The gear junkie in me has gone and done it again – a new (well, refurbished) lens arrived on the doorstop on Monday. Unfortunately, due to the demands of the day job, I wasn’t able to really play with it until this weekend. Introducing to my lineup, the Canon 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS lens. And here’s the scoop:
If you’ve been following my bird photography posts, then you’re aware of my concerns regarding the Sigma 70-200mm + 2x Teleconverter combination. As a short recap; 200mm isn’t long enough, and with the teleconverter mounted focus speed & image quality fall off noticeably. There’s also the ever-present problem of holding a 400mm lens steady at the lower shutter speeds dictated by the evening light and necessary f-stop.
The 70-300mm IS is my solution to all this. It’s not quite as long as I might have liked, but to go above 300mm requires a significant investment no matter how you do it, unless you’re willing to drop the IS. That’s a trade off I’m not willing to make; IS is essential to the kind of shooting I do with this lens. And I gotta’ say, the IS on this baby kicks ass! Out of the box and playing around in my apartment that first night, I was getting sharp images at 300mm, f/5.6, ISO 400, and 1/10 sec. And that’s at the base aperture. Stop down to f/8 or f/11, the settings for bird photography, and it only gets better. (The photo below is completely untouched, except for shrinking it down for the web.)
This is not an “L-series” lens, but then I’m no raving fan of the L-series in general. It is a sharp lens, it has the reach and the IS, and it clocks in at about $550 (less for me, since mine was refurbished). There is nothing out there that can touch that. This really is a hidden gem in the Canon lens line-up.
Negatives? Yeah, it has a couple. For starters, it is a plastic lens, and feels a little less solid than I might like. And when you zoom/focus, the front element telescopes to a rather ridiculous length. Oh, and speaking of focus, the front element rotates with it (which doesn’t matter if you use Cokin filters). If you really want to nit-pick, you could complain that the IS is quite a bit louder than, say, the Canon 28-135mm. But frankly, these are petty issues compared to the overall performance.
I have yet to get to my birding spot with this lens, but I did have it out both last night and this morning, shooting sunset & sunrise. It spend a lot of time on the camera, and it has yet to disappoint me – in fact, I’m even a little surprised at how much I like it. Check out the reviews at FredMiranda and B&H and you’ll read a lot of good things – and it really is that good.
The stinkin’ teleconverter is already on eBay, and about to be gone from my life!
Here are some samples – these are processed the same way I process all my photos. Nothing fancy, and just a touch of USM after shrinking it down for the web.
After further reflection: Canon got it right with the 70-300 IS. It’s the best of the “budget” telephotos that you can buy – certainly better than the non-IS version, or any of the third-party models. Sharpness is good, AF is nicely quick (although despite being USM, it’s not a full-time USM lens), and the IS helps get the shot when the light is low. Perhaps best of all, it’s not a huge honking lens – really not much bigger than the 28-135, and about the same weight.
300mm is really the shortest you can have for dedicated wildlife shooting, and most folks will tell you that 400mm is better, and 500mm better yet. Unfortunately, getting above 300mm starts to require some real money. If you’re looking for a general purpose telephoto, or just getting started shooting wildlife, this is a great way to test the waters.
In my quest for more reach, I sold my 70-300mm to finance a 120-400mm. I probably shouldn’t have. Don’t get me wrong, having 400mm gave me the extra reach I often needed. But the resulting lens is a beast. There are plenty of sunny, hot afternoons when it would be nice to carry around the small 70-300mm instead of a 6 lb super-telephoto!
