A New Lens for Australia

It was a hectic weekend leading up to our departure for Australia two weeks ago. I spent hours running errands and picking up last minute items for the trip. One of the last minute items I picked up was a zoom lens. I've had my camera now for 3 and half years and have wanted a zoom lens ever since I got it, but I've never been willing to allocate funds over other things (bikes, racing, etc) to make it happen. It took something like going to Oz to finally motivate me.

There were two Canon lenses I looked at in my price range. The first was a fixed f/2.8 70-200mm non-image stabilized (the image stabilized one was out of my price range), and a f/4.0 2 70-200mm image stabilized. When it comes to lenses more light is better so the obvious choice was the fixed f/2.8, but when I did a hand held test in indoor lighting, the f/4.0 was always crisper. There were two reasons I could think of for this. The first was the weight. The f/4.0 is smaller and narrower than the f/2.8 and almost half the weight of the f/2.8 (26.8oz vs 42.2oz). The difference was noticeable both in how it felt in my hand and in picture quality (less lens shake, etc.). The second is image stabilization. It uses Canon's most advanced image stabilization gaining the user 4 stops over the non-image stabilized version. It also features 2 modes, one for fixed shooting and one for panning. You can hear it spool up like a jet engine when you press the shutter release button half way. Another added benefit was filter size. The f/4.0 uses a 67mm filter compared to 72mm for the f/2.8. My other lens is a 67mm filter so all of my filters would be interchangeable.

The f/4.0 is on the left, f/2.8 on the right.

Even though it is clear the f/4.o suited my needs better it was a hard decision to make for my over analytical mind, but after using the lens on our trip I'm glad I chose it. My back was also glad because I lugged my camera bag to every event and adventure we had down under and it was heavy. Saving a couple pounds off the f/2.8 was well worth it.

Image stabilization does have its limitations, the most glaring is with a moving subject in low light. On our second night in Oz Peggy's friend Georgia took us into the bush to see some wild kangaroos. Like everything in Oz kangaroos mostly come out at night. We found one, but it was pretty dark and he was aware of my presence. Even though I was able to use a Y shaped tree branch for a tripod there is noticable lens shake, but the worst blur is due to the "roo" moving his head. I'm not sure if the f/2.8 would have negated it entirely, but I would have been able to shoot a faster shutter speed for less blur.

You can see it more in this one. There is less lens shake, but his head is slightly blurred as he turned to look at me.

I'm happy to live with that compared to the advantages mentioned above. Having some new glass re-invigorated my photographic stagnation of late and surely was a contributing factor to the excessive number of pictures I took. It's so nice to finally be able to capture some detail in far away wildlife shots and not have to crop, crop, and crop only to end up with a grainy image of what ever critter I was stalking.

More Oz posts to follow...