Posts Tagged ‘telephoto’
Testing the Canon 70-200/2.8 L USM
Canon 50D with 70-200/2.8 L USM
People say “I’m too poor to buy cheap stuff” and there’s a whole lot to be said about that. This is my first L lens and now I know why people sing Canon’s praises when it comes to this wonderful glass. Yeah L lenses cost a lot… but they are absolutely worth it. For anyone even remotely serious about photography, an L lens is a very good step in the right direction.
Toward the end of summer I’m planning a trip to Nordkap, Norway. There’s gonna be a whole lot of nature photography, low flying birds, possibly whales if I manage to fit a whale safari in, moose, deer and loads of open vistas. I have a wide lens for the vistas but I was lacking a telephoto zoom. The 70-200/2.8 fit right in. I decided against the IS version mostly due to the cost and the very positive reviews of the non-IS. I’m probably going to get a 1.4X extender to go with it just to add some more range.
The gist of this is that the USM motor focuses lightning-fast, the images coume out crisp, the colors are clear and maybe on the saturated side of things (at least on my screen), there’s the least possible hint of chromatic abberation even in the most high-contrast of areas and the f 2.8 aperture makes things smooth and bokehlicious. Oh and it ships with a pretty decent lens pouch and a collar for mounting it on a tripod.
I’ve had the lens for 3 days now and I put together a video with some test shots, watch it in HD. I’m not sure if it’s Imovie or Vimeo  but for some reason I haven’t been able to get rid of the pixelation on some images in the video. The images are unedited, I just imported them into LR and the exported as 100% quality .jpg.
Canon 70-200/2.8 L USM from Mileta Nikoletic on Vimeo.
Update:
What can I say… This thing is actually comparable to a prime lens. I get less chromatic aberration than with my 50/1.4 which is pretty unusual for a zoom. The range is also pretty good, Canon must have found a range vs. optical quality sweetspot here. The AF is stunningly fast and after switching to my Sigma 18-200 mm the difference in pretty much everything was very noticeable. The  build quality is the first thing that struck me, the 70-200/2.8L is built like a tank… really. Probably the single best piece of photography gear i have ever bought.
