Canon EF 70-200 mm f/4L IS II USM review - Summary

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Canon EF 70-200 mm f/4L IS II USM

6 November 2019

Arkadiusz Olech

11. Summary

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pros:

solid and sealed barrel,
excellent image quality in frame centre,
very good image quality on the edge of APS-C sensor,
good image quality on the edge of full frame,
very good control of longitudinal chromatic aberration,
low lateral chromatic aberration,
slight distortion on APS-C detector,
lack of coma-related problems,
practically zero astigmatism,
negligible vignetting on APS-C sensor,
nice out-of-focus areas,
silent and accurate autofocus,
efficient optical stabilization,
very good cooperation with the TC 1.4x III teleconverter.

Cons:

slight spherical aberration,
performance against bright light could have been a bit better,
higher vignetting than that of direct rivals.

The Canon EF 70–200 mm f/4L IS II USM is undoubtedly an excellent lens. The list of its good points is impressive and the number of flaws- low. What's more, the cons list includes rather small slip-ups than serious disadvantages. Still the rivals aren't idle and, for instance, the Tamron 70–210 mm f/4 Di VC USD, tested by us last year, can compete with the Canon on equal terms and it remains noticeably cheaper. Currently you have to pay about $1200 for the Canon, twice more than for the Tamron. On the other hand the older version of the stabilized Canon 70-200 mm f/4L costs $300 less than the new instrument so, in fact, it's really worth considering to buy the newer lens.

If you don't like compromises and you are a fan of brand-name lenses the Canon EF 70-200 mm f/4L IS II USM might be a good choice; I don't doubt you'll enjoy using it.