London South Bank

Saturday 14 August 2010

These images were photographed with my Canon EF 70-200mm IS lens which I bought in the summer of 2006.

Unfortunately I have not been able to get used to this lens; I am a shy person and the white colour attracts too much attention, there has been a few occasions where a complete stranger has actually stopped me and asked to peak through my view finder! I also do not like the vibrations from the IS, the constant hunting from the AF, having to stand at least 1.5 meters away before it can focus, the weight of the lens and the hit or miss quality of the photographs that I’ve been able to produce with this lens so after a while, I took the lens out of my camera bag and stopped using it.

Every year in late summer, I add it back to my camera bag for a few days and try to like the lens but every year, I am reminded again why I don’t like it and put it away again.

This summer, I had a wedding to shoot and I planned to use two Canon 5D bodies; the 24-70mm will go on one body and the 70-200mm will go on the other body but I had to play with the 70-200mm once again and decide if I will be comfortable using it for the wedding shoot. The 24-70mm lens was going to be the main workhorse for the wedding and I meant to use the 70-200mm lens for candid shots of the couple so I needed the lens to be very responsive.

The images I have picked below are the best from a day’s shooting and while the lens is versatile and would probably be great for a wedding shoot, it wasn’t very responsive and I wasn’t comfortable with it and missed a few shots trying to wrestle with it and when I began to dread pointing that lens at a potential subject, I knew it was over for this year so I put the lens away for another year and replaced the focal length with primes on the second camera body.

My setup for the wedding was the 24-70mm on the Canon 5D Mark 2 and for the second Canon 5D body, I went with the 85mm f/1.8, the 100mm f/2.8 macro and the 135mm f/2.0 and was so much comfortable with those lenses during the wedding shoot.

And the 70-200mm lens? I will take it out again next year but I know I will never fall in love with that lens!

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II | ISO 3200 | 200 mm | f/2.8 | 1/50 seconds ]

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II | ISO 3200 | 125 mm | f/2.8 | 1/50 seconds ]

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II | ISO 1600 | 190 mm | f/2.8 | 1/50 seconds ]

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II | ISO 800 | 140 mm | f/2.8 | 1/125 seconds ]

[Canon EOS 5D Mark II | ISO 800 | 173 mm | f/2.8 | 1/125 seconds ]