GEAR: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L I USM
February 20, 2008
For those of you who don’t care a lick about the technical side of photography, go ahead and click somewhere else. Here is my shallow (as opposed to “In-Depth”) review of the newest piece of equipment in my bag.
The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM (fancy terminology that really means nothing more than “This lens will mount on any EOS camera, has a focal range of 70mm to 200mm, has a constant f/2.8 aperture, is part of Canon’s “L” or “Luxury” line, and comes with the Ultrasonic Motor and built-in Image Stabilization features.” You can see why we abbreviate!) is an amazing piece of engineering.
One of the “Rules of Thumb” for photography, to ensure a sharp image is the “1/Focal Length Rule.” This basically means you want a shutter speed that is faster than 1 divided by the focal length. This is intended to stop the blur that can come in from human movement (the blood pumping though your veins, breathing, the effects of holding a long, heavy lens, etc.). So, for a 50mm lens, you wouldn’t want to shoot slower than 1/50th of a second. For a 200mm lens, you would typically want shutter speeds faster than 1/200th of a second to ensure the image was sharp. This rule of thumb become particularly important with longer focal lengths, because the length of the lens can exacerbate even the smallest of movements.
And this is where the amazing “Image Stabilization” or IS kicks in. The photo above is a 100% crop of this photo, which is of my coffee grinder in my kitchen. Following the rule of thumb, anything less than 1/200th of a second should have resulted in a blurry image. However, with the IS feature switched on, I was able to take this shot in pretty low light, at 1/25th of a second. That’s big. That’s huge! Being able to hand hold at much, much slower speeds and get shots this sharp…wow.
Later on I’ll post a more in-depth review of this lens (as per my New Years’ “Goals”), but for now, just know I am SOLD on the IS technology. Absolutely incredible!
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