>>4481760>what's the other kind of shooting you speak of?My 100mm IS macro is also a fantastic solo portrait and fast low-light/night prime. I can hand hold that thing down to 1/10th a second which is nuts allowing me to get good photos that are otherwise noisy as shit. The IS is not *as* important for portraits but I normally shoot them at 1/80th or 1/125th where it's still going to raise your keeper rate.
It cost an extra few hundred over the non IS version and I think it was well worth it. Putting it on my SLR is basically cheating.
Be advised that IS is borderline useless for macro approaching 1x and beyond. Effective stabilisation drops to like a stop down from four at 1:1. BUT, that is a whole stop of light in a genre that is starved for photons and every one counts.
The non IS, USM version is (iirc) the same optics (or at least practically the same for macro) so if that's all you plan on doing you can save yourself the extra money but I knew when I bought it, it was going to get a lot of use so why not put money where it's needed.
