Canon EF 70-300 f4-5.6 IS USM review

I can't imagine how in the World Canon can charge $400.00 up for this lens. For some of us that's a big chunk of change. I have 3 L series lenses in my arsenal. I recently purchased the 5DMKII and don't get the same focal length that I once got from my cropped chip camera. I really needed the extra 100mm that my 70 - 200mm L doesn't give me anymore. After reading a lot of reviews I was looking forward, although hesitant, to receive this lens. I also owned the 28 - 135mm lens.. another piece of Canon junk. After many test shots and trying every which way but loose to get this lens to perform I decided to sell it. This lens is not usable in the 200 to 300mm range and doesn't even compare to the 70 - 200mm in optical quality. My pictures were soft, a lot of chromatic aberration throughout, vignetting, etc.. Some of these problems can be corrected in raw in photoshop but softness is something I can't tolerate. Please find another alternative and put your money to better use.

I got my wife a new camera, a Canon Rebel T3i, after using her old camera, a Canon Powershot S5 IS, to shoot a full moon rise. The moon rise photo would have been very good but it was a dark moon rise (the sun had set maybe 15 minutes before) so when I brightened up the landscape it was a bit noisy (not a lot but more than I wanted). We had driven quite a long distance to see this so a better camera seemed reasonable. The next full moon was the Super Moon of May 05, 2012. We got the camera with the 18-55 mm kit lens but decided to go with the EF 70-300 mm IS USM lens instead of the 75-300 mm lens that was also available in a kit. On some practice shots of the moon before the full moon I was getting some pretty sharp views. As I learned more about the camera the technique improved, like using Live View which avoided the mirror bounce, using a shutter release cable, and zooming to 10X which showed that my old tripod would shake for 5 seconds or so and then be steady enough to see the image motion from the earth's rotation. I also calculated that at 300 mm zoom I needed to keep the shutter speed to faster than about 1/10 second to avoid more than about 1/2 pixel image smear because I wasn't tracking the moon. The resulting pictures were quite sharp, better than what I had found out on the web when I looked for moon photos through this lens. When I showed an employee at Best Buy one of the images on my iPod he said I hadn't got it with that lens, I said yes I did. I used autofocus on the moon. But it didn't work on the stars or planets with Live View so I tried a trick, autofocus on the moon, switch the lens to manual focus, then point to the star or planet. Wasn't sure that would work but it did. I pointed at Saturn and was able to detect the rings. Not very well, no dark space between the rings and the planet (I think that will be possible when they open up a bit more in 2 or 3 years). The crescent of Venus was also visible with this lens. Haven't tried Jupiter yet but it should show a disk and moons. Mars should also show a disk when it is close enough. I'm not suggesting this is a good lens for shooting planets, I just tried it to see how sharp it is and was happy with it. My wife finally got to try this lens when we went to find some eagles. They were mostly far away but her first shot clearly showed some and the image stabilization worked very well. By pressing the shutter halfway the stabilization is activated and the image really gets steady. That was one reason I went with this lens. We went to see the Super Full Moon rise and found a few members of the local camera club there with their big lenses. A Super Full Moon is not really a big deal, it's just when the full moon happens near when the moon, in its elliptical orbit, is closest to the earth. It's a bit bigger (apparent size) and a bit brighter than other full moons. The weather wasn't promising and at moon rise time nothing was seen, but maybe 20 minutes later or so a bit of it was seen peeking through the clouds and it finally got up out of the haze. Got some shots with this lens. The full moon in November 28 is the farthest from earth full moon of the year, I guess that would be a submoon, opposite of the supermoon. The apparent diameters of the May 5 and Nov 28 full moons will differ by about 14%. Back to the lens, there are only a couple of negatives I can think of so far, and they may not be a problem for everybody. The lens cap could be better, might not be able to use it with a lens hood in place. That's easy to replace. Also the front of the lens rotates and will be an issue with polarizing filters. This may not be a big deal, haven't tried it yet, but the following may work. Zoom, focus, adjust the polarizer, then focus again. The last step may not be needed and should be such a minor adjustment that the polarizer should be ok. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this lens.

I have used this lens on 5D mark III. It is really good. Quick and precise focus, sharp image, efficient IS.

Love using this lens. It really has increased my overall use of my DSLR. I am able to take photos from a distance and really capture a natural shot since I don't have to be close to the object. The lens itself feels solid and generally requires if you are zooming in fully. This lens has also allowed me to get great pictures of the moon, just make sure you have a decent tripod as well. Lens is too heavy to keep still with longer shutter speeds. Overall I am very happy with this lens. Would recommend to any starter using a DSLR.

Thrilled to see the price drop and I'd been waiting for the telephoto lens for awhile. I weighed the pros and cons of getting this one for my Canon 40d vs an L series lens but decided in the end that this would do nicely in the meantime. I took some excellent shots through my kitchen window of some baby birds and was very pleased with the detail.