Canon EF 75-300/4.5-5.6 IS USM

This lens happened to be my choice when I have got tired with my older EF 75-300 finally. I loved the focal range of its predecessor, but did not use it very much due to limiting aperture values. So I started to look around for some reasonably priced 300 mm lens with maximum f values around 2.8. Here was the problem: there was enough choice of very good lenses in the range 200/2.8 to 300/2.8, unfortunately it was hard to call them "reasonably priced". And then Canon came with that amazing solution: Image Stabilizer. The idea itself was not new - various versions of image stabilizers were already in use for a long time in video cameras. However, photography required incomparably higher quality and nobody was able to solve this problem for years. Finally Canon got it and until now is the only brand making lenses equipped with this impressive technology. 

The lens I bought this time was basically the same lens as the old one (EF 75-300) but equipped with the image stabilizer. It was not THAT expensive: I had to pay for it not much more than twice the regular EF 75-300 (some 500 USD). At the same time I accepted somewhat not-the-best optical quality at largest f values, but with the IS I can now use f 8 - 11 much more frequently. 

Honestly, I did not believe that the IS can really work until I had not tried it. The first experience was just amazing! I was so fascinated that I was ready to say that just the fun of making pictures at 300 mm and 1/60 s without a tripod was a reason good enough to spend 500 bucks. To my greatest amusement, you can easily see the effect of image stabilization even without making any picture: you just look into a viewfinder at the longest focal length, press the shutter release halfway to turn the IS on, and the image stabilizes immediately in the viewfinder. Of course this is impressive when you look at it, however even more impressive is that it really works when taking pictures. Fascinated with my new toy, I tried taking pictures in some obviously stupid ways. For example, I took a hand-held photograph in a church. The interior was so dark, that had to use 1/4 s. Would you ever imagine making pictures at 75 mm and 1/4 s?! The exposure time is long enough to notice movement of your hands even without making pictures. But the image stabilizer did the job! Even if it was well below the range specified by Canon as 'optimal' for using image stabilizer, the slide is at least acceptable for me. I also tried to use the lens with 1.7 x converter and with rather few exceptions the results were quite good. 

Is this lens a perfect and relatively inexpensive replacement for $ 5000 high quality 2.8 lenses? Certainly not. The optical quality is definitely not the best, and the image stabilizer does not give you exactly the same effect as f 2.8. Your maximum aperture is still 4.5 - 5.6, and that means that you always have larger depth of field than with f 2.8. On the other hand, this can be also considered a bonus: with the same film you can use much higher aperture numbers which gives substantially greater depth of field - a situation usually favourable in nature photography. I used the lens extensively during my trip to Africa. Especially during safari its value was hard to overestimate: with a regular lens I would make no more than 10% of the photographs I brought from Masai Mara and Nakuru. Its light weight and compactness (it is only slightly larger then the original EF 75-300) made it a perfect lens for climbing Mt. Kenya. To summarize: I love this lens, and if it had just slightly better optics, I would be ready to call it the perfect lens.