Simon Bradshaw (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
major_clanger) wrote2014-01-19 11:44 am
major_clanger) wrote2014-01-19 11:44 am
Entry tags:
Trying out the expensive upgrade option
Just before Christmas I had an email from photo-dealer Calumet about a special hire deal for Christmas: 75% discount for any hire starting on 23rd December. I had a look at their catalogue and realised that since their price model is that 4 to 7 days' hire is charged at 4 times the daily rate, this discount meant that I could hire a lens for a week for the same amount I'd normally pay for a day. This was too good an opportunity to miss to see if Canon's high-end lenses were as good as they're made out to be.
I own a Canon digital SLR (a 400D, the basic model as of about 7 years ago) and a selection of lenses. Apart from one third-party Canon EF compatible (a Sigma 10-20mm super-wide zoom) the other three are all Canon-own brand, but from the consumer end of Canon's lens line-up. Canon also make L-series lenses, with more robust construction, expensive optics and extra attention to detail such as weather sealing. You end up paying for this, of course, with most L-series lenses coming with four-figure price tags.
My current telephoto zoom is the Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS. To decode the numbers and letters, that means:
- it has a zoom range covering focal lengths from 70mm to 300mm (telephoto to extreme telephoto, especially on an APS-C sensor camera with a 1.6x crop factor).
- its maximum aperture varies from f/4 at short zoom to f/5.6 at long zoom. This is 'OK to so-so' but the alternative is a big, heavy and very expensive lens.
- It has image stabilisation to help avoid camera shake and thus blur when hand-held.
I got my lens about six years ago and have used it heavily ever since. I have to say I've generally been satisfied, but now I had the chance to see if the L-series counterpart was any better. This would be the recently-introduced 70-300L. This lens also has a maximum aperture of f/4 to f/5.6 depending on the zoom setting, and also has image stabilisation. It costs about three times as much though. Is there any difference?
Having picked up the lens from Calumet, the obvious difference was size and weight. The L-series lens is wider than the standard version, and is made of metal rather than ABS plastic. (Like most L-series lenses, it's also painted cream rather than black.) It's noticeably heavier, too.
For my first test, I tried some shots out the window at a nice bit of architectural detail over the road. This was without a tripod, but with the camera and lens chocked firmly in place and with image stabilisation thus turned off.
Firstly, the standard lens at f/8:
and at f/16
Then the L-series at f/8
and at f/16
These were taken in Camera RAW mode and have not been processed for colour. The only sharpening was very minimal baseline sharpening in the RAW conversion filter.
The first surprise is the difference in colour. As I said, there was no enhancement here; no playing around with saturation. The L-series lens does seem to have slightly more vibrant colour rendition and better contrast. This seems like a surprise, but there is a lot of glass in a decent camera lens (hence the weight) and it shouldn't be a surprise if the result can be a slight change in colour. L-series lenses supposedly use special low-dispersion glass, so this is probably what we are seeing here.
What about image quality? The pictures below show the centre and edge of the image at 100% scale, compared across all four shots.
This surprised me a bit. The L-series lens is visibly sharper than the standard one, but more pronouncedly so at f/16 rather than f/8. I'm surprised because normal wisdom is that lenses are best around f/8 and as you stop them down further diffraction starts to blur the image. Here, it seems that the 70-300L is happier at f/16.
A couple of days later we went for a walk around Edgbaston Reservoir. I got a lot of nice pictures (I'll post them separately) but I also took comparison shots of the Birmingham BT tower, which from where we were was about 2.5 km away. This is arguably a more realistic test; handheld, with image stabilisation on in both cases, and shooting at about f/5.6:
Apart from the slight colour difference and the possibly better contrast on the L-series lens, I'm not sure there's a great difference in resolution here.
The conclusion: in some conditions the L-series lens is undoubtedly performing better. But unless you really are down at pixel resolution, blowing up the middle of an already zoomed-in shot, it may not be very visible. The colour rendition and contrast are a bit better, but it seems to be the difference between 'good' and 'excellent'. At the end of the day the 70-300L may be an excellent lens but the standard 70-300 is a very good one in its own right and I don't see any benefit in upgrading from one to the other. So the rental deal (about £50 for a week) may have ended up saving me even more in the long run!
I own a Canon digital SLR (a 400D, the basic model as of about 7 years ago) and a selection of lenses. Apart from one third-party Canon EF compatible (a Sigma 10-20mm super-wide zoom) the other three are all Canon-own brand, but from the consumer end of Canon's lens line-up. Canon also make L-series lenses, with more robust construction, expensive optics and extra attention to detail such as weather sealing. You end up paying for this, of course, with most L-series lenses coming with four-figure price tags.
My current telephoto zoom is the Canon 70-300 f/4-5.6 IS. To decode the numbers and letters, that means:
- it has a zoom range covering focal lengths from 70mm to 300mm (telephoto to extreme telephoto, especially on an APS-C sensor camera with a 1.6x crop factor).
- its maximum aperture varies from f/4 at short zoom to f/5.6 at long zoom. This is 'OK to so-so' but the alternative is a big, heavy and very expensive lens.
- It has image stabilisation to help avoid camera shake and thus blur when hand-held.
I got my lens about six years ago and have used it heavily ever since. I have to say I've generally been satisfied, but now I had the chance to see if the L-series counterpart was any better. This would be the recently-introduced 70-300L. This lens also has a maximum aperture of f/4 to f/5.6 depending on the zoom setting, and also has image stabilisation. It costs about three times as much though. Is there any difference?
Having picked up the lens from Calumet, the obvious difference was size and weight. The L-series lens is wider than the standard version, and is made of metal rather than ABS plastic. (Like most L-series lenses, it's also painted cream rather than black.) It's noticeably heavier, too.
For my first test, I tried some shots out the window at a nice bit of architectural detail over the road. This was without a tripod, but with the camera and lens chocked firmly in place and with image stabilisation thus turned off.
Firstly, the standard lens at f/8:
and at f/16
Then the L-series at f/8
and at f/16
These were taken in Camera RAW mode and have not been processed for colour. The only sharpening was very minimal baseline sharpening in the RAW conversion filter.
The first surprise is the difference in colour. As I said, there was no enhancement here; no playing around with saturation. The L-series lens does seem to have slightly more vibrant colour rendition and better contrast. This seems like a surprise, but there is a lot of glass in a decent camera lens (hence the weight) and it shouldn't be a surprise if the result can be a slight change in colour. L-series lenses supposedly use special low-dispersion glass, so this is probably what we are seeing here.
What about image quality? The pictures below show the centre and edge of the image at 100% scale, compared across all four shots.
This surprised me a bit. The L-series lens is visibly sharper than the standard one, but more pronouncedly so at f/16 rather than f/8. I'm surprised because normal wisdom is that lenses are best around f/8 and as you stop them down further diffraction starts to blur the image. Here, it seems that the 70-300L is happier at f/16.
A couple of days later we went for a walk around Edgbaston Reservoir. I got a lot of nice pictures (I'll post them separately) but I also took comparison shots of the Birmingham BT tower, which from where we were was about 2.5 km away. This is arguably a more realistic test; handheld, with image stabilisation on in both cases, and shooting at about f/5.6:
Apart from the slight colour difference and the possibly better contrast on the L-series lens, I'm not sure there's a great difference in resolution here.
The conclusion: in some conditions the L-series lens is undoubtedly performing better. But unless you really are down at pixel resolution, blowing up the middle of an already zoomed-in shot, it may not be very visible. The colour rendition and contrast are a bit better, but it seems to be the difference between 'good' and 'excellent'. At the end of the day the 70-300L may be an excellent lens but the standard 70-300 is a very good one in its own right and I don't see any benefit in upgrading from one to the other. So the rental deal (about £50 for a week) may have ended up saving me even more in the long run!
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In fact I replaced the Canon 17-85 I got with the camera (as a better-than-the-basic-kit-lens deal) with the 17-55 f/2.8 in part because I spent an hour editing the CA fringes out of this picture so that I could blow it up to poster size.
Hmmm. I may on reflection downgrade the standard 70-300 to 'good'. Still not convinced I need to drop the best part of a grand on an upgrade though... Must! Resist! New! Photo! Toys!
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We were in Genoa recently and there were big liners and tall ships in harbour. Taking with my usual macro/micro was gard work!