Lawrie switched from a Canon SLR to Panasonic DSLR body over Christmas, and was looking to sell off his old Canon EF lenses. I picked up his Canon 75-300mm f4-5.6 USM Mark II for a good price.
It’s not the best lens ever made, and the optics aren’t much (any?) better than the kit lens, but it sure is long. I wanted something with a good reach, and this sucker has that in spades. At 300mm, the visible area is about 6? across (if I hold my arm out in front of me, with my hand up and fingers together, it’s about 3 fingers across).
There is noticeable chromatic aberration, especially in bright photos with high contrast. But, for a lens to grab a mountain from over 100km away, it ain’t half bad at all. It’s certainly no worse than the kit lens.
It’s not a fast lens, either, meaning that I’ll need to use a monopod or tripod in low light scenarios, even moreso at the 300mm end of the lens. But, that’s not bad since I have a handy dandy monopod.
The lens is far too long to be a regular walking-around lens, but will definitely come in handy for shooting far-away things, and has a decent macro at 1.5m, so I can take nice closeups of stuff without cramming the lens into whatever the subject is. It doesn’t come close to the 28-135mm USM IS lens, which has a more normal range and much nicer optics (and I’m still saving up for that one, too).
I’ve taken a bunch of test photos to see how it behaves at the extreme ends of the range.
Here are some samples of a scene from my back door. The first shot was taken at 300mm on the new lens, the next at 75mm (the wide end of the lens), and the last one taken at 18mm using the kit lens.
Lawrie switched from a Canon SLR to Panasonic DSLR body over Christmas, and was looking to sell off his old Canon EF lenses. I picked up his Canon 75-300mm f4-5.6 USM Mark II for a good price.
It’s not the best lens ever made, and the optics aren’t much (any?) better than the kit lens, but it sure is long. I wanted something with a good reach, and this sucker has that in spades. At 300mm, the visible area is about 6? across (if I hold my arm out in front of me, with my hand up and fingers together, it’s about 3 fingers across).
There is noticeable chromatic aberration, especially in bright photos with high contrast. But, for a lens to grab a mountain from over 100km away, it ain’t half bad at all. It’s certainly no worse than the kit lens.
It’s not a fast lens, either, meaning that I’ll need to use a monopod or tripod in low light scenarios, even moreso at the 300mm end of the lens. But, that’s not bad since I have a handy dandy monopod.
The lens is far too long to be a regular walking-around lens, but will definitely come in handy for shooting far-away things, and has a decent macro at 1.5m, so I can take nice closeups of stuff without cramming the lens into whatever the subject is. It doesn’t come close to the 28-135mm USM IS lens, which has a more normal range and much nicer optics (and I’m still saving up for that one, too).
I’ve taken a bunch of test photos to see how it behaves at the extreme ends of the range.
Here are some samples of a scene from my back door. The first shot was taken at 300mm on the new lens, the next at 75mm (the wide end of the lens), and the last one taken at 18mm using the kit lens.
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That’s definitely some food for thought. Although I think I went straight from Period 1 to Period 3. Still keeping Bigma…well…for obvious reasons!
Need some primes yet though. I’ll go Canon but I highly doubt they’ll be Ls….unless I really can hold off…
Thanks for the post you rotten bastard, now my monetary requirements for my next lens purchased nearly tripled! LOL 😉
Honestly though. Being able to be apart of this online community and others, hearing their stories and somewhat following your “lens path” via threads, I was seriously set on L glass. I wasn’t going to accept anything else. To summarize your post; PERFORMANCE, RELIABILITY, BUILD QUALITY, IMAGE QUALITY – These are the reasons for owning the L lenses. These are all important to me. Its much like a tool. You by the best tool and it lasts you, sometimes a life time. If you buy the cheap tool, you’ll end up wasting more money or buying enough cheap ones to pay for two or three of the best ones.
Personally, I don’t have any L-Glass.
My experience is that the Canon 18-55 will focus hunt and then lock on to nothing while the subject is clearly out of focus.
The Canon 50mm f1.8 is soft pretty much all the time.
My Tamron 28-75 is pretty sharp although focus can be hit or miss at times.
My Tamron 17-35 is sharp and locks on every time.
My Tamron 70-300 locks on most of the time and is pretty sharp too
For the moment I don’t envisage buying new or more lenses since I’m pretty happy with what I have and can work within limitations imposed by my equipment.