Which Canon EF 70-200 L to buy – The Answer –
Two days ago and after the announcement of the new 70-200 L f/4 IS I was confused and was wondering which of the 4 Canon lenses should I buy.
My question raised a great and very informative thread of DPReview and I think it is a great read for anyone thinking of buying any of the Canon EF 70-200 L lenses.
I’ll try to do a quick summary of the results here and I am sorry if I am going to miss anything from this 65+ posts thread…
1) The Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L is too heavy to be used at 200mm without IS unless mounted on a monopod/tripod
2) The main advantages of the Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L IS and non-IS are size, weight and of course price
3) The Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L image quality tends to be slightly better than the f/4 at apertures up to f/5.6
4)The main advantage of the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS the one stop (from f/4 to f/2.8) which will yield a possibility of one stop faster shutter speeds to freeze the motion
5)Another advantage Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS is that you can stuck a 1.4x converter and still get a 280mm f/4 lense or even a 2.0x converter and still get a f/5.6 400mm that is capable to auto focus on most cameras
6) Till today the msrp of the Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L IS is $1250 without a tripod mount, the price of the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS is $1600 with tripod mount, so the difference between them is only around $260
7) The Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L IS is overpriced unless it hits the market with a price lower to its expected MSRP
8) The Canon EF 70-200 f/4 L IS has an IS of up to 4 stops, while the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 L IS has an IS of up to 3 stops. So both will technically be able to be handheld in practically the same lighting conditions
Conclusion
If you can afford to pay the extra $260 and weight is not really a problem for you, the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 L IS seems to still be the best one to get
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chris