Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Overall very pleased with the lens. Only used a couple of times so far but can't foresee any problems.
A bit disappointed there was no lens hood included for a lens of this price though!!

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I use this lens for wildlife, mostly at the 300mm end. Image quality is excellent - it focuses accurately and produces sharp images with decent bokeh. I can't compare it to more expensive lenses as I have no experience of them, but at f8.0 I can't really see how the images could be any sharper, or at least not so as most people would notice.

AF can be tricky in low light and the manual focusing ring is a little too sensitive for my liking. The IS system is noisy and far too slow to help with fast-moving subjects like birds, so is turned off most of the time. Far easier to bump up the ISO and use a faster shutter speed.

If you can live with the 300mm maximum, which is a little limiting for small wild birds, then it's a no-brainer.

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I use this lens for motorsport and I'm well impressed with what I have achieved so far, very few shots have gone in the bin. It has a good range and a very rapid auto focus.

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Overall a great lens. If you can't afford lenses like the 'L' range, this is definitely the one to go for. Very strong, robust and durable. IS is great, useful. Can get great quality photos. Just sometimes at full zoom length to a further subject, quality and sharpness isn't as great. Also it's quite noisy when and after focusing..!

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

It's just a great lens

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

If you don't have the budget to reach L lenses this is a good alternative, well made as you would expect from Canon. The IS is so useful (especially if you have an APS-C format camera). The focus is fine. Drawbacks...its only f5.6 at the long end, a pain when carrying your camera around your neck as lens extends on its own facing downwards.

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

Having bought an 18-200 with my 1st DSLR, I was looking for something to extend a bit further for wildlife shots. Unfortunately this doesn't do it at 300 for me in terms of sharpness, even if subject matter is static. It would be OK at a shorter focal lenth.

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

before buying this lens i was tossing up if i shoud just spend the extra cash and get the 70-200 Lseries but i've got to say i'm really pleased with this purchase. the IS means that even at full zoom (100mm more than the other lens) i can still get really sharp images which is great for me because i'm always going to be shooting hand-held. i took this on a canal boat trip and even with the rocking of the boat and the engine vibration under my feet i still got some really good shots. apparently the AF is meant to be a bit slower but i cant testify to that at all. a great bit of extra length to have in the bag

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

This lens replaces the original 75-300 IS lens and delivers a slightly better package than its predecessor, although not quite the fanfair Canon would have us believe.

Build quality is decent but for a lens costing this amount I expected better. The plastic finish is of a much higher quality than Canon's budget lenses, however I expected a full-metal finish. Luckily the lens mount is metal (as it should be!) and the glass optics contain one UD element, commonly found in the more expensive L range. Despite the somewhat disappointing finish, the lens feels solid enough and the zoom ring feels substantial.

Another disappointment is the non-ring USM, which again one would expect in a lens of this price. The micro-USM performs well enough but can be sluggish at times, especially when tracking fast-moving objects. Also, the autofocus is pretty poor in low light (again more of a problem with moving objects), and the IS provides little compensation unless your subject is static. The rotating front element extends when focusing and/or zooming, and to be honest when extended the whole thing looks a bit cheap and flimsy.

Image quality is very good, and that's what ultimately counts when choosing a lens. The lens is sharp up to about 220mm, even at larger apertures, and when stopped down to F8 and above the results are pretty impressive. I've compared results in the 70-190mm range with those of the (more expensive) EF70-200 F4 L, and although the latter is obviously better the differences to even a trained eye are minimal. Of course the softness of the 70-300 at 300mm can be an issue to some - the quality of an image taken at 200mm with the L lens is so good that a suitable crop would be of better quality than an image taken with the 70-300 at 300mm.

Despite a few needless faults, I would recommend this lens. Overall it's a pretty good investment, if not for the IS alone, and to be fair image quality is almost on a par with Canon's L series lenses (most of the time). It's certainly one of the best non-L lenses in the line-up, and a better alternative would be difficult to find. If, however, you shoot a lot in low or failing light then I would recommend an alternative, due to the mediocre auto-focus speed of the primitive USM. Additionally, if you don't desperately need 300mm at the long end and IS isn't essential, go for the slightly-more-expensive EF70-200 F4 L.

Comments about Canon EF 70-300mm f4-5.6 IS USM Lens:

I bought this lens as a replacement for a Sigma that had been damaged. The difference in using a Canon lens is clear to see. The quality of the images are much higher and the dual stage image stabilizer works extremely well when you just don't have the tripod there