Canon showed off at its expo two new zoom lenses that are as different as night and day. On one side, the 70-300mm F4-5.6 L IS zoom lens offers a range of high-powered telephoto reach with a seemingly excellent image stabilization system. On the other side, the 8-15mm F4 L fisheye zoom lens offers a wide to really-super-ultra-wide angle, accomplishing some impressive optical gymnastics in the process. I spent some time with both lenses, and I was impressed (and at one point, amazed) by what I saw.
Canon 70-300mm F4-5.6 L IS
The 70-300mm lens got remarkably close to Canon’s demonstration subjects, a group of ice dancers in a mock-up of the Rockefeller Center ice rink. At full 300mm reach, I could capture sharp close-ups of the dancers’ faces as they spun on the faux ice.
Unfortunately, Canon didn’t let me use the lens with my own camera, or record the pictures on my own CF card; I had to use the EOS 60D they paired with the lens, and I couldn’t keep the pictures for analysis. However, from what I saw on the 60D’s screen, the lens managed to take incredibly clear, accurate pictures even at high speeds. The seeming sharpness is a testament to both the lens’s optical elements and its image stabilization system; my hands aren’t particularly steady, and a 300mm zoom would usually be a blur-fest under any conditions.
While the lens is certainly solid, it’s not particularly heavy and seemed very easy to carry on the 60D’s small frame. The focus and zoom rings are large and and grippable, and the three autofocus and stabilizer switches are similarly big, making thumbing the different settings and adjusting focus and zoom while staring into a viewfinder very easy. The autofocus seemed quite fast, rapidly locking on the faces of the ice dancers at full zoom.