The Canon EF 70–300 mm f/4–5.6 IS II USM doesn’t have any problems with the longitudinal chromatic aberration. At 300 mm its performance is very good; at 135 mm the colouring of defocused images is a bit more pronounced but still it can be considered low.
Now time for the lateral chromatic aberration – the first of graphs below shows the performance on the edge of the APS-C sensor, the second one concerns the edge of full frame.
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An interesting division can be observed here. In the middle of the range of focal lengths, so at 135-200 mm, that aberration is negligible and won’t bother you at all. On both ends of the range of focal lenghts, however, it is on a borderline between low and medium level. There are no serious reasons to complain but the chances of noticing that aberration increase.
These are results comparable to the performance of the more expensive L-series lens but, in that case, the values were generally more even, never exceeding 0.08%. In the case of the lens tested here sometimes the values are close to 0.1%.
Canon 5D III, RAW, 135 mm, f/8
Canon 5D III, RAW, 300 mm, f/5.6
Spherical aberration
First photos of this chapter don’t show any significant ‘focus shift’ effect but circles of light we got in front of and behind the focus are able to tell you more. At 300 mm both circles are similar so the spherical aberration is corrected in a proper way. At 135 mm the situation is different. The circle in front of the focus features a noticeably lighter rim, the circle behind the focus is devoid of it so there are problems with spherical aberration for sure.
