Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Lens Review

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Wide aperture. Great quality. Zoom. These things usually don’t go together.

Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM has them all, with extra good build quality! This is seriously the best lens I’ve reviewed so far and it is definitely the king of all telephoto zooms. It does come at a higher price, but if you want your shots to look sharp, crisp and clean (with some knowledge about photography of course), this is the lens.

Specifications:

• Focal Length: 70-200mm (acts as 112 – 320mm on APS-C)
• EF: Fits on all Canon DSLRs
• Elements/Groups: 23/18
• Aperture Blades: 8
• Max. Aperture: f/2.8
• Min. Aperture: f/32
• Max. Magnification: 0.17x
• Minimum Focus Distance: 140cm/55.1″
• Filter Size: 77mm
• AF Motor: Ring USM – Ultra Sonic Motor
• Full Time Manual Focus: Yes
• Front Element Rotates: No
• Weight: 1470g/51.9 oz
• Size: 86 x 197mm

1/200 – f/5.6 – ISO 200 – @115m

Love the dramatic atmosphere and colors!

Focusing

Auto Focus

It’s accurate and quick. What more could you want? I felt as if I were using a sniper rifle.

Sports, animals, action, journalism – you can do it all with this lens. Inside, outside, it doesn’t matter. Canon EF 70-200mm uses an Ultra Sonic Motor (USM), a motor that can be found in all professional lenses.

Manual Focus

Full Time Manual Focus means you can focus manually even when to button is at AF! Saves a lot of time and energy if you need to keep on switching.

The focusing ring is smooth and big. While I haven’t really manually focused a lot, I know some of you will and it is excellent.

1/320 – f/4 – ISO 500 – @200mm
 

Sharpness

If the lens is not sharp, it sucks. Period. There’s no point in having a soft lens (yeah, abstract and stuff don’t count here). I understand not all of you (us) have the money for more expensive lens but don’t – spend – your – money – on – cheapest – lenses. Save a little bit more and get yourself something good, that won’t make you go upset after every shot.

1/320 – f/2.8 – ISO 500 – @120mm

This was shot in a huge arena with awful lighting. Since Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 has a very wide aperture, shooting here was not a problem for me. Badminton players often jump and make cool moves; it will be all blurred if your lens has a small aperture, like f/5.6 and more. Increasing your ISO speed is an option but the noise… it can often be terrible.

One thing you should know when it comes to telephoto lenses -in order to get sharp shots, your shutter speed must be above your current focal length. At 200mm, it should be minimum 1/250. On APS-C sensors, even more, due to 1.6x crop factor.

But do not worry, the lens has Image Stabilization, up to 3 stops. So at 250mm, you could shoot with ~1/30 and get a sharp shot (if your subject is not moving)!

1/320 – f/3.2 – ISO 500 – @130mm

1/800 – f/4 – ISO 200 – @200mm

 

Colors, contrast; simply amazing. This is straight out of the camera, with no editing, except for resizing to make images smaller in size.

That’s a 100% crop! Some lenses can’t produce sharp images even when they’re not cropped.

1/80 – f/4 – ISO 320 – @200mm

The shot itself is not that interesting. However, when I cropped it to 100%, the ultimate sharpness was seen again.

Size – Weight – Buttons – Design

There’s an AF/MF button (but you can manually focus at any time), an Image Stabilization button that allows you to switch from Mode 1 to Mode 2 (useful for panning) and we have a focus limiter, from 1.4m – inifinity and from 2.5m – infinity.

1.5kg is quite a lot of weight. That’s 2kg+ with your camera body, so you will have to get used to holding the lens. My wrist got tired after 4 hours of shooting, but a bit of stretching will get you back in track in a few minutes.

White lenses, also known as L lenses, have excellent build quality. They are also waterproof, so you can wash them at any time. Okay, just kidding, but some rain will not damage it and you can leave the extra umbrella at home. I was at the ZOO with it and a seal jumped into the water (probably knew I had an expensive lens) and I got all wet because of the giant splash. Canon EF 70-200mm was not hurt and I went on shooting, like nothing has ever happened.

77mm filters are right in the middle price range and I seriously recommend you to get a UV filter. Check out my Buying a Lens Filter guide if you’re confused.

As soon as I saw this deer, I slowly raised my camera, took a shot and hoped it will not run away. There was a small “lake” separating us so I guess it didn’t really hear the shutter sound.

By cropping it to 100%, I saw two things: the animal was not scared of the big white object and the big white object is again, super sharp.