Today’s gear item is a bit of a specialty; depending on one’s subjects and shooting styles it might be of use. We’re going to look at the Canon 300mm f4L IS super telephoto lens.
My original uses for a telephoto lens of this length were in railroad photography, where the subjects are often a long distance away or they’re approaching directly and a telephoto lens can compress the scene. Environments such as the Columbia River Gorge or Mojave Desert are a great playground for a long telephoto lens. Many bird and wildlife photographer shoot exclusively with long lenses. I started off with a cheaper 75-300mm zoom lens but became disappointed by the softness of the lens at either end of the range; it was time to move up to higher quality glass.
Amongst Canon’s professional “L” series glass are a number of long telephoto lenses, the f2.8 ones start around $3,000. The f4 variety of the 300mm is available for around $1200, which puts it within easier reach of more people. The image quality is excellent, performing well even at f4 but sharpest when stopped down a bit. Canon’s two-mode Image Stabilization (IS) system allows for better results when hand-holding; even though the lens is fairly heavy I’ve found it workable without a tripod.
If you do a lot of work requiring a long telephoto, the image quality and features on this lens are excellent for the price. Purchase the Canon 300mm f4L IS lens via B&H Photo.
This is part of my Gear series, in which I take a look at photo equipment I’ve used
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Aaron, please link us up to some of your fav pics with this lens. Would love to see some of these shots. Thanks!
Will do. I'd intended to do it origially but had some things come up and wasn't able to work as much into this post as I wanted. Expect some 300mm photos here in the next couple of days.