Canon EF 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS USM

Re: Canon EF 70-300 f/4-5.6L IS

Taken @ the Albuquerque, NM Zoo with my T2i and the 70-300L:

250mm, f/5.6, 1/320, ISO200
20120513-IMG6184-M.jpg


250mm, f/5.6, 1/60, ISO100
20120513-IMG6095-M.jpg
 
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All of those pictures looks nice, but this lens (from 200mm till 300) produces not very sharp images and the contrast is very low. No concerns from 70 to 200mm.
I have the 70-200L II, but sometimes I use the 70-300 when I do not want to carry a heavy equipment with me or when I am traveling to an insecure country.
 
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AlbertPorres said:
All of those pictures looks nice, but this lens (from 200mm till 300) produces not very sharp images and the contrast is very low. No concerns from 70 to 200mm.
I have the 70-200L II, but sometimes I use the 70-300 when I do not want to carry a heavy equipment with me or when I am traveling to an insecure country.

Hardly true I suppose but the way you say it makes it sound quite bad. This lens is actually just as good as the EF 300mm f4 IS at f5.6. To go better than this you need an EF 300mm f2.8 ( and about £5,200 :) )
 
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Ray2021 said:
AlbertPorres said:
...but this lens (from 200mm till 300) produces not very sharp images and the contrast is very low.

*yawn*

Overall IQ, excellent IS, good focal range, weather sealing, portability.... it is an excellent zoom.

Not very sharp, low contrast? Where does that come from? The advantage of this lens according to all reviews is that it does the exact opposite of what you say. Here's one of my own 300mm pictures - looks pretty sharp to me!
 

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AlbertPorres said:
All of those pictures looks nice, but this lens (from 200mm till 300) produces not very sharp images and the contrast is very low. No concerns from 70 to 200mm.
I have the 70-200L II, but sometimes I use the 70-300 when I do not want to carry a heavy equipment with me or when I am traveling to an insecure country.
Are you talking about the non-L version maybe? That I could agree with
 
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Very sharp...and very plesant shallow DOF in spite of the aperture starting at f/4. The focus in this picture was on the hairs above her eye as I wanted her over-obvious whiskers out of focus...I have no complaints...great zoom.
 
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ahab1372 said:
AlbertPorres said:
All of those pictures looks nice, but this lens (from 200mm till 300) produces not very sharp images and the contrast is very low. No concerns from 70 to 200mm.
I have the 70-200L II, but sometimes I use the 70-300 when I do not want to carry a heavy equipment with me or when I am traveling to an insecure country.
Are you talking about the non-L version maybe? That I could agree with

That's what I was thinking. He must have them mixed up. The non-L is very soft from 200-300mm.
 
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Thanks to everyone on the nice comments of the image above. Here's another that I took with the 70-300L this week. I hadn't yet done the AFMA on the lens, which I did the latter part of this week. I've had a bit of an issue dialing in the long end - it is great at/up to AFMA distance (roughly 25 feet), but out closer to infinity (75 feet +) I find it is a little out as compared to the Live View focus. I tried AFMA from a little further away, but it does get a little harder to be precise (longer distance + f/5.6 is not a great combination). I ended up with only one point further (-3), so I'll have to see how it goes.


The Grey Owl by Thousand Word Images by Dustin Abbott, on Flickr
 
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killswitch said:
TWI by Dustin Abbott said:
Here's another horse shot. I am really pleasantly surprised at how good the bokeh (very smooth) is on this lens for a variable aperture telephoto zoom.

Dustin, have to ask you...how do you get such nice/soft tones? Love how you process your images! :o

That whole workflow was all within Lightroom (4), so no Photoshop there. I have invested in some presets for LR that I further customize. The basic look is from a preset collection (http://www.adobelightroompresets.net/lightroom-presets/ultrafaded-presets/) Preset 9. By the way, these preset collections often go on sale for 50% off. I then further tweaked the tone curve to bring a little of the low end back, used a preset brush to paint in a little sharpness and contrast to the forelock. I probably tweaked the sliders a hair, but I doubt that I have any more than about 4 minutes in processing this particular image. Another collection I use a lot in my workflow is the "Instagram style" presets. I usually customize the sliders somewhat after processing, as I am pretty familiar with the way that LR works at this point. I typically spend as much or more time in adding metadata, descriptions, and keywords as I do processing. I am careful about all of those things because a fair bit of my work moves commercially in one way or another.
 
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TWI by Dustin Abbott said:
killswitch said:
TWI by Dustin Abbott said:
Here's another horse shot. I am really pleasantly surprised at how good the bokeh (very smooth) is on this lens for a variable aperture telephoto zoom.

Dustin, have to ask you...how do you get such nice/soft tones? Love how you process your images! :o

That whole workflow was all within Lightroom (4), so no Photoshop there. I have invested in some presets for LR that I further customize. The basic look is from a preset collection (http://www.adobelightroompresets.net/lightroom-presets/ultrafaded-presets/) Preset 9. By the way, these preset collections often go on sale for 50% off. I then further tweaked the tone curve to bring a little of the low end back, used a preset brush to paint in a little sharpness and contrast to the forelock. I probably tweaked the sliders a hair, but I doubt that I have any more than about 4 minutes in processing this particular image. Another collection I use a lot in my workflow is the "Instagram style" presets. I usually customize the sliders somewhat after processing, as I am pretty familiar with the way that LR works at this point. I typically spend as much or more time in adding metadata, descriptions, and keywords as I do processing. I am careful about all of those things because a fair bit of my work moves commercially in one way or another.

Whoa, thanks for sharing your workflow Dustin. Appreciate it. Will go through the link you posted. :)
 
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