Friday, January 06, 2006

300mm of Fun

This year, Santa brought a new Canon lens, 70-300mm to go on the Canon 20D that was last year's gift.

Recently, we took a vacation down to Santa Cruz where I took pictures of butterflies clumped together on tree branches, and wetsuited surfers riding the waves. In each case, I got some good pictures but only by extensive cropping, losing enough detail that it would be tough to enter those pictures in competition or get good prints.

Hoping to use the new lens soon for some birdwatching pics along the SF Bay shore!

This lens is the mid-range of Canon's 300mm lenses for mere mortals, that is, the ones without "L" glass. The highest-priced one is the super-compact DO model, which uses some optical engineering to give the same amount of telephoto without actually extending the lens. The lowest-priced one is actually a very inexpensive model without Image Stabilization (IS) or Ultrasonic motor (USM). I couldn't justify twice the $$$ for the DO lens just to make the camera easier to handle. I was very tempted by the cheapest model -- it should be affordable for anyone with a Canon SLR -- but the bigger and heavier the lens, the more important the IS and USM features are. No point in having a 300mm lens where I couldn't handhold a steady shot at full zoom!

Tags: , , ,

No comments: