Best telephoto zoom I own, and it better be for this price!
I own a Canon 75-300mm non-IS lens and while it’s light and sharp enough in bright light on a 1.6x crop body, I’ve missed too many shots of wildlife in the shade or at dawn/dusk. I was going on a trip to Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks and decided if there was ever a time to invest in a lens for the future, it was now.
When trying to decide whether to buy this lens or not, I must have looked at every Digital SLR Lens in the 50-400mm range made by Canon, Sigma, Tamron and Tokina. I rented the Canon 100-400L for a weekend, and learned a few things. 1) it was too large and heavy to carry around on hikes longer than a few miles and 2) good image stabilization was going to be just about as important as lens quality. With this new information, and reading lots of lens tests I narrowed my choices down to this lens, the Canon 70-300 IS and the Canon 55-250 IS.
Now it really came down to money; was I willing to spend nearly 2x as much on this lens which was sharper, faster and weather sealed, but weighed more and had less reach than the other two? Ultimately I decided to purchase this one because, compared to the other two, there was no way I would be disappointed with any of my photos due to the lens and the onus would be on me to take great photographs. With either of the others, there was a chance I’d wish the lens were faster or sharper.
I am very happy with this purchase and have also become a believer in weather sealing. It was windy in Yellowstone and the pine trees were giving off huge amounts of pollen. I got several bits inside my Tamron 17-50, but the inside of this lens are flawless. The only reason I didn’t give this lens 5 stars is the high price tag.
In addition, if you want to spend some more money to get some extra reach, I’d recommend the Kenko Teleplus PRO 300 DG AF 1.4x Teleconverter for Canon EOS which works flawlessly with this lens and my 40D.
