In the Cenote

Updated review of Canon 70 - 300 L lens

Today I decided to update my review of Canon 70-300 L f/4-5.6 IS USM tele-zoom lens. You can read the updated review here.

The reason for this update is that initial review, which was written at the beginning of 2012, missed some important bits of information. It's because by that time I owned this lens for just a few weeks, so I didn't know everything about it (and my knowledge about photography was much smaller than now). It was a mistake - I know - and nowadays I try to review gear and software at least after a few months of using it.

BTW I think that current version would be more helpful for anyone considering buying this lens.

In the nearest future I plan to update a few more reviews on my blog for the same reasons, especially review of Canon 5D MK III camera. I also consider updating a few tutorials so they will be more up to date.

Daily photo - In the Cenote

Today photo is actually a crop from this panorama that I took in one of the cenotes in Mexico and I shared just a few days ago. It's not a simple crop though - apart from using cropping tool in Photoshop I applied completely different processing. Panorama I mentioned was processed using realistic processing, this time I decided to go with my painterly processing to make this place a little bit more magical.

To learn more about this technique, make sure to watch my video tutorial about it.

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Canon 24 f/1.4 L USM II Review

Canon 5D MK II | 1/160 s | f/1.4 | ISO 200

For a few months now I'm a lucky owner of a Canon 24 f/1.4 L II lens. It's the fastest prime lens I own and use it for many of my landscape shots and almost for all night landscape shots (including both HDRs and astrophotos).

First some technical specs:

Apertures	f/1.4 - f/22
Field of view	84 degree
Minimum focusing distance	25 cm
Filter thread	77 mm
Dimensions	9.35 cm × 8.69 cm
Weight	650 g
Number of aperture blades	8
Auto-focus	YES
USM	YES
Image-stabilization	NO
Price	~ 1800 USD

The build quality is typical for L-series lens and it means it's excellent. The lens looks and feels very firm, solid and durable (in fact I think this lens looks more solid than most of the other L-lenses). The only downside is that it's pretty heavy (650 g) and quite large. It also uses 77 mm filter thread.

Sharpness is fantastic across whole frame. It might be a bit soft at f/1.4 (but still sharper than most of the lenses wide-open) but stop it down to just a f/2.8 or f/3.5 to get razor sharp images. However, please note that f/1.4 is still completely usable and I use it with success to capture many night photos.

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My favourite lens is...

I took this HDR photo of a dead tree in Masuria from 5 exposures at 2 EV spacing.

And the answer is: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM. I used it for as many as 21% of my already developed photos since I started photographing with digital cameras back in 2008.

I already mentioned it a few times but I will repeat it once more: it's a really great lens and very universal one too. At the time I was buying it I was also considering Canon 24-70 f/2.8 but longer focal range turned out to be really helpful in a number of situations. If I go shooting with only one body with a single lens most of the time this is the lens I take with me. It allows me to take both wide-angle landscape shots and some nice close-ups as well (70 mm sometimes wouldn't suffice). What's more if you use a crop camera like for instance 7D, the focal range becomes 38-168 so you can have an "entry level" tele-zoom lens if you cannot afford 70-200, 70-300 or similar.

The lens is quite compact and its weight isn't too heavy. It suits 5D MK II perfectly (it was/is its "kit" lens) but I had no troubles using it with other cameras like 50D and 400D as well.

Canon 24-105 isn't ideal though. Two biggest issues for me are chromatic aberration and flares. Both are much worse than in Canon 24 f/1.4 L II USM but given that the latter is a one fantastic prime - it is to be expected. But you know when you get used to images which contains very little of them produced by Canon 24 mm prime it's really difficult to stop comparing the results.

Sharpness is good - it's all that I can say :) Above photo was taken with this lens and it should appear pretty sharp (at least it does on my monitor at the time of writing). I've definitely seen sharper lenses (especially Canon 100 L Macro and Canon 70-300 L lenses) but sharpness is good and with a little of sharpening in post the images can be made very sharp.

Lens could be a little faster but as I use it mainly for travel photography it's sufficient most of the time - especially as from my tests this lens is sharpest between f/7.1 and f/8.0 and these and slower apertures are the ones I use most of the time with any lens.

So summing up this very short post - it's a great universal lens that all travel photographers should have with them. If you want to travel light it is perfect choice.

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Tutorial: Finding your lens sharpest aperture

Probably you've already heard that sharpness of your image depends on many factors and that one of them is the aperture being used. Each lens have its sharpest aperture which is usually somewhere between f/8 to f/11 (but not always). That means that photos taken with this aperture will be the sharpest ones.

Please note, that sharpest aperture differs from lens to lens and it can even differ for the same lens at different focal lengths.

Ok, we now know that being aware of sharpest aperture is useful and important but how can you find it out? It's very simple in fact.

1. Put a newspaper (or other text or drawing with strong lines and contrast) on the wall using a tape (make sure it cannot move as it can potentially ruin the test).
2. Mount your camera on a tripod just in front of a newspaper.
3. Set your camera to Aperture priority mode (Av for Canons) and set your ISO to 100.
4. Focus on the newspaper and switch to manual focus to avoid refocusing (what could result in different sharpness due to Auto-Focusing missing the target).
5. Use shutter release to avoid any camera shake and take photos of the newspaper at different apertures. Start with the widest aperture and close it slowly (I used 1/3 EV increment in my test below). To be honest to avoid touching the camera during the test I connected my Canon 5D MK II with my PC via the USB cable and released shutter and changed exposure parameters using Canon's EOS Utility.
6. Copy files to your PC.
7. View your files at 100% magnification and compare them. You will notice that some photos are more blurry than others. There will also be a few which are much sharper than any other. Note aperture of these photos - it is your lens sharpest aperture.

Here are some test shots for my new Canon 24 f/1.4 L lens, taken at apertures of f/1.4, f/7.1 and f/22.

From these images it should be easily visible that for this lens the sharpest aperture is f/7.1. If it isn't view the images in full size - the difference should be much easier to notice then.

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Canon 100 f/2.8 L Macro lens review

As I mentioned some time ago I recently got Canon 100 f/2.8 L Macro IS USM lens. After taking a few test shots during last weekend I can finally write a few words about it.

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Canon 100 L f/2.8 IS USM Macro - first photos

Recently I've bought Canon 100L f/2.8 IS USM Macro lens (uff these names get longer and longer...). Although I will be heavily testing it in a few days (and after that I'll write my review) I would like to share some photos and short thoughts today.

I can already say one thing - this lens is ultra-sharp. I used very small amount of sharpening in post - more simply wasn't required. Also it is unbelievable how much detail you can capture with it. This make it also quite difficult with some subject because you can capture dirt you don't see with your eyes.

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Canon 70-300L lens review

I'm a lucky owner of Canon 70-300L f/4 - f/5.6 IS USM tele-zoom lens for some time now. And here is my short review of this lens.

Parameters

I will start with a few technical information:

Apertures	f/4 - 5.6
Field of view	34.3 - 8.2 degree
Minimum focusing distance	1.5m
Filter thread	67 mm
Dimensions	14.3 cm × 8.90 cm
Weight	1050 g
Number of aperture blades	8
Auto-focus	YES
USM	YES
Image-stabilization	YES (4 stops)
Price	$1,599.00

Review

What really amazes me in this lens is image quality produced by it.  For me image quality is the most important factor and it was actually the main reason why I decided to get this lens.

Canon 70-300L produces images with great sharpness (really!), very nice contrast and colours. If you're not convinced after such short statement I would like to mention that some of images taken with this lens didn't require any sharpening in post-processing. No sharpening at all!

The new Image Stabilization system (same as in excellent 70-200 f/2.8 L II) offers about 4 stops of stabilization. And it really rocks and works as advertised (in some tests it proved to be even better). On my Canon 50D camera I'm able to hand-hold shots at 300mm and 1/15s exposure time without big problems. On 5D MK III I can hand-hold even longer times due to it having full-frame sensor. I was also successful even with longer exposures but the success rate was lower in these cases of course.

Focus is fast, accurate and silent due to ultrasonic engine.

Another interesting thing is that this lens is pretty compact. Most of the white long tele-zooms from Canon and other vendors are huge and heavy. 70-300 L is just slightly longer that 24-105L lens. If you're familiar with that lens this tele-zoom will be really easy to handle. It's also lighter than most of the Canon tele-zooms (still weighs 1 kg) but looks and feels as solid as all other white L lenses.

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