Canon EF 70-200 mm f/2.8L IS II USM
11. Summary
- excellent build quality and solidity of barrel,
- sensational sharpness of photos in the frame centre,
- very good quality of photos on the edge of APS-C and FF sensors,
- chromatic aberration corrected in the right way,
- negligible distortion,
- low coma,
- slight astigmatism,
- sensational autofocus with regard to both speed and accuracy,
- perfect image stabilization,
- rich standard accessory kit.
Cons:
- the work against bright light should have been better.
It might be one of the shortest summaries I have written so far. Without any doubt we deal here with the best stabilized 70-200 mm f/2.8 lens on the market. If you can afford it and if you need to use such a type of instrument, you really shouldn’t think twice.
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I owe one more remark to attentive Readers. In March 2010 Canon Polska made the first specimen of the tested lens available to us and we almost completed its test. We also presented sample shots which stirred up a lot of controversy at that time because many people considered them to be weak, of bad quality. The Canon company informed us that that version of the lens was only a front-end model and they asked us to remove the photos from our page, promising that we would get the production version, which was supposed to be optically better.
As I analyzed the data concerning both versions of the lens which reached our editorial office I can honestly say Canon was right. The front-end version is indeed worse than the production version but just slightly. The front-end model was still sharper than the predecessor and the model without stabilization and it was able to generate photos of very high quality. The complaints stemmed from one simple fact – in our sample photos we applied the minimum sharpening level of JPEG files.
Sample shots
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/160 s, ISO 400 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.32 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 102 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/250 s, ISO 400 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.6 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/200 s, ISO 400 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.27 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/3200 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 7.28 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 135 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/2500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.34 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/2500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.23 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/2000 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.44 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/3200 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.61 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/100 s, ISO 800 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.71 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 135 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 3.82 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 140 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/160 s, ISO 200 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 4.98 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 200 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 4.3 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/2.8, exp. 1/2500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 7.03 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 100 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 7.31 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.99 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.15 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 140 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/3200 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.16 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/3200 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 4.97 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 120 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/1000 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 7.37 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 8.86 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/2000 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.98 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/1250 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.98 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 135 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.11 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.31 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/800 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 7.56 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 135 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/640 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.61 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/640 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.83 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 70 mm, f/8.0, exp. 1/500 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.32 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 140 mm, f/8.0, exp. 1/800 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.66 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII Parameters: 200 mm, f/8.0, exp. 1/800 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.24 MB |
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Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII + TC 1.4x Parameters: 280 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/3200 s, ISO 100 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 4.43 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII + TC 1.4x Parameters: 280 mm, f/4.0, exp. 1/4000 s, ISO 200 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 5.87 MB |
Camera: Canon 1Ds MkIII + TC 1.4x Parameters: 280 mm, f/5.6, exp. 1/1600 s, ISO 200 File: JPEG, 5616×3744 pix, 6.12 MB |
