IRIX 150mm f/2.8 Macro Dragonfly review
- Lauri Lohi
- Aug 10, 2023
- 3 min read
Irix approached me and asked if I would be willing to test their 150mm f/2.8 Macro lens if they send it to me and I accepted the offer. Here is my short review and quick summary of the lens based on my testings and observations.
Irix 150mm f/2.6 Macro lens is a third-party lens designed primarly for macro photography with full frame cameras, but it is compatible with crop sencors as well. It is manual focused and has no image stabilization. It is true macro lens giving 1:1 magnification ratio(on full frame cameras). It is an electric lens and you can fully control exposure and aperture adjustments from camera. It records also all the exif data to the image file.
The lens itself comes with beautiful black hard casing. Body is made of reinforced metal and composite elements. Appearance and design is simple and all the markings on the lens are engraved to surface and filled with UV reactive paint. It has a pleasant and beautiful finish. Lens built quality feels firm and solid. It is fully weather sealed so you can happily take it out in the field in any conditions with no worries. Lens is quite heavy, around 1000g with lens caps, lens hood and tripod mount attached. But usually lenses with high quality built and optics tends to be heavy. Lens is available with the EF-mount for Canon, F-mount for Nikon and K-mount for Pentax. I got the EF version as I’m Canon user.
On my Canon EOS R I'm using RF-EF mount adapter with the lens and it works perfectly with that combo and all the electronics etc. works as they should.
Some sample images taken with Irix 150mm f/2.8 Macro lens and edited in Adobe Lightroom:
At first I was little sceptic about Irix lens because of it's manual focus only function and lack of image stabilization as I'm used to shoot my macro photos with Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM which has autofocus and image stabilization. But after a while using Irix lens it was really not hard to get used to it and get sharp photos with little effort, special thanks to Canon EOS R manual focus guide which helps to visualize the focus area and get the focus just where I want it to be. But using this lens you need definately more patience and different approach to photography due to it’s manual functions. This lens is not for quick actions, so for example if you are photographing sports, insects or other relatively fast moving objects it might be very hard to nail the focus on time as you have to scroll the focus ring constantly around. I would recommend this lens more for flowers, plants, product and other kind of still life and detail photography, where the objects are not moving as much.
Of course this lens is not only limited for macro photography. You can happily use it for portraits and it is perfect pick for nature and landscape details as well. 150mm focal length with widest aperture of f/2.8 gives you large scale of possibilities to use your imagination in many ways.
I was surprised about the image quality and sharpness of this lens. It renders colors very naturally and smoothly. It produces beautiful and pleasantly smooth out of focus area(bokeh), which I was really happy with. I have not noticed chromatic aberrations at all even when shooting subjects with hard contrast edges directly on backlight. Irix has done great job with the lens design to get rid of chromatic aberrations and disortions. Lens disortions is minimal, Irix itself claims that it only has about 0.1% disortion which is remarkable.
What I like about the lens:
150mm focal length, gives great reach and I'm able to shoot subjects from further distance
built quality, firm and solid body with weather sealing
large focus ring with focus lock option, focus ring turns pretty smoothly
optical quality
perfect communication between lens and camera
2.8 widest aperture, helps separate the subject from backgound with giving beautiful bokeh and out of focus area
comes with the tripod mount (Arca swiss)
great value for money
minimal if at all chromatic aberration and minimal lens disortions
sharpness
full electronic lens so it is possible to control aperture and shutter speed from the camera
What I don’t like about the lens:
no image stabilization so this lens is not ideal for very low light shooting
manual focus only
it is very heavy
focus lock ring is quite sticky at least on my copy of the lens (may smoothen over time)
Irix 150mm f/2.8 Macro Dragonfly on Irix website: https://irixlens.com/photo-lenses/150mm/
Irix website: https://irixlens.com/
Irix social media:
Equipment used on this review:
Canon EOS R wit Canon RF-EF mount adapter
IRIX 150mm f/2.8 Macro Dragonfly lens
Fotopro tripod
Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro for Irix lens product images
iPhone 11 for behind the scenes and unboxing images
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