I had much more consistent results when shooting soccer, softball and football in the park. The AF speed did not present an issue for any of these activities and the results were excellent.

I wish the lens were a little less expensive but I the prints I have gotten from my 13 X 19 printer have been worth the extra money.

________________________________________________________________

  
Good Lens+ Long Reach+ Price Right, March 2, 2006
Reviewer: ThinCrustPizza
Have used this lens for a few months now and am very happy with it. The long reach specially with the 20D is definitely a plus. The lens is a little slow but the IS allows you to take at 2-3 stops than normal for static subjects. If I would rate it with 10 being best, optical quality is 8, focus speed 8, construction is 7 because of zoom creep and loud IS, price 9.
________________________________________________________________

        
Nice Lens, February 18, 2006
Reviewer: J. Farance

This lens does everything it should very well. Really allows you to take a close look at something with great image quality. The only thing I wish was better about it is the aperture. The 4-5.6 is not bad by any means, but can be limiting when you are trying to stop fast movements. However, as long as you plan for it and the conditions are constant, you can work around it. All in all this is a nice lens.
________________________________________________________________

         
Nothing Special, January 29, 2006
Reviewer: M. Watson

EDIT: It looks like the sharpness problem with my lens is the result of using it in portrait-orientation. That's the same problem many other people have encountered. This lens is either getting returned to Canon for a refund or I'm selling it because the blurry results are unacceptable. Save yourself the hassle and buy the 70-200mm f/4L instead.

I owned this lens' predecessor, the 75-300mm IS. That lens was horrible. When I read many good things about this new 70-300mm IS lens, I thought it was time to upgrade. But, it was difficult to decide whether buy this lens or Canon's 70-200mm f/4L professional lens. I bought this lens and it was my mistake.

While it has numerous improvements over the 75-300mm IS, there are still some shortcomings with this lens that keep it from competing with the similar-priced 70-200mm f/4L.

First, starting at around 150mm-200mm and getting worse as you approach 300mm, this lens gives images that look soft (no, I'm not using any filters!). This is not an issue of focus, but of low-cost consumer-grade optics. You can stop the lens down and get some improvement, but then you lose your depth of field.

Second, the focusing speed is slow. New in this lens is variable-speed focusing; as the zoom passes 200mm, the focusing speed slows. I assume this is to prevent the missed-focus hunting common with its predecessor. But, this makes it harder to track moving objects and keep them in focus.

Third, this lens suffers from very ugly purple chromatic aberration. This lens really shows this problem too, in that even small bright objects develop purple halos.

Finally, the lens gets larger as you zoom, the lens gets larger when you focus, the front of the lens moves when focusing, the focus ring moves when auto-focusing, the zoom retracts by itself when pointed upward, and I'm sure there's more I'm forgetting... But none of these problems exist with the 70-200mm f/4L.

This is not "the hidden L lens" as one reviewer said, it is nothing but a common consumer lens with a big price tag. The IS feature is the single sole benefit. If you have very shaky hands you might just need this lens. If you have very steady hands, with IS you can use this lens in the dark of night (assuming you have a very still subject). The 200-300mm range is nice, but a tack-sharp photo from the 70-200mm f/4L at 200mm is going to look much better cropped than a 300mm full-frame photo from this lens.

If what you want is a very high quality lens that will give you sharp photos in daylight; buy the 70-200mm f/4L lens instead, it even comes with a hood. The hood for the 70-300mm IS lens is another $40.
________________________________________________________________

          
The hidden L lens...", January 11, 2006
Reviewer: Bryan Duggan
I bought this lens about a month ago when I purchased my Rebel XT.

I was initially dissapointed by the image quality but it turned out that I actually had a bad filter on the lens. Once I removed that cheap filter the lans came to life and has blown me away!!

If you read some of the forums there are actually Canon owners complaining that this lens is too good and has effectively devalued their expensive "L" lenses!

The only negative thing that I can say about this lens is that the front element rotates while focusing, making using a circular polarizer somewhat cumbersome. The Image Stabilizer really is a technological marvel though and will leave you wondering why every lens doesn't come with it (the answer is that it adds to the weight and IS isn't cheap).

This weekend was the first time the weather cooperated enough for me to try it outdoors. I went to a small local zoo and took a picture of a red fox from about 30ft away... through 2 wire fences... in sub-par lighting. I didn't expect much. The picture actually came out and is so sharp I am having it framed.
Buy this lens!

   Back to Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras