One of the sharpest Canon lens, comparable with 135mm f2. Great bokeh, contrast and colours. Not to big and heavy.
Strengths:
Contrast, colour, sharpness - very good. AF very fast. With the Canon Extenders (1,4x and 2x) the Image Quality is almost preserved, with AF too. You can to have with them three lens: 200mm/2.8; 280mm/4; 400mm/5.6, all of them fully acceptable; (for analog cameras). For DSLRs we have (after the crop coefficient): 320mm/2.8; 450mm/4; 640mm/5.6.
Heavenly Bokeh!
I have the 50 1.8 and 85mm 1.8 and this is even better.
Yes it's not a 70-200mm 2.8L IS zoom but it's light, black(inconspicuous)
and sharp.
Strengths:
Bokeh, price, black finish, BOKEH.
Lightweight and inconspicuous with fast focus.
You just have to use your feet and predict the crop before you raise the camera VF to your eye to get the right composition.
This one and the 135mm 2.0L are as good as it gets for fast tele primes.
Got mine used on eBay Italy in excellent conditions. No scratches, no dust. Looks like new. Actually it's the first model (mark I) with the built-in hood.
This lens produces stunning pics! Great optics, wonderful bokeh (backgroung blur), corner sharpness just as good as in the center or at the edges.
AF is fast even on my relatively slow Eos 300D (Digital Rebel) and quiet. The large aperture combined with great quality glass give you sharp pictures at 2.8 and allows a creative use of the depth of field.
If you can live with the limitations of a fixed focal lens, and you need fast telephoto with great quality, buy it! Better if you can find it used, a real bargain.
Coupled with a Tamron 1.4x extender give you a great 280mm F4, and keeps AF working. Almost no degradation in image quality, at least on a 300D/10D/D60.
Definitely recommended.
Strengths:
- Sharp even at F2.8, from corner to corner
- No halos, no purple fringing
- Light and compact compared to 70-200 zooms
- Fast AF, very silent too
- L quality built
- Works well with extenders, delivering excellent result with the 1.4X.
- Great bang for your buck if you find it used
I got this lens for a steal, $390 in brand new condition. I doubt if it had even been taken out of the box before. Anyway, I saw this lens right before going on a trip with my family to hawaii, and had to have it. I really wanted a the zoom 70-200mm f4 "L," but the price on this was so good I figured I could sell it on ebay for more than what i paid for it if I needed the versatility of the zoom. I do not regret this purchase at all. The lens is extremely solid, the exterior being almost all metal, yet not as heavy to hold as you might think. The autofocus is faster than anything I have ever used, and the manual focus is on a calibre I have never seen for an autofocus lens. The manual focus is so smooth and well made, if you had your eyes closed you would think it was a leica. That said, the glass is absolutely incredible. Paired with a slow smooth grained slide film like Kodachrome 64 I believe the results from this lens are much closer to the quality of medium format, than anything I had seen previously from 35mm. As far as handling goes, this lens can be handheld relatively easily, though with any telephoto, a tripod will help. As far as the obtrusiveness goes, I have the mk. II and without the lens hood on, most people dont' notice it too much. With the lens hood on it looks like it belongs on the sidelines of a sporting event. This lens is excellent paired with either the Elan 7e or 10d, having slightly better balance with the 10d's heavier body. Despite being prime lens, I find this to be extremely versatile for all the different types of photography I do. I work for my campus newspaper and routinely use this lens for sports and to take pictures of speakers that come to my university. The speed of the f2.8 is extremely helpful in both cases, and paired with a 420ex I can easily take perfectly exposed pictures of speakers from the very back of dark auditoriums. I also use this lens for landscape and portrait photography. It is not too long that it makes unnatural looking portraits, and the f2.8 is really helpful for background blur. I have been trying to use this lens for bird photography as well, and have had decent results, though it is a bit short. I am considering getting the 2x teleconverter this summer for use with it. The optics in this lens are so sharp, it sometimes makes me want to cry, it should deliver very acceptable results even with the teleconverter.
Strengths:
Price: It's an affordable lens, and professional lens in every sense of the word. You can't find a better value in this focal length.
Build quality: Solid feel that seems like it could be dropped off a cliff and survive.
Sharpness: No better, except for the massively expensive 200mm f1.8 L.
Speed: Fast f2.8 aperature makes a bunch more shots possible than the slower f5.6 I was using before. Retains AF even with 2x tele converter.
Versatility: I am able to do a bunch of stuff with this lens, even more once I add a 2x teleconverter.
Focusing: Fast, accurate, and silky smooth!
Weaknesses:
Did not come with tripod ring.
Large 72mm filter size makes polarizing filters expensive!! I still have yet to buy one, though this filter size should be expected of such a fast lens.
Similar Products Used:
EF 75-300mm f4-5.6 III
EF 100-300mm f4.5-5.6 USM
EF 70-200mm f4 L USM
Customer Service:
Pretty good, I've never had anything of mine break, but my mom dropped her A70 digicam and they fixed it free of charge even though it was blatantly obvious it was due to a drop.
This is my 2nd L lens (1st was 17-40). I bought the 200mm f2.8 L Mk.II from a London store, then proceeded to do some sight-seeing while I checked it out. My body is a 10D.
Since I was in evaluation mode, I took almost every picture three times, at f2.8, f4 and f8. Since the weather was very fine it was a struggle sometimes to keep the required shutter speed at 1/4000 or below when at f2.8!
The results are outstanding. I'm blown away by the sharpness, contrast, colour reproduction, and some of the other 'features' of this lens such as a wonderful perspective effect and great bokeh.
I also did many tests at f2.8 to check out the focussing. This lens and my 10D perform flawlessly.
There is a very slight drop-off in performance at f2.8, but from f4 up it is razor sharp. The f2.8 performance is still very good - I'm talking about differences only visible at 100% on a large monitor (which for me is an effective image size of 3 x 2 feet).
This must be one of Canon's best lenses.
Strengths:
Sharpness - and entirely usable wide open.
High contrast, great bokeh.
Fast focussing, no problems on my 10D.
Small size (compared with a 70-200 zoom).
Black (doesn't attract attention).
Relatively low cost.
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