This is addressed to all that use an EF 70-200/2.8 II: I'd appreciate to read some posts about your experience with it - in particular of those who use it with a crop cam. I have a 7D and a 50D as backup (I prefer crop cams for tele shooting). According to many reviews I read (e.g. on dpreview.com) the older Mark I version wasn't too sharp in its sweet spot so it was not the best solution for an APS sensor - much better for a full frame. So I invested in Tamron's much cheaper alternative. With the Mark II version things obviously have completely changed according to reviews that stress lab tests. Should do much better. Bryan writes in his review that this is now his favorite and most-used lens (but he prefers full frame bodys I understand).


Currently I use two lenses in that zoom range:


EF 70-200/4 L IS USM: superb sharp lens with very quick and accurate AF drive, light. This is my standard lens in particular for medium distance action shooting (birds, sports etc.). But as it is not very fast it is only an outdoor lens.


Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di Macro Lens: I was lucky to get a copy that with well adjusted lenses so I didn't have the trouble that Bryan reports in his review of this lens. It needed an AF microadjustment with both my 7D and 50D, of course. It is tack sharp (sharpness brakes only down in the medium zoom range a bit), fast, and it provides with 0.90 m minimum distance a quite good macro potential (another drawback of Canon's Mark I f/2.8). It is a superb portrait lens, too, and its bokeh does not meet Canon's L quality but is okay. The major drawbacks are that it has no IS (I miss that in particular when I do macro), and it's noisy micro motor drive is so imprecise that it mostly comes down to manual focusing - with f/2.8 and short depth-of-field a gamble (even with a good viewfinder as the 7D has). The latter started to really annoy me and I realized that I stopped using this lens very often. So the Tamron is a solid lens, but completely old school and does not meet today's level of photo shooting. I really think about starting to save many of my Cents to replace it by Canon's 70-200/II.


If you are lucky, you can get good results with the Tamron but you always need to shoot say 4-5 times to get a sharp pic (f/2.8, 1/125 s, 83.0 mm, cropped, shot with EOS 50D indoors):


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Thanks in advance to all for your comments.


Roland