Using a Prime Lens for Macro Photography

You probably thought that prime lenses in the range of 40-50 mm are only good for portraits and landscapes! I have, in my kitty of lenses a prime lens that proves this is not entirely true! The Canon EF 40 mm f-2.8 STM Pancake Prime lens proves to be as good in Macro photography as it is in Landscape or even portrait photography. It was on a whim that I thought of trying it on some bees that were flying around in my garden and I came out like, 'This can't be true!' The photographs came out crisp, sharp and the depth of field was even better than that of my 55-250 mm EFS lens!

To top it all, I didn't shoot in RAW and then convert them into JPEGs, rather I shot in JPEGs and only tweaked the sharpness and cropped the photographs using the Canon Proprietary DPP software. I was not sure if it would be worthwhile shooting in RAW as it was only on a whim that I wanted to try the 40mm Primes lens.

It is clear that one can definitely bend rules of photography with the Canon 40mm f-2.8 STM lens, though the only drawback would be getting too close to the bees. For those who are squeamish about Bees, this might be an issue, however, trust me, they won't even sting you as long as you don't seem to be threatening them! A few of the bees brushed across me, some even sort of, you know, landed on my arms, but then I kept still and continued photographing them.

Surely you will agree that this little lens does pack quite a punch in it when it comes to Macro-photography. Its compact form factor also ensures that you don't have too long of a barrel sticking out of the camera body. Its lightness compactness and robustness will ensure that the Canon 40 mm STM Pancake lens will serve you long and well! I had literally put it away for quite some time not realising that it was quite a match for other lenses when it came to Macro-photography.

I wouldn't mince words when I state that I simply admire the Canon Pancake 40 mm STM lens for the very fact that it is a spunky little champ that does quite well as a macro, portrait and probably landscape lens. I have yet to try this lens for street photography, however, with lockdown going on, I guess that would be for another time.

You might be wondering about the settings I used for the bees, well, to be honest, I used the built-in flash as a fill-in flash, a shutter speed of 1/200, and ISO settings of 100 and an f-stop setting ranging from 7.1 to 8 and 9.