Canon EF 28-300mm f3.5-5.6L IS USM review

This price is not a bargain, I researched this lens and found it in Cannon's website for $2689.00 brand new.

Unlike many of the reviewers you can read here, photography is not my job. I am a scout helicopter mechanic in the US Army. Photography is my hobby and passion, keeping our pilots safe in the air is my job, which I thoroughly enjoy. I have more than a few deployments under my belt, and on a previous trip overseas with my comrades in arms, I was depressed at how little photos there were of us doing our jobs, and well, being ourselves. I took it upon myself tho document everything through the lens of my shiny new point-and-shoot. Terrible I know, but it was a beginning. Making a very long story short, I fast forward three years, three cameras, and a deployment or two.

Working a full time job in harsh conditions is very few peoples preferred "photo-shoot", but it's mine everyday! A perfect example is how I keep hearing people talk and write about lens changes in the "field", doing this in the constantly dusty deserts of the middle east is not only in-advisable, but disastrous. Remember the three previous cameras? one suffered that fate. To tell the truth, even indoors might as well be considered the "field" here. The first thing I noticed after I attached it to my T1i body was the great amounts of air whistling in and out of the cracks in the camera body and viewfinder, when you slid the lens through it's zoom range. This is what happens when you attach a weather and dust sealed lens to a body that is anything but!

Right away the enormous zoom range let me do things like catch pilots pre-flighting the aircraft from afar, really showing what an Army aviators life is like, to lens-scratching-the-windscreen close up wide angle shots of the pilots doing there thing, all while wondering what I am doing. Pilots aren't the only ones that catch the love, the lens's IS and zoom range let all sorts of photographic opportunities (my hypersonic kids for example) turn into quality photographs.

In closing (and no particular order):

Heavy - Change of command and promotion ceremonies almost break my lens supporting hand's wrist after an hour or two. On the flip side, the weight ballasted my camera when I had it slung to my side, so it hung lens-down and tucked in, nice and safe.

Solid - not only is the actual structure of the lens durable, so is the paint finish. I can not believe that after 6 months of hard use it is still flawless.

Funky Lens Hood - I think all lens hoods are awkward, but due to the weight of the lens I usually keep it off and stored away unless I plan on shooting into the sun. The lining is made of black velvet however, which is nice.

Stiffness Ring - It fails as a infinitely adjustable stiffness adjustment, as certain portions of the range "grab" more than others, so I wound up using it as a barrel lock only. However I could disengage the stiffness with one hand, gripping the focus in an overhand manner with my fingers and spinning the lock ring with my thumb counter-clockwise. I do have big basketball-player hands, so you may or may not be able to do the same.

Auto Focus (one-shot)- Both my retired T1i and my current 7D will hunt if the starting focus is way off at the opposite end of the scale. A few half-presses of the shutter or a manual spin of the focusing ring gets everything peachy again however.

Auto Focus (AI Servo) - When it comes to following aircraft or people, this lens is flawless. In fact I wound up preferring to shoot in this mode due to the quality.

Zoom Range - Easily the most valuable feature of this lens. Where before I missed shots (worst feeling in the world) because I could not compose the frame properly, this lens made it all possible, without carrying other lenses, which I would not change outdoors here anyway.

Image Stabilization - A huge plus and a tiny minus in my book. The plus is it's unparalleled ability and range of stabilization. Photos of a MI-24 while being buffeted by rotorwash? No problem. The tiny minus is the slight lag time it induces if it has been off for a while, you hear a clunk, and feel the lens jerk, then all is good.

Slide Zoom - The first time I used the lens around my co-workers the "compensating for something?" jokes began. But snapping to 300mm in less than a fraction of a second is mighty convenient when you have little time to capture a moment.

Enormo-Giganto-Huge-Ness - It's big. Realllly big. Not as big as the sports photographer Hubble telescope knockoffs, but when I raise it to my eye, people notice, and it's big enough that they tell their friends, and then candids are a no-go.

Cost - That's the best part, I got it for FREE. I'm essentially borrowing it for a year. I'm actually considering buying one, which is equivalent to a months wages for me.

I hope you enjoyed my unique perspective on this high quality and un-inexpensive lens! If you feel my review is leaving out a critical factor, feel free to comment and I will share!

I bought this lens in April of 2008 to shoot at the St Pete Grand Prix in FL, I wanted a great all around lens so I didn't have to change lens or switch to a camera with a different lens during fast action. At first I would have given the lens a 4 or even a 5 star rating however after a while you start to notice some problems with it. Push/Pull Problems: Most of the problems I believe have to do with it being a push/pull lens. Within the first year of heavy usage I started to notice dust on the lens, the problem is that its on the inside. This is never happened with any of the other canon lenes I have and my theory is that dust/dirt will get on the main cylindar and then work its way up into the inside. I could send it to canon and pay to have it clean but then I would be out of a lens for however long that took. Besides that even though there is dust in it you can't really see in in the photos. Every once in a while you can see a spec when in images with flat colors like the sky. Many cameras have the abaility to create a dust map to digitally map where dust specs are and remove it anyways. The other problem with the push pull is it sticks a little, its hard to get any kind of smooth movement out of it. Not a problem when shooting stills but most all modern DSLR's like my 5D Mark II do 1080p HD video. Unless your going to stick to one zoom lenght dont try zooming while shooting video, the result is jerky looking. Vignette: For such a large in diameter lens this thing creates a lot of vignette (darkening around the edges). I notice it the most on photos where I have zoomed in from the mid range to all the way zoomed in. I use Adobe Lightroom which recently in the 3.3 version added a lens profile correction specificly for this lens (as they have done with many other lens in previous versions). This has made corrections much easier since its automated. However it has really shown me also just how bad the vignette is. There is also a far amount of distortion which is corrected. For as expensive as this lens it I wouldn't have expected it to have noticable vignette effects. Sharpness/Color: Sharpness is good, not great, but good. The Image Stabalization does a good job of reducing blur and keeping the image sharp. I still find myself afterwords bumping up the sharpness in lightroom though. I have to post process more sharpness with this lens than with my 17-40mm F4 L USM. The color reproduction with this lens is also a little dulled to me. Not much but enough to where I will bump up the vibrance and/or saturation for landscapes. It does do a good job when shooting with models though. Would I recommend this lens? It depends on what you are going to use it for. If switching lenses is just going to be to problematic and to slow than this is a great option. It is definatly convenient not having to go back and forth. However if you can switch lenses without it being a problem go with a good wide to mid range zoom and a telephoto and not an all in one unit like this one.

I bought this lens in April of 2008 to shoot at the St Pete Grand Prix in FL, I wanted a great all around lens so I didn't have to change lens or switch to a camera with a different lens during fast action. At first I would have given the lens a 4 or even a 5 star rating however after a while you start to notice some problems with it.

Push/Pull Problems:
Most of the problems I believe have to do with it being a push/pull lens. Within the first year of heavy usage I started to notice dust on the lens, the problem is that its on the inside. This is never happened with any of the other canon lenes I have and my theory is that dust/dirt will get on the main cylindar and then work its way up into the inside. I could send it to canon and pay to have it clean but then I would be out of a lens for however long that took. Besides that even though there is dust in it you can't really see in in the photos. Every once in a while you can see a spec when in images with flat colors like the sky. Many cameras have the abaility to create a dust map to digitally map where dust specs are and remove it anyways. The other problem with the push pull is it sticks a little, its hard to get any kind of smooth movement out of it. Not a problem when shooting stills but most all modern DSLR's like my 5D Mark II do 1080p HD video. Unless your going to stick to one zoom lenght dont try zooming while shooting video, the result is jerky looking.

Vignette:
For such a large in diameter lens this thing creates a lot of vignette (darkening around the edges). I notice it the most on photos where I have zoomed in from the mid range to all the way zoomed in. I use Adobe Lightroom which recently in the 3.3 version added a lens profile correction specificly for this lens (as they have done with many other lens in previous versions). This has made corrections much easier since its automated. However it has really shown me also just how bad the vignette is. There is also a far amount of distortion which is corrected. For as expensive as this lens it I wouldn't have expected it to have noticable vignette effects.

Sharpness/Color:
Sharpness is good, not great, but good. The Image Stabalization does a good job of reducing blur and keeping the image sharp. I still find myself afterwords bumping up the sharpness in lightroom though. I have to post process more sharpness with this lens than with my 17-40mm F4 L USM. The color reproduction with this lens is also a little dulled to me. Not much but enough to where I will bump up the vibrance and/or saturation for landscapes. It does do a good job when shooting with models though.

Would I recommend this lens?
It depends on what you are going to use it for. If switching lenses is just going to be to problematic and to slow than this is a great option. It is definatly convenient not having to go back and forth. However if you can switch lenses without it being a problem go with a good wide to mid range zoom and a telephoto and not an all in one unit like this one.

I have a 5D Mark II and I wanted a lens where I did not have to keep switching lenses and missing great shots. This fits the bill while giving you weight bearing exercise. Naturally with this complete lens system, it is highly recommended that you use appropriate software that has the lens correction for this lens to account for roll-off, vignetting and barrel distortion at the short focal lengths etc. But it is all well worth it, even with the weight because of all the glass required to achieve its objectives. I recently used it to shoot a retirement event in a large room and I got great close-ups as well as whole room shots without missing any of the action. It is on the expensive side, not surprisingly, but, in my opinion, it is well worth it.