Which lens?

froot said:
I have a Canon 450D for which I want to buy a lens for wildlife photography (mainly). I currently have two options available to me:
Canon EF 70 - 300 mm f 4.0 - 5.6 IS USM STABILISER (R7000)
or
Canon EF 70 - 200 mm f 4.0 L USM (Official SA dealer) (R7700) and then later adding the Canon EXTENDER EF 1.4 X II (R3700) (which brings it to 290mm f4.0).

Now my question is, which one would be a better buy? I took a look at reviews for both these lenses and the 200mm (white lens) is preferred above the 300mm (black lens), even with its IS. Can anyone help me on this?
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Howzit,

The reason the 70-200 F4 L is preferred is due to the the quality of the lens, as well as the fixed aperture through the focal length.

What you need to remember is that the 450D is a non full frame body and there for your zoom will be multiplied by 1.6x so the 70-200mm F4 L USM becomes 112-320mm

Personally I shoot with Canon and there is always huge debate over these two lenses as to which one is better. What we need to remember is IS cannot be added after the lens is purchased and the 70-300mm with your 1.6x conversion will give you a focal length 112-480mm.

So all of that said you need to decided do I want to get really close up in there with the IS or buy the L lens and have a fixed aperture?

I hope this helps in some way :D
 
drew137 said:
Howzit,

The reason the 70-200 F4 L is preferred is due to the the quality of the lens, as well as the fixed aperture through the focal length.

What you need to remember is that the 450D is a non full frame body and there for your zoom will be multiplied by 1.6x so the 70-200mm F4 L USM becomes 112-320mm

Personally I shoot with Canon and there is always huge debate over these two lenses as to which one is better. What we need to remember is IS cannot be added after the lens is purchased and the 70-300mm with your 1.6x conversion will give you a focal length 112-480mm.

So all of that said you need to decided do I want to get really close up in there with the IS or buy the L lens and have a fixed aperture?

I hope this helps in some way :D
Click to expand...

I understand most of what you are telling me here apart from the non full-frame body.... :) (ie a little help needed here)

I am most likely to go with the 200mm white lens above the 300mm IS black lens and especially the 500mm Sigma lens (which is out of my price range). I would have liked to go for the 200mm IS white lens but at R14k it's a little out of my league....
 
froot said:
Congrats on your 11000th...

I like the 100-400 quite a lot, but I don't have 16k to spend...
The 70-200 I mentioned up there is an L series, which is why it supports the extender. In your opinion, what would be the best option? I really am just focusing on wildlife photography, medium range shots (under 400mm range) and further on regular close-ups.
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Well, from what I've heard, the 70-300mm is a "L series" lens without the branding. It also uses Ultra Low Dispersion, as do the genuine L series lenses. It's a very good lens, but people will always opt for L. Just remember that the 70-200mm doesn't have IS, so you would need a tripod to get a steady shot, or lean against something etc... Check out www.photozone.de for in-depth lens reviews. At this point, you need to decide how much zoom you really want/need. The 70-300mm reaches further and has IS and produces very good quality. Tough choice. bwana loves his L :p
 
froot said:
I understand most of what you are telling me here apart from the non full-frame body.... :) (ie a little help needed here)
Click to expand...

A full frame DSLR has a sensor the same size as the image area on a 35mm SLR - 24x36mm. Most DSLRs, often referred to as "cropped", have sensors around 16x24mm or a little smaller. This size is called APS-C. They can share lenses with the full frame digital and film cameras, but the field of view will be smaller, making the pictures look like they were taken with a longer focal length. A 50mm lens on an APS-C DSLR will give the field of view of a 75 or 80mm lens on a full frame camera. The problem is finding good ultrawide-angle lenses for the smaller format. There are a few zooms specifically for the APS-C format that go down to around 10mm.

The advantage of the larger sensor is similar to the advantage larger film formats have - if you have to enlarge the image less, optical flaws will be less obvious. In digital, there's a further advantage in having larger pixels - they have less visual noise than smaller ones. The advantage of the cropped format DSLRs is that they can be lighter and cheaper than a full-frame camera, at a fairly small sacrifice in image quality.
 
froot said:
I understand most of what you are telling me here apart from the non full-frame body.... :) (ie a little help needed here)

I am most likely to go with the 200mm white lens above the 300mm IS black lens and especially the 500mm Sigma lens (which is out of my price range). I would have liked to go for the 200mm IS white lens but at R14k it's a little out of my league....
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If you're going to use it for wildlife then get the 70-300 - IS wont matter so much but the extra reach will and you'll save a few grand not having to get the extender.

I have the f4 70-200 and a sigma 28-300 and invariably reached for the 28-300 whenever I went to the game parks.
mercurial said:
Well, from what I've heard, the 70-300mm is a "L series" lens without the branding. It also uses Ultra Low Dispersion, as do the genuine L series lenses. It's a very good lens, but people will always opt for L. Just remember that the 70-200mm doesn't have IS, so you would need a tripod to get a steady shot, or lean against something etc... Check out www.photozone.de for in-depth lens reviews. At this point, you need to decide how much zoom you really want/need. The 70-300mm reaches further and has IS and produces very good quality. Tough choice. bwana loves his L :p
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Not true. You may need a tripod in some cases - or a suitable rest - but its hardly a prerequisite.

I regularly shoot mine at speeds of 1/60 handheld and during daylight (often the time when game drives happen) there is going to be plenty of ambient light.

When you're shooting animals the faster the speed the better because more often than not the animals are moving more than you are and IS doesnt do squat about that. :)
 
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bwana said:
Not true. You may need a tripod in some cases - or a suitable rest - but its hardly a prerequisite.

I regularly shoot mine at speeds of 1/60 handheld and during daylight (often the time when game drives happen) there is going to be plenty of ambient light.

When you're shooting animals the faster the speed the better because more often than not the animals moving more than you are and IS doesnt do squat about that. :)
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Oh ok. I was under the impression that without IS, the images will most often come out a bit blurry, unless you have a tripod or something steady to lean against. If that's not the case, then I guess not having IS is not such a bad thing.
 
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Thanks for the input guys. Will take a further look at both the 300mm IS and the 200mm L-series and then make my decision.
 
froot said:
Thanks for the input guys. Will take a further look at both the 300mm IS and the 200mm L-series and then make my decision.
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As mentioned earlier, go and chat to the folks at Outdoorphoto. They are all real life photographers and will give you the best advice for your needs. On my last visit, they talked me into an item R3000 cheaper than what I actually went in to buy.

[Also, I compared the prices of the lenses you mentioned, and they are within 3% of the place you mentioned.]
 
I've seen this thread on ODP and the Canon fanatics all said get the L. Some on this forum said they were stroking their ego.
 
Had a chat with family who likes those big things and they like both the 200 and 300mm Canon lenses. I took further looks and stuff and it seems there's a 99% of me getting the Canon 70-200mm F4.0 non-IS L-series.... and then later getting the 1.4x extender.
 
froot said:
Had a chat with family who likes those big things and they like both the 200 and 300mm Canon lenses. I took further looks and stuff and it seems there's a 99% of me getting the Canon 70-200mm F4.0 non-IS L-series.... and then later getting the 1.4x extender.
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Not a bad choice though until you get the extender it might be a little short.
 
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One of the important things is that the 200mm lens has a f4 straight through whereas the 300mm has a f4-5.6 from 70-300mm... so the lens gets darker as you extend the focal distance.
Another thing is that the Ring USM is a huge improvement over the Micro USM and one thing that I love is the FTM on the 200mm (I often make use of manual focus, having to disable AF the whole time would get annoying).
 
froot said:
One of the important things is that the 200mm lens has a f4 straight through whereas the 300mm has a f4-5.6 from 70-300mm... so the lens gets darker as you extend the focal distance.
Another thing is that the Ring USM is a huge improvement over the Micro USM and one thing that I love is the FTM on the 200mm (I often make use of manual focus, having to disable AF the whole time would get annoying).
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I know all about the 70-200 f/4 - I've been shooting with it for more than a year. :)
 
Yeah well.... :)
Can't wait till I get my hands on it though....
 
froot said:
One of the important things is that the 200mm lens has a f4 straight through whereas the 300mm has a f4-5.6 from 70-300mm... so the lens gets darker as you extend the focal distance.
Another thing is that the Ring USM is a huge improvement over the Micro USM and one thing that I love is the FTM on the 200mm (I often make use of manual focus, having to disable AF the whole time would get annoying).
Click to expand...
You shouldnt have to with the 70-300 either.
 
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