determines how close or far away the background appears to be from the main subject. The shorter (wider) the lens, the more distant background elements appear to be, and the longer (more telephoto) the lens, the closer, or more compressed the elements appear.

Wide-angle lenses

Wide-angle lenses do what the name implies — they offer a wide view of a scene. Sometimes, the view is beyond human perspective, and depending on the focal length, this strong perspective creates a separation between the subject and the background or objects in a landscape scene. In addition, wide-angle lenses provide a greater sense of depth than normal or telephoto lenses provide.

Generally, lenses shorter than 50mm are commonly considered wide-angle on full-frame 35mm image sensors. On the 60D, a normal lens is closer to 30-35mm. Not including the 15mm fisheye lens, EF-mount wide-angle and ultrawide lenses range from 16-40mm.The EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM lens is designed specifically for cropped sensor cameras such as the 60D. The wide-angle lens category provides angles of view ranging from 114 to 63 degrees.

On the 60D, the 1.6X focal-length multiplier works to your disadvantage. Thus, if you often shoot landscapes, cityscapes, architecture, and interiors, you can consider buying a lens that offers a true wide-angle view. Good choices include the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM (approximately 26-56mm with the 1.6X multiplier), the EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM, or the EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens (approximately 27-64mm with the multiplier).

Wide-angle lenses are ideal for capturing scenes ranging from sweeping landscapes and architecture to large groups of people, and for taking pictures in places where space is cramped.

9.5 To get the wide-angle view on the 60D, you need a wide-angle lens such as the EF 16-35mm f/2.8L lens that I used here to photograph the Skykomish River near Sultan, Washington. The focal length was set to 24mm. Exposure: ISO 100, f/8, 1/320 second using –1 stop of Exposure Compensation.

Here are wide-angle lens characteristics to keep in mind:

Extensive depth of field. Particularly at small apertures from f/11 to f/32, the entire scene, front to back, appears in acceptably sharp focus. This characteristic gives you slightly more latitude for less-than-perfectly focused pictures.

The lens’s aperture range is one factor that affects the depth of field. The depth of field is also affected by the focal length and the camera-to-subject distance.

Fast apertures. Wide-angle lenses tend to be faster (meaning they have wider maximum apertures) than telephoto lenses. For example, the EF 24mm and 35mm lenses sport a very fast f/1.4 aperture while the more economical EF 35mm offers a fast f/2 maximum aperture. As a result, wide-angle lenses are good choices for shooting when the lighting conditions are not optimal.

Distortion. Wide-angle lenses can create perspective distortion, especially if you tilt the camera up or down when shooting. For example, if you tilt the camera up to photograph a group of skyscrapers, the lines of the buildings tend to converge and the buildings appear to fall backward (also called keystoning). You can minimize the distortion by keeping the camera level and parallel to the main subject. The wider the focal length, the more pronounced the distortion. For architectural subjects, a 28mm lens offers low distortion along with an ample focal range, and on a cropped sensor camera, that translates to an 18mm lens in the EF line.

Perspective. Wide-angle lenses have a foreshortening effect that makes objects close to the camera appear disproportionately large, while subjects farther away quickly decrease in size. The wider the lens, the stronger the foreshortening effect. You can use this characteristic to move the closest object farther forward in the image, or you can move back from the closest object to reduce the effect. Wide-angle lenses are popular for portraits, but if you use a wide-angle lens for close-up portraiture, keep in mind that the lens exaggerates the size of facial features closest to the lens, which is unflattering.

9.6 This image and Figure 9.7 show the difference in perspective between a wide-angle and telephoto lens. Here the wide-angle lens creates a sense of separation between the tractor and the building and field. Exposure: ISO 100, f/14, 1/60 sec. using –2/3-stop of Exposure Compensation.

Telephoto lenses

When you need to make a portrait or bring a distant scene closer, reach for a good telephoto lens. Telephoto lenses offer a narrow angle of view, as well as a beautifully compressed perspective that brings the subject and background closer together while at the same time isolating the subject and bringing it visually forward in the image. Short telephoto lenses such as the EF 85mm lenses (136mm on the 60D) are ideal for portraits while telephoto lenses, including the EF 300mm (480mm on the 60D) and 400mm (640mm on the 60D), are the ticket for wildlife and sports shooting. When photographing wildlife, these lenses also enable you to keep a safe distance.

9.7 Here the telephoto lens compresses the perspective, making the building seem much closer to the tractor than it is. Exposure: ISO 200, f/8, 1/320 second using –1 2/3-stops of Exposure Compensation.

On full 35mm-frame cameras, lenses with focal lengths longer than 50mm are considered telephoto lenses. For example, 80mm and 200mm lenses are telephoto lenses. On the 60D, however, the focal-length multiplier works to your advantage with telephoto lenses. Factoring in the 1.6X multiplier, a 50mm lens is equivalent to 80mm, or a short telephoto lens. And because telephoto lenses are more expensive overall than wide-angle lenses, you get more focal length for your money when you buy telephoto lenses for the 60D.

Telephoto lenses offer an inherently shallow depth of field that is heightened by shooting at wide apertures. When you shoot with a telephoto lens, keep these lens characteristics in mind:

Shallow depth of field. Telephoto lenses provide a limited range of sharp focus, and as the focal length increases, everything in front of and behind the focal area is thrown out of focus, even at narrow apertures. At wide apertures, you can reduce the background to a soft blur, and the longer the lens, the greater the blur. Because of the extremely shallow depth of field, it’s important to get tack-sharp focus. Many Canon lenses include full-time manual focusing that you can use to fine-tune the camera’s autofocus. Canon also offers an extensive lineup of Image Stabilized (IS) telephoto lenses.

Narrow coverage of a scene. Because the angle of view is narrow with a telephoto lens, much less of the scene is included in the image. You can use this characteristic to exclude distracting scene elements from the image.

Slow speed. Midpriced telephoto lenses tend to be slow; the widest aperture is often f/4.5 or f/5.6, which limits your ability to get sharp images without a tripod in all but the brightest light unless they also feature Image Stabilization (IS). And because of magnification, even the slightest movement is exaggerated.

Perspective. Telephoto lenses compress perspective, making objects in the scene appear close together. At 300mm, the compression effect goes beyond what humans naturally see. Extreme telephoto focal lengths put the subject and background next to each other, which creates visual tension in images.

Normal lenses

Normal lenses offer an angle of view and perspective that is similar to how you see the scene. Because of the normal perspective, if you are using wide apertures, you must do more in terms of balancing the subject distance, perspective, and the background blur. Using your shooting position skillfully with a narrow aperture, you can make a normal lens produce images with the same impact as a wide-angle lens would. Likewise, using a wide aperture to soften the background can produce images that mimic those shot using a medium telephoto lens.

On full 35mm-frame cameras, 50-55mm lenses are considered normal lenses. However, on the 60D, a normal lens is 28-35mm when you take into account the focal-length multiplier. When you shoot with a normal focal length, keep these lens characteristics in mind:

Natural angle of view. On the 60D, a 28mm or 35mm lens closely replicates the sense of distance and perspective of the human eye. This means the final image will look much as you remember seeing it when you made the picture.

Little distortion. Given the natural angle of view, the 28-35mm lens retains a normal sense of distance, especially when you balance the subject distance, perspective, and aperture.

Macro lenses

Macro lenses are designed to provide a closer lens-to-subject focusing distance than nonmacro lenses, which enable you to shoot extreme close-ups of all or part of a subject. Depending on the lens, the magnification ranges from half life-size (0.5X) to 5X magnification. Thus, objects as small as a penny or a postage stamp can fill the frame, and nature macro shots can reveal breathtaking details that are commonly overlooked. Using extension tubes can further reduce the closest focusing distance.

Some normal and telephoto lenses offer macro capability. Because these lenses can be used both at their normal focal length as well as for macro photography, they do double duty focusing from close-up to infinity. And with focal lengths that range from 60–180mm (96-288mm on the 60D), macro lenses make good portrait lenses as well.

You can buy a macro lens based on focal length or magnification. One of the lenses I use most often is the EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro USM lens (equivalent to 160mm on the 60D), and I use it for both macro work and for portraits.

9.9 The EF 100mm f/2.8L IS Macro USM lens captured this detail shot of strawberries. Exposure: ISO 200, f/22, 1/125 second.

Tilt-and-shift lenses

Tilt-and-shift lenses, referred to as TS-E lenses, enable you to alter the angle of the plane of focus between the lens and sensor plane to provide a broad depth of field even at wide apertures, and to correct or alter perspective at almost any angle. This enables you to correct perspective distortion and control focusing range.

Using tilt movements, you can bring an entire scene into focus, even at maximum apertures. By tilting the lens barrel, you can adjust the lens so that the plane of focus is uniform on the focal plane, thus changing the normally perpendicular relationship between the lens’s optical axis and the camera’s focal plane. Alternatively, reversing the tilt has the opposite effect: It greatly reduces the range of focusing.

Shift movements avoid the trapezoidal effect that results from using wide-angle lenses pointed up; for example, when you take a picture of a building. Keeping the camera so that the focal plane is parallel to the surface of a wall and then shifting the TS-E lens to raise the lens results in an image where the perpendicular lines of the structure are rendered perpendicular and the structure is rendered as a rectangle.

TS-E lenses have a range of plus/minus 90 degrees, making horizontal shift possible, which is useful when you are shooting a series of panoramic images. You can also use shifting to prevent reflections of the camera or yourself from appearing in images that include reflective surfaces, such as windows, car surfaces, and other similar surfaces.

All of Canon’s TS-E lenses are Manual Focus only. These lenses, depending on the focal length, are excellent for architectural, interior, merchandise, nature, and food photography.

Image Stabilized (IS) lenses

Most photographers can use a bit of added steadiness when shooting. And in the Canon line of cameras, that steadiness comes in the form of Image Stabilized (IS) lenses. Image Stabilization counteracts some or all of the motion that results in image blur from handholding the camera and lens.

While additional stability is nice and sometimes essential, it comes at a premium price. IS lenses are pricey compared to their nonstabilized counterparts because they give you from 1 to 4 f-stops of additional stability over non-Image Stabilized lenses — and that means that you may be able to leave the monopod or tripod at home.

With an IS lens, miniature sensors and a high-speed microcomputer built into the lens analyze vibrations and apply correction via a stabilizing lens group that shifts the image parallel to the focal plane to cancel camera shake. The lens detects camera motion via two gyro sensors — one for yaw and one for pitch. The sensors detect the angle and speed of shake. Then the lens shifts the IS lens group to suit the degree of shake to steady the light rays reaching the focal plane.

Stabilization is particularly important with long lenses, where the effect of shake increases as the focal length increases. As a result, the correction needed to cancel camera shake increases proportionately.

To see how the increased stability pays off, consider that the rule of thumb for handholding the camera and a non-IS lens is the reciprocal of the focal length, expressed as 1/[focal length]. For example, the slowest shutter speed at which you can handhold a 200mm lens and avoid motion blur is 1/200 second. If the handholding limit is pushed, then shake from handholding the camera bends light rays coming from the subject into the lens relative to the optical axis, which results in a blurry image.

Thus, if you’re shooting in low light at a music concert or a school play, the chances of getting sharp images at 200mm are low because the light is too low to allow a 1/200 second shutter speed, even at the maximum aperture of the lens. You can, of course, increase the ISO sensitivity setting and risk introducing digital noise into the images. But if you’re using an IS lens, the extra stops of stability help you keep the ISO low to get better image quality, and you still have a good chance of getting sharp images by handholding the camera and lens.

But what about when you want to pan or move the camera with the motion of a subject? Predictably, IS detects panning as camera shake and the stabilization then interferes with framing the subject. To correct this, Canon offers two modes on IS lenses. Mode 1 is designed for stationary subjects. Mode 2 shuts off Image Stabilization in the direction of movement when the lens detects large movements for a preset amount of time. So when you are panning horizontally, horizontal IS stops but vertical IS continues to correct any vertical shake during the panning movement.

Setting Lens Peripheral Illumination Correction

Depending on the lens that you use on the 60D, you may notice a bit of light falloff and darkening in the four corners of the frame. Light falloff describes the effect of less light reaching the corners of the frame as compared to the center of the frame. The darkening effect at the frame corners is known as vignetting. Vignetting is most likely to be evident in images when you shoot with wide-angle lenses, when you shoot at a lens’s maximum aperture or when an obstruction such as the lens barrel rim or a filter reduces light reaching the frame corners. On the 60D, you can correct vignetting for JPEG shooting.

If you shoot RAW images, you can correct vignetting in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional program during RAW image conversion.

When you turn on Peripheral Illumination Correction, the camera detects the lens, and it applies the appropriate correction level if the lens is already registered in the camera. If the lens isn’t already registered, then no correction is applied. The 60D can detect 25 lenses, but you can add information for other lenses by using the EOS Utility software supplied on the EOS Solutions Disk.

In the strictest sense, vignetting is considered to be unwanted effects in images. However, vignetting is also a creative effect that photographers sometimes intentionally add to an image during editing to guide the viewer’s eye inward toward the subject.

You can test your lenses for vignetting by photographing an evenly lit white subject such as a white paper background or wall at the lens’s maximum aperture as well as at a moderate aperture such as f/8, and then examine the images for dark corners. Then you can enable Peripheral Illumination Correction on the camera and repeat the images to see how much difference it makes.

If you use Peripheral Illumination Correction for JPEG images, the amount of correction applied is just shy of the maximum amount. However, if you shoot RAW images, you can apply the maximum correction in Digital Photo Professional. Also, the amount of correction for JPEG images decreases as the ISO sensitivity setting increases. If the lens has little vignetting, the difference when using Peripheral Illumination Correction may be difficult to detect. If the lens does not communicate distance information to the camera, then less correction is applied. Canon recommends that you turn off Peripheral Illumination Correction if you use a non-Canon lens.

Here’s how to turn on Peripheral Illumination Correction:

For all step-by-step instructions in this chapter, you can access the 60D camera menus by pressing the Menu button. Then press left or right on the Multi-controller or turn the Main dial to highlight the menu tab, and then press up or down on the Multi-controller or turn the Quick Control dial to highlight a menu option.

1. Set the camera to the JPEG image quality setting that you want.

2. On the Shooting 1 menu, highlight Peripheral illumin. correct., and then press the SET button. The Peripheral illumin. correct. screen appears with the attached lens listed, and whether or not correction data is available. If correction data is unavailable, then you can exit this screen and use the Canon EOS Utility program to register the lens.

3. Turn the Quick Control dial to select Enable if it is not already selected, and then press the SET button.

Doing More with Lens Accessories

Even with the lenses you currently own, you can increase the focal range on some lenses and decrease the focusing distance to add creative flexibility. Lens accessories are also relatively economical. Accessories can be as simple as a lens hood to avoid flare, a tripod mount to quickly change between vertical and horizontal positions without changing the optical axis or the geometrical center of the lens, or a drop-in or adapter-type gelatin filter holder. You can use extenders on some telephoto lenses to increase the focal range. And you can add one or more extension tubes to the lens for close focusing.

Lens extenders

For relatively little cost, you can increase the focal length of any lens by using an extender. An extender is a lens set in a small ring mounted between the camera body and a regular lens. Canon offers two extenders, a 1.4X III and 2X III, that are compatible only with L-series Canon lenses. Extenders can also be combined for even greater magnification.

However, one disadvantage to using extenders is that they reduce the light reaching the sensor. The EF 1.4X III extender decreases the light by 1 f-stop, and the EF 2X III extender decreases the light by 2 f-stops. But an obvious advantage is that in addition to being fairly lightweight, extenders can reduce the number of telephoto lenses you carry.

Thus, accounting for the extra reach of the extender, its light loss, and the focal length magnification, if you use the Canon EF 2X II or III extender with the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM lens, the lens becomes a 224-640mm f/5.6 lens.

In general, you can use extenders with fixed focal-length (prime) lenses 135mm and longer (except the 135mm f/2.8 Softfocus lens). The extender compatibility list is available at www.usa.canon.com/app/pdf/lens/EFLensChart.pdf.

Extension tubes and close-up lenses

Extension tubes are close-up accessories that provide magnification increases from approximately 0.3 to 0.7, and they can be used on many EF lenses, though there are exceptions. Extension tubes are placed between the camera body and lens and connect to the camera via eight electronic contact points. Extension tubes can be combined for greater magnification.

Canon offers two extension tubes: the E 12 II and the EF 25 II. Magnification differs by lens, but with the EF12 II and standard zoom lenses, it is approximately 0.3 to 0.5. With the EF25 II, magnification is 0.7. When combining tubes, you may need to focus manually. Extension tubes are compatible with specific lenses. Be sure to check the Canon Web site for lenses that are compatible with extension tubes.

Additionally, you can use screw-in close-up lenses. Canon offers four lenses that provide enhanced close-up photography based on the lens size, including the 52mm Close-up Lens 250D; the 77mm Close-up Lens 500D; the 52mm Close-up Lens 500D, and the 58mm Close-up Lens 500D. The 250D/500D series uses a double-element design for enhanced optical performance. The 260D/500D series features a double-element achromatic design to maximize optical performance. The 500 series has a single-element construction for economy.