A wildlife photographer's dream

History:

I have always been fascinated shooting wildlife (animal and human) in their natural habitat (My favorite: a trip to Kruger National Park, South Africa). This sometimes requires an extremely steady hand and/or a really fast shutter speed. To obtain extremely fast shutter, one needs a lens with 2.8mm aperture or larger in conjunction with a fast motor. These professional grade lenses typically run $2000-$10000. That was not an option given my income.


Reason for purchase:

I originally purchased the 75-300mm USM lens but found some of my pictures that were to be my best came out blurred. I tell my friends that I meant to do that and it is "art".

Then, about 2 years ago, I scanned the pages of the Canon catalog, and lo and behold I saw the 75-300mm IS. I called around town and found a company that had it in stock. After about an hour handling and shooting pictures with the lens at the store, I found the pictures were crisp and clear except for one where I jolted the lens before the shutter closed. With the lens, I found I could shoot at about 1-2 f-stops higher than necessary with the appropriate shutter speed compensation. I do not know what I would do without this lens. I found it works great with the canon 2x zoom attachment to get 600mm zoom. I couldn't successfully achieve free handling this setup and realizing decent pictures without this lens.

This is now my main lens since I can take portraits and shoot distant shots with the same lens without hassle.

Advantages/Disadvantages:

In terms of features, one nice point is the ability to turn off the Image Stabilizer by moving a button on the lens. The image stabilizer is a set of lenses oriented like a gyroscope. As you push the button on the camera half way down(focus mode), you can hear the "gyroscope" move/balance and when the picture is taken, you see these inner lenses align inside the lens (scary at first but you get used to it). You also have the ability to manually focus the lens. Great portrait camera at 80mm and f/4.0. Not one bit of trouble with the IS system.

Drawbacks: quite heavier than the regular 75-300 lens. When hanging from my body, the lens always zooms out on its own due to the weight of the inner lens body. When the image stabilizer is ON, the number of shots per second diminishes on my EOS Elan.


As one can see, the pros outweigh (no pun intended) the cons.

This lens is definitely worth the extra $300.