Canon 70 -300 zoom

[ChrisJB]

Hello. Does anyone have and use the Canon 70 -300 IS zoom lens? Is it any good? Having just bought a Canon 450D I figured this would be a reasonable all-round walking about wildlife lens, which will do for birds and anything else I stumble across on my walks. Weight and bulk I do not like to lug around and on the surface this seems to tick all the right boxes. But, if the resultant photos are iffy then I don't want one.
Thanks in advance.

Regards, Chris

[Gaza]

Hi ChrisJB
I have been using this lens as a walkabout lens for over a year now.
I love it, Not heavy, easy to use, Photo's are generally very good. No doubt there are better lens's out there, but at the price they are, I'd say good value for money
An example of a photo using the 70mm - 300mm IS

[Gaza]

Hi Chris
Forgot to say. I also use this lens for Bird in flight shots, Also pleased with the results

[Geoff F]

A good general purpose zoom, one of my most used lenses. Suitable for a lot of landscape and closer wildlife work. A bit short for a serious bird lens but all of the alternatives for longer reach are a lot heavier and far more expensive.

Used with a 25mm extension tube I have taken some reasonable insect photos, but a tripod is necessary for this.

IS makes it a good choice for handheld shots.

The only thing to remember is that it won't take a Canon converter.

[ChrisJB]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

The only thing to remember is that it won't take a Canon converter.

Will it take any other converters? And if so, do you lose auto' focus?

Regards, Chris

[galanthus]

Hi Chris

I own this lens and it's one of my favourite. It's certainly my 'walkabout til you can barely see' lenses as the IS gives it that bit more flexibility. Fairly sharp lens and very affordable. Will be unable to replace happily unless going into very expensive lenses. Lots of the pics on my website are taken with it, however, here's one of my fave examples.....

[Geoff F]

You should be able to use some third party converters (the Canon version has a projecting front glass which won't physically fit) but don't expect great results. Following advice on a photography site, I used a 12mm extension tube between the lens and converter for macro work but the results were disappointing and worse than cropping and resizing.

You will probably lose autofocus and a bit of light due to the extra glass.

My advice is that with this lens the best converters are called feet. Having said that, I have taken some excellent photos (normal, not macro) using the 12mm extension tube and manual focusing but you can't reach infinity. Not really sure why this worked. It might just be that I put extra effort into getting sharp manual focusing.