One of the things I have learned over the years while playing with cameras and photography is that your glass (lenses) does matter. For a while I have been using the lenses that came with my Canon XSi which are the EF-S 18-55mm IS and the EF 70-300mm III USM and those worked well for being beginner lenses. I later purchased the EF 50mm 1.8 prime lens which is a great little lens (really inexpensive) that everyone should have in their camera arsenal. Though with the EF 70-300 I have never really liked the quality of the photos when you looked closer at them. It just was not as sharp as I would like it. Though for a ~$200 lens what else would I expect right? It has done me well though, until now.

Canon EF 70-200 f2.8L IS USM

I’ve talked about this lens to many people (annoyingly at times) and I believe it is one of _the_ lenses that people strive to purchase in their photography lifetime. Recently I have been able to afford such a lens and I’m giddy about such a purchase. It is also the most expensive purchase I have made to date next to purchasing my car of course.

I have not been able to play with the lens too much as the weather here in Vancouver is rainy. Typical right? Though I did manage to go for a walk around Lost Lagoon with the lens and the available sun we did have on Saturday morning. Glad I did too, I managed to get some pretty cool photos of the local critters inhabiting the Lagoon.

If you are ever in the West End of Vancouver and it is a sunny day I do highly recommend walking around Lost Lagoon, especially if you want to take photos of the various birds. You will most likely run into various Raccoons too which are usually entertaining to watch, if people aren’t feeding them.

So what makes this lens so special?

Well it has a fixed (fast) aperture of 2.8 which is great for low-light conditions. It also has IS (Image Stabilization) which helps get rid of camera shake, especially at the 200mm length if I have to use a slower shutter speed. The cooler thing I found out about the IS is there are two modes; one mode to keep camera shake (jitter) at bay and the other mode to help keep an object in focus while you pan-shoot such as following a car or a cyclist.

The other cool part of being a fixed 2.8 aperture is that it stays the same at any focal length of the camera. Whereas the 70-300mm lens I have at the 70mm length it will be f4 where at the 300mm length it bumps up to f5.6. This can be fairly annoying when indoors or even outside and the sun isn’t shining bright.

The glass elements of the camera of course help with creating surprisingly sharp, clear images though I won’t get into those details. I can show them.

I took the above photo which as is looks pretty sharp and clear, right? When I zoomed in with Adobe Lightroom I noticed how much detail the lens was able to capture. You can see the scaly feet, the tufts of features and even details on the beak.

Here is the cropped head of the duck. A big difference I noticed was not only in the detail in the beak and feathers but there is no weird colouring issues on the edges of the duck like there would be with my EF 70-300mm lens. Chromatic Aberration [wiki] is what would happen with my other lens and it would drive me absolutely insane. With the EF 70-200 f2.8 IS this happens very very little, if not at all.

I am excited to have this lens and look forward to using it as often as possible. It is a bit heavy (1470g / 3.34lbs) but with carrying it around I am sure I will get used to it. With a lens like this I can see why photographers carry around two camera bodies. Switching this lens out for a wide-angle lens is going to be a bit trickier now. I could hold the EF-70-300 and EF-S 18-55 in one hand and do the swap but with the EF 70-200 I won’t be able to do this so quickly. I’ll have to figure something out.

Do you have a lens you’ve been dreaming about obtaining? Which one is it and why?

*Update: The other thing I’d like to make mention is the ‘L’ portion of the lens. The L means Luxury and for me the environmental seal the lens has is great for keeping out dust and water. I don’t mean I can take this lens into a down pour but if I am out in the snow and it gets snow on it I should not have issues with the water getting inside of the lens. Too bad my Canon XSi isn’t environmentally sealed like the lens is.