Thursday, August 1, 2013

Shooting with Canon’s 70-200mm f/4L Lens


Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM Lens


As most of you know, I shoot regularly with Canon’s EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM and have found it to be an incredible little lens. I’ve recently found that I needed a little more “reach” in certain landscape and commercial situations so I decided to try out one of John O’Connor’s favorite telephoto zooms, the EF 70-200mm f/4L USM and it’s younger brother the EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM.



I’ve always loved Canon’s telephoto zoom lenses in the “70-200mm” range and shot extensively with an old FD 70-210mm on my F-1N body in the days before digital. The EF 70-200mm lenses are both extremely sharp throughout their zoom range as you can see below in the MTF charts. I’d have loved to have evaluated the f/2.8L version of this lens but the price and size/weight convinced me to stick with the f/4 version. I finally settled on the newer, image stabilized lens so I could use it for landscape and commercial (hand-held) work.



Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM MTF Charts




I’ve got to say that this is one impressive lens. The size and weight are just about perfect for my 5D2 body and using the “Tripod Mounting Ring A II” the combination balances effortlessly on my Gitzo tripod. This is probably the sharpest Canon zoom I’ve ever shot with and the extra “reach” really helps cover those shots I was missing before.






Lower McKinney Falls – Austin, Texas
Copyright 2009 Jeff Lynch Photography
Shot taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II set on manual (M) using an EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM lens tripod-mounted. The exposure was taken at 85mm, f/20 for 0.4 seconds at ISO 100. All post capture processing was done in Adobe’s Lightroom 3 Beta. Click on the image above for a larger version.



No lens is perfect but this little beauty is close. My only gripes are that the image stabilization system is somewhat loud compared to my EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM and my EF 300mm f/4L IS USM lenses and that the ET-74 lens hood is very narrow and deep. This makes adjusting a CP filter a bit of a pain when shooting.



And finally, the price difference between the “IS” version and “non-IS” version is just plain wrong ($1135 versus $589). The two lenses are optically very similar and I just can’t imagine that adding image stabilization could double the price. I suspect that Canon has been selling the “non-IS” version at too low a price for many years now and is trying to make up some of the profit on the “IS” version.



Other than that, Canon’s EF 70-200mm f4L lenses are absolutely superb in terms of sharpness, size/weight and value (especially the non-IS version at less than $600 USD) and I highly recommend either of these two lenses for landscape, portrait or commercial photography. You won’t be disappointed.



Posted in Photography Tagged: Canon, Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS USM, Landscape Photography, McKinney Falls State Park, Photography, Texas Landscapes



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