Found a few (countable) dust particles inside my 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens

I bought it in last August.


Is it normal? I thought 70-200 2.8L IS is a weather/dust resistant one...

Mine has one, that particfle is probably from the factory. Don't worry it will not affect your image quality.

I'd contact canon and see if they'll offer you a courtesy cleaning. They've been very generous with those for me. I've never had it with the 70-200 that I've noticed, but I had some dust get inside a 28-135, and later a 180mm Macro (my fault to use Kleenex to clean the rear lens element). Actually, they gave me two courtesy cleanings on the macro, though the first one didnt' actually clean the Kleenex particles out. They wanted to charge me for the second, and I told them that if they charged me for the second, and the first one wasn't done correctly, they never actually gave me a courtesy cleaning. (it was a more drawn out conversation than that, but I was a little bit of a pain). They decided to give me the second cleaning for free, and I am proud to say I've been saying nicce things about them ever since. The The turn around isn't speedy, but it is not so bad either. Once they actually covered a bent mechanical part in the autofocus mechanism. I noticed that my 16-35 had a weird high-pitched sound zooming one direction, and it really bothered me. They found the problem, which was obviously the result of me dropping the thing a few times (by accident). Regardless, no pain, just a warranty repair. I'm pretty happy with Canon service.

Lens will get dusty along the time, that's normal. My 24-70L is inthe similar shape too, the dust is quite visible by inspection but does not show on image at all even stopped down. So shouldn't be an issue optically, but I found that I always need to take effort to overcomethis phycologically... And it might affect your resell value if you ever need to put the lens for sale.


Some Sigma lenses, as I have seen, had dust right out of the box. At least Canon doesn't do that very often.[:D]

As the others have said, it won't affect image quality. Mine has several small particles.


Think of it like your car windshield. As soon as you get it replaced due to a little chip, the chances of getting hit by a big rock increase by 50%. Let it go until you actually notice a problem, then send it in to get cleaned. With a few specs of dust it might come back worse than you sent it out.