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Pergear 100mm F2.8 2x Macro Review | Budget Full Frame Macro
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Jan 13, 2025
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of budget Pergear 100mm F2.8 2X Macro lens - a full frame 2:1 Macro lens for just $270 USD. | Read the Text Review: https://tinyurl.com/PerGear100Mda | Visit the Image Gallery | Purchase the Pergear 100mm 2x Macro @ Pergear https://bit.ly/BUYpergear100M | Amazon https://amzn.to/4ikbY3R | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3CWFXi5 | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/3OYdBXL | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3B7bDAV Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.link/nt4zdz1goa7ql Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the per-gear 100-millimeter
0:14
F-2.8, two-times macro. Now, I recognize that for many photographers, macro is more of a niche part of what
0:22
you do. Now, there are some of you who your primary type of photography is macro photography
0:27
and for someone like yourself, I suspect that you'll probably going to invest some serious money in a macro lens
0:34
For those that dabble, however, they may not want to spend big bucks on a macro lens
0:39
But what if you could get a decent, full-frame macro lens with two-time magnification
0:45
for either your Sony, Canon, Nikon, or Elmount camera, or even Fuji, for just $270 U.S. dollars
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Not only that, but beyond the typical one-to-one level of magnification, the per gear 100 millimeter 2 times macro doubles the fun with two times macro capabilities
1:04
So does that make it worth buying? Well, that's what we're here to explore
1:08
We'll dive into that in today's review. So we'll start by taking the look at the build and handling
1:13
As you can probably see here, this lens has a very long, slender profile
1:17
It actually reminded me a lot of the Lawa 100mm F2.8, 2 times macro
1:22
that I reviewed several years ago, very, very kind of similar profile
1:26
and even some of the characteristics of the focus group are similar, and I'll get to that in just a moment
1:31
So this lens is quite narrow. It's only 71 millimeters or 2.79 inches in diameter
1:37
but it is 157.8 millimeters or 6.2 inches long. It weighs in fairly heavy at 814 grams or 28.7 ounces
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Now, the weight comes because this is all metal and glass, and it's a fairly substantial lens, at least in terms of the overall length
1:55
Up front, we do have a common 67-millimeter front filter thread, so all is well there
2:02
It's at the front of the lens that, again, I'm reminded a lot of the design of the Lawa 100mm
2:07
Now, difference being that Lawa in that initial design, they actually had a filter completing the optical design
2:15
The filter actually served as the front element and the optical design
2:20
In this case, it's a more traditional look where you've got a glass element here at the front
2:25
And then the focusing group of elements moves back and forth as you focus to where at the closest point
2:31
it'll basically bump right up against that front glass. And that's actually at that closest point there that is actually at the macro distance
2:40
And as you focus back, you're towards infinity, those focusing groups will actually move backwards
2:48
Now, I will note that I find the focus a little on the heavy side, though I will also note that it feels like it's loosening
2:55
up a little bit. I think it could be just a little bit less heavy as far as the damping
3:00
However, the nice thing here is it will hold its position quite well. Now, when it comes to the
3:05
actual focus rotation, for the macro range, I have no concerns. The overall throw here is about
3:12
130 degrees by my estimation, as you can see here. But my bigger concern is trying to focus from
3:18
one meter to infinity. And you'll see here that there's only about 15 degrees of rotation
3:24
between those two points, which means that there's a lot of potential focus possibilities
3:28
and very little space to get those accurately. So what I found is it was actually hard to focus outside of the macro range
3:36
because all it took was the tiniest little bit of correction, and it was the difference between being slightly in focus or completely out of focus
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and somewhere in between there is that little tiny point where you have to be very sensitive and nail the correct focus
3:50
So this is a lens I think that works best as an actual macro lens
3:54
and not as a multi-purpose lens. Now, we also have a aperture ring here
4:00
and the aperture ring itself is declicked, and again, the weight's fairly heavy on that
4:05
but it moves smoothly enough, and you can actually accomplish an aperture rack
4:09
as you can see here, without too much difficult there. The actual aperture iris has 13-rounded blade
4:17
so it does quite a nice job of keeping a circular shape, even when you're stopping down
4:21
and that will help you to have, you know, round specular highlights across the frame
4:26
There is no included hood, and as we'll see in our image quality section, it could probably
4:30
use one. It is somewhat fair, uh, flare-prone. The actual barrel itself is an anodized kind of satin finish on there, all metal
4:40
Feels nice. Feels like a pretty nicely made lens. However, there are no electronics here, so you need to be aware of the limitations that come
4:48
with that. There's going to be no exif data that is communicated to the camera, no automatic
4:52
communication if you have in-body image stabilization in your camera. All of that's going to have to
4:57
be manually accomplished. I actually reviewed on Nikon, which is kind of my preferred platform for
5:03
these type of lenses because at the least you can actually program in in the camera. You can put in
5:08
the designation of the lens itself. And so give it its name. Tell the camera what its maximum
5:13
map is. And of course, it's focal length. And so that way it knows when you're selecting that
5:18
particular lens. It knows what name to give it for the XF data. It knows what the maximum
5:24
aperture is and what the appropriate focal length is for the embody image stabilization. So that's
5:30
nice However there are other limitations So it always going to be if you set the maximum aperture even in the Nikon body you say the maximum aperture is F2 Well the camera has no way of knowing if you moved anywhere past F2
5:42
So it's always going to be F2.8 in the XF data. And of course, with other camera systems that don't have that capability, you're going to get very little information that's communicated
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So, you know, there are limitations there. I do find there can be a little bit of quirks when it comes to metering as well
5:58
And the other thing that's going to happen is if you have a camera that has some kind of, of focus confirmation, like a focus guide. That's not going to work because there's no electronics
6:07
to accomplish that. However, you will still get things like focus overlays, you know, like if you're
6:14
wanting to have a certain color overlay to show you when things are in focus. Things like that
6:18
are still going to work because they are camera specific. Now, before we move away from the build
6:23
quality, let's discuss for a moment that minimum focus distance here is 30 centimeters. And that's to get
6:29
to the two to one macro range. Now, Even though this is a very long lens, that's a long enough working distance that I found that there's about 12 centimeters of working distance beyond the lens
6:39
So it's actually a fairly decent amount of working distance. And of course, if you are just shooting at one-to-one magnification level, you actually have quite a nice working distance there
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And so all of that is good. At one-to-one, it says that the working distance is a total of 35 centimeters
6:58
And so you're adding another five centimeters to work with, which is, getting useful enough
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So let's move on and talk about the optics here. Optical design is 14 elements in nine groups
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Now, if we take a look at the MTF chart here, you can see that it gives you three different breakdowns of the MTF results
7:17
And that is at different focus distances, more of a standard difference at one to one and
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then at two to one. Interestingly here, this lens is most consistently good at two to one
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Now, I don't always see that. Sometimes the closer to focus that you get the worst
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that the lens performs. Obviously, this lens is designed to where it is optimized for that range
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And as we saw earlier with the focus issue, this is a lens that's really set up to prefer
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the macro range. And I think that that's true of the optical performance as well. Now, there are
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a couple of factors in my experience using this lens that are going to impact the image quality
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We've already briefly discussed the focus distance, and that is going to play a part. The other
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thing that's really going to play a part is the sources of light in your particular scene
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Obviously with macro you have to introduce a fair amount of lighting. Otherwise, it's very hard to get decent results
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And so this is a lens that is very sensitive to light, be it typical flare or light leaks
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They really do impact image quality. So, for example, if I had a backlight or if I didn't have a backlight on the scene
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you can see from this that it looks radically different. On the left side, much more contrast
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On the right side with a backlit, you can see that contrast really lifts
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It's a very different looking kind of image. And even if the light source is out of the frame
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you can see from these shots. You can get a variety of different light leak kind of looks
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where there is light that kind of intrudes in there and the coatings here are not sufficient to prevent that
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Now, you could argue that they are artistic and in some cases I think that they are
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But the reality is that it is going to impact image quality. So you're going to have to use the lens accordingly
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Now, moving on to other elements, I did find that distortion was quite low
9:00
I saw a minus three of correction of pincushion distortion just a little bit
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Vignette is also fairly low at only a plus 44 to correct
9:10
So no big issue on either of those things. I also found that I didn't see a lot of fringing in terms of the longitudinal style
9:18
that's before and after the plane to focus. So for example, on my test chart, you can see just a minor amount of blue-green fringing
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after the plane to focus. I found that in shooting text that often exposes longitudinal chromatic aberration
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I saw very little there, and even on the variety of shiny surfaces
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that I did macro work on, I saw a minimal amount of fringing there
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so that's great when it comes to macro work. I did find a little bit of lateral style chromatic aberration
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near the edges of the frame. That's kind of common in my experience on cheaper lenses
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The optical glass isn't quite as good, but in this case, it's not pronounced
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chances are that you're probably not going to see it that much in real-world results
10:01
Now, when I shot my test chart, it's clearly not a distance that this lens is optimized for
10:08
I found that my chart test results were just okay in that the center at F2.8, center looks fine
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mid-range looks good, corners look okay. In no case did I find that the contrast is really off the charts or the acuity at that distance
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the ability to render really fine details. I didn't find that to be exceptionally good
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because typically macro lens is really excel in that regard. What I did find as I stopped the lens down
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is that I could really see the difference I could see from the MTF chart
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that it suggested that the lens is actually better off center in the mid, kind of the rule of thirds, mid-frame zone
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than what it actually is in the center of the frame. And I in fact did find that to be the case
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I was never really blown away by the center results, but as you can see in this F4 and F5 point
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comparison from the mid frame it looked quite good and if we jump up into the upper
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left corner of the chart you can see just how reduced to that image quality is
11:04
by comparison going out into the real world I found kind of a similar result and the results were good but not exceptionally good contrast was okay but not exceptionally good and so that just something to be aware of in the overall optical performance Though as we going to see I think it actually performs better in the actual macro range
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I also found that as per usual, you'll get fairly decent results up to about F11
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At F11, diffraction is going to start to become a factor. Defraction is almost always the case with most cameras that tend to be higher resolution than cameras used to be
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and so diffraction shows it more often. You're really going to see it by F-16 and F-22, F-22 being minimum aperture
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And is often the case with lenses without any kind of electronics, I found that metering wasn't as good after F-11 either
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As you close off the light coming to the sensor, it has a harder job, I think, adjusting and metering for that
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So just be aware of that. Now, I think that at the macro distances
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I would say that results are better. Not that this is the sharpest macro lens that I've used
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I've used a lot of better macro lenses, but it is good enough that you can really get good images
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And I got a lot of images that I really liked. I think that look great, particularly at kind of a global level
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and look pretty good at a one-to-one pixel level. I also found that the bouquet quality was quite good
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no real issues with that. I found that, obviously, at macro distances
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you're going to be able to really, really strongly blur out back. And even if we step back a little bit further, not quite macro distance, you can see that still
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you're able to really, really strongly blur out a background. You know, 100 millimeters is a reasonably long focal length
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F2.8 is a moderately large aperture. So as a byproduct, you can really blur out backgrounds
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Now, if you move a little bit further out, the bouquet is a little less compelling, just gets a little busier
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But for the most part, I thought that it looked really quite good. And at macro distances, it looks just fine
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So my conclusion is this. I think that this is a good option if macro is kind of an occasional pursuit for you
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If you're hardcore into macro, you're probably going to want to invest in a higher-end lens
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This lens doesn't have anything in terms of bells and whistles. However, it is a full-frame macro lens that gives you not one-to-one but two-to-one level of magnification
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all for 280 U.S. bucks. And that, I think, really is what makes it the most compelling
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because if you don't want to spend a lot of money on a lens, it is primarily perfect
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is something that you don't do all the time, then this makes a lot of sense
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Makes more sense in spending $1,000 on a macro lens. So I think that there certainly will be a market for the per gear 100mm F2.8
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two times macro lens. Now, if you want more information, you can check out my full text review
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That's linked in the description down below. You can take a look at more photos in an image gallery there
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There's some buying links if you'd like to purchase one for yourself. And now, if you want a deeper dive into the optical performance, stay tuned and we'll jump into that together
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All right, we'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion here. You can see a very mild amount of a pin cushion distortion, that center that's kind of squeezed a little bit
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I used a minus three to correct here on the right. You can see it's a good linear correction, no issues even with a manual correction
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which is important in this case because you may or may not ever end up with any kind of correction profile for a lens like this
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Likewise with the vignette, you can see it's largely concentrated in the corners
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I used a plus 44 to correct for it. And again, nothing major there
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I have no big concerns. Now, as far as fringing goes, you can see there is, it's not completely free of fringing
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You can see after the plane of focus. In particular, you'll see a little bit of blue-green fringing there
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Nothing significant, however. Text is actually really, really good. And you can see here that even at a very high magnification level, there's a tiny bit of that green fringing out of the plan of focus
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But again, if we pop back out, you don't even see it at a normal level of magnification
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Likewise, with all of the shiny surfaces that you're going to encounter here when doing macro work
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you can see there's very little fringing either in defocused areas or on these kind of transition areas
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where light is reflecting off there. So I don't see any kind of concerns really with that kind of fringing
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You will see a little bit of lateral style fringing. You know, a lot of times to me this is a little bit of a hallmark of optical glass being not fantastic
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And in a cheaper lens like this, it's pretty common. but again, it's very, very mild
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This is at, like, as you can see, a very high level of magnification, more than 200%
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So you're not going to have any kind of real-world issue with that. Now, as far as the chart test
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this is done on an icon Z8, so 45 megapixels of resolution
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This is shown at 200% magnification. So you can see it's, you know, not a bad performance
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in the center of the frame. Neither is it an off-the-chart's good performance. I don't see any kind of like noir pattern here
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that shows that contrast and resolution is really high. You can see that you can make out the lettering, but it's not like it's really, really crisply delineated
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Here in the mid frame where things tend to be the strongest, you can see a little bit of that moire pattern here, which shows that it's actually a little bit stronger here than what it was, even in the center
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In other places, here, for example, you can see it's a little sharper here than here, but not a really noticeable difference
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As we move off into the corners, the corners are going to be impacted a bit by Vignette, as you can see
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the resolution is not terrible. I mean there's resolution right off to the edge. It's not like it's popping off the page pen sharp either
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Stopping down to F4 and you can see here that the metering again, it's as this tends to happen, it's not really a precise
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The math doesn add up if we closed down a full stop From here we should be at a longer shutter speed than this but such is life
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And so looking in the center of the frame, we can see that there is a little bit more contrast
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now in the center of the frame. You can see that particularly the dark levels are a little bit darker
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Looking at this text, it does definitely have better contrast, and so it's a little crisper looking
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But again, your best zone is going to be, even if you look here compared to here, how much
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darker. The black level is there. You can see as we pull over here towards the queen that
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you can see again, even like the dots of ink are much darker there, more detail in the hair
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and that more pattern is just a little bit more pronounced there. As far as the corner performance
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the corner performance, I find to be largely unchanged. It's not really better. If we take a
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look at centering here, I'm going to say that the left side doesn't look quite as good to me as what
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right side did and so you can see here and we can take a look at this here where you can
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barely make out the forever USA if we look at the other side you can see that it's definitely much
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crisper looking and so the right side seems to be a little bit stronger than the left so here at
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f5.6 and then at f8 we can see in the center of the frame that the two results look largely similar
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but i think f5.6 is just a little bit better best again results are going to come in that
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mid frame here looks really good on the right side how about the left side left side is you can tell
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just not quite as good so again not perfect centering another hallmark of a cheaper lens now how about at a
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macro distance this would be about f5.6 looking at the depth of field here and so we can see that you know
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there's usable amounts of sharpness and contrast there it's not at the upper echelon of macro performance
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that I have seen before. The texture just aren't quite as crisply delineated
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Have a little bit of a very, very slightly jittery quality. But overall, it looks pretty good
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And I think the defocus is fairly good from the lens. Now, for evaluating diffraction
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I'm going to show you kind of the sharpest area of the frame, typically. So here at F11, it looks really, really great
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You can see that by F-22, it looks much softer due to diffraction. You can also see that the metering as you close the lens down
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it's just not as precise. So we have a fair bit of under-exposed. there. Now my minimum focus test shown here is from that same test chart and it is from the ship
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that's in the center of the frame to see you of the chart I should say so you know what you're looking at
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So this shows kind of the overall level of magnification and you can see once again that this lens is
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stronger on the right side than what it is on the left side. Plaintiff focus actually looked relatively
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flat and in the center of the frame you can see that it's good but not exceptionally good here at a
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two to one the level and certainly lots of detail that's there but it's i've certainly seen sharper
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macro lenses but again for the cost and this being a full frame two times macro not bad at all now as
19:51
noted earlier i think that the bouquet quality is really quite good and even if you're not at a true
19:55
macro level as in this shot you can see you're able to just really completely blur out the background
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so at macro distances nothing to worry about so here at more of a a medium close distance you can see
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that performance is really fairly good. I mean, here I think that the contrast and the detail on the subject looks good
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And looking at the background here in general, you know, the blur looks not bad
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I mean, it's not perfectly creamy, but neither is there are a lot of hard edges
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Here, when it comes to specular highlights, you can see that they are fairly round
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You know, getting a little bit of a cat eye deformation towards the edge of the frame
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but the specular highlights don't look bad. and, you know, there's a little bit of business in them, but not bad at all. So I think that that's going to be fine. At macro distances, we can see, once again, you know, a good amount of detail on that shot. I think I like it fine. And then looking at the defocus screws on either side, again, the quality of the bouquet looks good. And here, I think that the kind of the specular highlights, they're nice and round in shape. And so that's good. You can tell those, that high blade count that as you've stopped it down, you can see it's doing a good. You can see it's doing a good
21:04
good job of keeping things circular there. Here you can see just kind of the overall glow quality
21:11
I think that's used to good effect in this shot. And again, not a lot of longitudinal type
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chromatic aberration there. So the shot holds up really well, I think. However, flare is the final
21:23
thing we'll evaluate. And it is, I mean, it's just not a strength for the lens. You can see in this
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shot, this image is just flooded with light. So it's lost almost all contrast. You've got this
21:33
prismatic haze down here in the corners. In shots like this, you can see the light leak that's coming in
21:39
The light source is out of frame, but you can see really directionally. Here you can see very directionally where the light is coming in and the coatings are not
21:47
handling it well. However, I mean, use that for your advantage. And so in this shot right here, you know, this is a kind of a glow effect that you
21:55
might typically add. So it almost gives you like a spotlight effect
21:59
I think this shot is very cool looking. and it's fairly easy to achieve with a lens like this
22:03
So even use its weaknesses as a strength. And so, as always, I hope that the deep dive
22:08
into the optical performance of this per gear 100 millimeter macro have helped you to decide whether or not
22:13
it's a lens that will work for you. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in
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