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Jason Bailey photo
Serbia, Belgrade
1 Level
742 Review
33 Karma

Review on πŸ“· Crisp and Versatile: Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM Lens Revealed by Jason Bailey

Revainrating 5 out of 5

It is what it is, but it's great at what it does.

The ins and outs of this lens are probably well known to anyone interested in this review. This is a 15 year old design and among Canon's "smaller" white lenses it is the heaviest and most expensive. The 11x zoom range requires numerous optical trade-offs, and sometimes they are visible. With just one lens is the best you can get. The lens certainly lives up to its L designation and is a lot better than the other two all-in-one lenses: the EF 28-200mm USM (a 19-year-old design) and the EF 28-135mm. both of which are set. There is some distortion at the wide end, but that's not a huge disadvantage for me as I don't often find structure in the viewfinder when walking around with this lens. The sharpness over the entire zoom range is particularly impressive. On a recent trip I caught the neighbor's cat with 300mm and I have to say the lens is as sharp as a cat's moustache! The image sharpness is clearly supported by the image stabilization, since the picture was taken with a shutter speed of 1/250 second. The street scene should show that at 28mm you can see an object (here needles on a bush) at close range with a large aperture. I should also mention that the autofocus is pretty quick at the long end (at f/5.6), even in lighting conditions that the camera (in Auto ISO) recognizes as ISO 32,000! If you can afford it and are strong enough to carry it, then it's a great lens considering its inherent (small) limitations.

Pros
  • Best in its niche
Cons
  • Poorly thought out

Comments (1)

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April 18, 2023
I love this lens