Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Everything the other reviewers say about the incredible sharpness, rapid auto-focus and build quality of this lens is absolutely true. What else can you say? It's a truly awesome piece of glass that will leave you wondering why you didn't get one sooner. It will also make it impossible for you to consider buying anything besides "L" series glass in the future. That's the bad part. While this lens is reasonably priced, it stands by itself in that category for "L" glass. Now if Canon would just come out with some "L" series EF-S lenses, they might be able to offer them at a similar price. But for now, this baby's the bargain of the bunch. And don't worry about the 1-stop loss of light compared to the f/2.8 version. Just change from 100 ISO to 200 ISO and you've got the same shutter speed. Worried that it doesn't have IS? Get a tripod! You should be using one anyway. Stop reading and buy it already.

Despite most people giving this lens a five-star rating, i did not see anything overly great about it. Six hundred dollars buys you great build-quality- a metal mount, a real manual focusing ring, and a USM motor, but in practice this lens didn't perform much better than one of my Cheap Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6 zoom lenses. Like a few of my photographer-friends pointed out you pay for durability and optical quality, and you get those things with this lens. In my opinion, you could get just as good results with a general-purpose zoom lens- and this lens is not much faster than a regular zoom lens either. The lens hood wasn't that great either. It does its job, but it doesn't stay in place (it doesn't lock on). It's made of a great material inside though. I am sure most people reviewing this product here are professional photographers. I, however, am representing the at-home amateur photographer on a budget. The quality of the glass may be better, but in the end, i did not see a four hundred dollar difference (considering the cheaper zoom lens was $200 dollars). I found this lens great for portraiture, but it performed basically identically to my cheaper lenses with other subjects like flowers.

In conclusion, you get a little sharper results and MUCH BETTER build quality with this lens. Do you get your money's worth? I do not feel you do. Perhaps it would be a wiser decision to save up a lot more and spend your money on the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lens. I learned my lesson with this lens, and am going to stick with cheaper, sharper, prime lenses. If you are on a budget, you should perhaps spend your money differently.

If you want to share an opinion with me, you can contact me at nathangrammatico@yahoo.com, or nathan_grammatico@hotmail.com. I am not giving Canon a bad name, i am expressing my opinion.

I came upon this lens yesterday (June 11th 2008) and was excited to actually test run an "L" lens versus my regular canon/tamron lens and was disappointed. Is this what "L" series is about?
This day I was out shooting landscape beaches, vegetation, flowers, and dockyard shots where I stumbled upon another photographer having shot similar stuff that day with this 70-200 f4 L. So I compared her shots to both my 18-55 ef s IS canon and my Tamron 70-300 4-5.6 non IS.
SO I used my rebel xs( 1000d) and shot some similar stuff with the 70-200L vs my Tamron 70-300. Here are my findings.
The test contained shots at sunset at a dockyard here in the Caribbean, in lowlight and almost no light to truly see the grade.
1. In decent light the L was nice and sharp...just a little bit sharper than the 70-300 tamron. Nothing staggering here, but the tamron lens was brighter in colour.
2. L 70-200series was solid built felt secure, but then I thought it was way too heavy for carrying around on my neck for long periods, compared to the light weight 70-300 tamron I had carried for almost 5 hrs in the sun.
3. The daytime shots I had seen from the L 70-200 did not jump out or surpassed what I had taken on the 70-300 tamron, in fact the tamron responded better i terms of colour.
4. It was nice to zoom on the L and the physical lens zoom internally as opposed to the outside plastic extend on the 70-300 tamron, just as this may be attractive to some with an L lens so it may be equally attractive to see your ordinary Lens extend its barrel...looks intimidating, draws attention.
5. Both lenses had similar representations in the low lit pictures in the end, though the L was quicker to focus. Tamron had better colour still in lowlight. Both cameras found it difficult when it came to blurring because of the non IS so again camera man technique is important.
My finding: Unless there is a big difference when choosing lens like IS versus non IS or desired focal lengths be careful in choosing a lens because of a NAME or expected performance as opposed to what it really does.
Yes if I had the cash to waste I would buy an L series lens for every need, but even in this case being non IS is somewhat of a challenge and I would prefer an IS lens with this focal length (70-200 or upward).
A good camera person will make an average or lesser lens work well, good compositioning, contrast, colour modes, shutter speed etc vs a great lens under an average user.
The end product picture is the measure mark, not all the features, this is extremely important in photography to remember, there are too many gimmicks concerning brands and so called improvements.

Would I buy this L 70-200 f4: Not against a 70-200 or 300 IS lens of similar picture quality, weight is also too heavy, and this lens doesn't even stay on the cam that long, it's range is not very long say 70-300, and it's not that impressive for the price.
But yes if I wanted a 70-200mm only and this was available for less money.

This is a great lens. Initially, I was contemplating between this lens, the 70-200 f/4 IS lens and the 70-200 f/2.8 lens. From a day to day practical use perspective, the 70-200 2.8 was just too heavy for my spouse and I. Also, because most of the pictures we take with this lens is outdoors, there is sufficient lighting with the f/4. IS would have been nice, but I couldn't justify spending an extra $500 for capabilities that I rarely use in a 70-200 lens (the practicality of using this lens indoors for me was neglible).

As far as Amazon, the $560 price is excellant. However, amazon needs to work on it's shipping. Amazon stuck this L series lens in a very big cardboard box with almost no packaging material, allowing the lens to float around the box as it's sent via USPS. Not exactly the way I would treat an L series lens, and perhaps I would be more upset if this lens was $1000+ dollars. So amazon gets a 1 star on packing and shipping.

Not bad , I don't use it every day but it seems to work well