All Day I Dream About Photography

I have been trying to save money for a long time to buy myself this dream lense but now, after the recent announcement at photokina 2006 of the new 70-200 L f/4 IS I’m even more confused…

This lense comes now in 4 different versions
- The Canon EF 70-200 L f/4: At $600 the cheapest of the series and the lightest.
- The Canon EF 70-200 L f/2.8: At $1150 it is one stop brighter than the f/4 but still lacks the IS
- The Canon EF 70-200 L f/2.8 IS: At $1700 this lense was the “obvious” pick for me, more expensive than the above two, but still at 200mm a 2 stops IS is really a good ad-on
- The 70-200 L f/4 IS: Just introduced a couple of days ago, with an expected price of $1250 this lense is here to confuse me Lighter than the Canon EF 70-200 L f/2.8 IS and armed with a 4 stops IS (a canon premiere) This lense looks really competitive.
Knowing that f/2.8 is one stop brighter than f/4 and comparing the 3 stops IS of the Canon EF 70-200 L f/2.8 to the new 4 stops IS of the Canon EF 70-200 L f/4 simple calculations shows that the f/4 will still be able to be handheld at the same shutter speeds than the f/2.8 all this saving around $300…

One more question: any idea about the “filter size” of the Canon EF 70-200 L f/4?

Thanks

If you have any answer/thoughts to this please be kind to drop me a comment