Canon EF 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 USM

A few months ago I ran this threadlooking for a telephoto lens on a budget. I spent hours agonizing over different lens choices and settled on an old used lens, the Canon EF 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 USM. I figure Bryan will never review it as it is out of production and new announcements keep him plenty busy. I thought I would post a few pictures and thoughts so that we have a "knowledge base" about the lens around here.

Disclaimer: I am no Pro. The nicest lens I own/use is the Sigma 150mm f/2.8 Macro. I say that because I cannot compare this lens to L series equipment. I also warn you that the pictures below are not of the highest quality. I only have 800x??? editions of the images at the moment, but I will link to the full raw files when I get them online.

Now for my comments.

First, I am impressed with the AF. It is an absolutely silent, quick, and accurate, edition which is especially impressive as I shoot on an XTi.

Second, There is some vignetting as you can see in the all blue picture below on a 1.6x, but it isn't noticeable unless the corners are solid colors.

Third, it is a little soft, however I think it is better than my 28-105 f/3.5-4.5 II USM in that regard, though not by much.

Fourth, you will notice some CA in 100% crops such as the ORACLE plane below. This is a larger negative than with other lenses because DPP does not have a lens profile for this lens. (Can you create a custom one?)

Fifth, it takes some work to get a nice blur background because of the small minimum aperture (small size, large number, whatever[:)]) but when you do get it I find it pleasing. See the picture of the flower below.

Sixth, the Maximum Magnification is not all that great due to a 1.2 meter minimum focusing distance.

Seventh, Build is fairly nice with a metal mount. The entire barrel in front of the focus ring turns during zoom. Both the focus ring and zoom work well, though not as silky as could be. This lens will extend when facing downard. The front element does not rotate during zoom or focus (it is internal focus).

Summary: for $200-250 used this lens can be a good mid-grade for those of us who don't want to shoot with kit gear but also can't afford L. Pair this with a 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 USM or the above mentioned 28-105 and you have a nice kit. Toss in a 500D close up lens with 58mm threads and you can include macro with a good range for an affordable price.

Photos

All these pictures are the full-frame resized except for the ORACLE plane which is a 100% crop. I did no retouching on these pictures. RAW sharpness was set to "1" in DPP. Once sharpness gets boosted into the 5-6 range it made the planes nice and sharp. No color correction.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH...cle%201600.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH...n%20eagles.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH...M/s800/sky.jpg
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH.../s800/lily.jpg
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH...beechcraft.jpg
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_5rUpBITw16E/TH...eechcraft2.jpg

Re: Canon EF 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 USM

Hey,

I must say that I'm pretty impressed with what I see so far [Y]

However it's very clear that you use a low quality jpeg-conversion and it's hard to really judge the lens this way since the images suffer significantly.

However the first shots looks better than almost any shot I made at an airshow using a 7D and 100-400 this year.

It does have some chromatic aberrations, although if this is a 100% crop it isn't that bad at all.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Whatsreal

Summary: for $200-250 used this lens can be a good mid-grade for those of us who don't want to shoot with kit gear but also can't afford L. Pair this with a 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 USM or the above mentioned 28-105 and you have a nice kit

Sounds clear to me. I'm wondering one thing. Will they keep up with todays pixel hungry camera's? I'm wondering how it competes to the EF-S 55-250 IS for example.

Thanks for showing,

Jan

Re: Canon EF 70-210 f/3.5-4.5 USM

$200-$250 used seems like a high price to me.

Ihave bought a half dozen over the years for $75-100 maxium. Most of my family now has one. I just keep my eye on the local craigslist, I particularly look for older film cameras which sometimes have this lens along with the 50mm f/1.8 MK I for under $100.

Mine does have CA's as well, they are easy to remove. The CA's are more of a issue if you try to put a TC on it.