A New Religion
I mentioned yesterday that we bought Donna all new kit, as far as photo gear goes. The most amazing piece of all that stuff is the Canon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 IS USM lens. The key to all it’s photographic goodness are those two little letters, IS. Working with that lens allowed both of us to get images we simply shouldn’t have been allowed to. Here are some examples of images I managed to get:
Created with Paul’s flickrSLiDR.
Every one of these is hand-held. I found that, at 300mm, I was able to hand-hold the lens as low as 1/80th of a second, although 1/100th was a more comfortable “minimum” shutter speed. It’s amazing. It’s incredible. It’s image stabilization!
Even with image stabilization, it’s important to hold the camera and lens correctly — especially at long focal lengths. While IS is impressive, it’s not a cure-all for bad technique. Donna shows the right way to do it in the picture at left.
Today’s outing solidifies my desire to get the 70-200 f/2.8L IS lens, and I’ve decided to add to that the 2X converter as well. For the time being, I’m pretty darned jealous!
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Those are nice and sharp.
Does the IS lens take a little getting used to?
Do you feel a little drunk at first?
Thanks.
IS/VR/OS/whatever you want to call it, at least in Canon’s implementation, isn’t all that noticible through the viewfinder, in that it doesn’t tend to “swim” around any. You do hear and feel the lens working, and you do need to think about which mode you should be using. But, otherwise, it’s pretty transparent.
Theresa - This lens took absolutely no getting used to. Right out of the gate, it was great to use.