Canon 70-200mm F4L IS - Does it POP?

It's my cousin's BMT Graduation Parade aka POP today!

For this special occasion, I borrowed the Canon 70-200mm F4L IS lens from a friend. Some may ask, why not the f2.8 one?! Well, since the parade was in the day (which actually turned out to be a scorchy, sunny morning), I did not need the extra stop, and hence the extra weight. The f4L IS weighs 760g while the f2.8L IS weighs double at 1.5kg!

Here's some shots taken at home before heading to the parade.

"70-200 f2.8L" | 70-200mm f4L | "24-105 f4L" | 15-85mm | 18-55mm | 50mm f1.8

Compared to the f2.8, it's thinner and shorter as well.

Anyways, as an L-lens, you'd expect great build-quality from this lens. And it IS superb with all metal barrel interrupted by the well-weighted rubber zoom and focus rings. The rings are wide enough to perform a confident zooming or focusing action. Both actions are internal, meaning the lens does not extend or retract as a whole. Very handy indeed. The diameter of the barrel and weight of the lens make it very easy to handhold it when mounted on my 550D. Overall feel is well-balanced.

Ok let's cut to the chase - the performance of the lens.

The parade was held at The Float@Marina Bay, aka the Floating Platform. Guests like me would be sitting about 150m (might be wrong due to my unconvincing agar-ation) from the actual parade ground. Another way to guesstimate the length is that, anyone with a 50mm prime or 15-85 zoom lens would have trouble getting face shots of the soldiers in the parade. I was well-armed with this 70-200 lens.

There was some waiting time before the parade started (well what's new anyway about waiting to rush and rushing to wait). Guests were slowly but steadily streaming in and filling up seats.

"Here! Here!" (Not waving to me anyway, but still caught the lens' attention)

The first thing that struck me when taking this picture was the focus speed. It was certainly snappy and locked on focus accurately, allowing me to grab the shot while they were still waving.

The troops have emerged. Thankfully, no maids contingent today.

Soon the marching contingents emerged from the holding area. When taking shots of subjects on the platform itself, zooming in all the way to 200mm enabled relatively easy identification of faces. One advantage of this lens is the constant f4 aperture when using the whole focal length range. The benefit is very obvious - exposure remains the same whether zooming in or out, thus you can use the same shutter speed throughout.

After a few minutes, the whole parade was just about formed up and it was time to spot my cousin, which was in the company furthest away from the guests.

200mm @ f4

100% crop of the above picture. There he is!

Looking at the 100% crop of the identification shot, I was blown away by the amount of detail and quality of the image captured. Remember, all shots were taken handheld. The sharp pictures had to be attributed to the Image Stabilizer (IS) in this lens. It is a workhorse of a system, perhaps too hardworking. When half-pressing the shutter button to recompose the shot, a very audible hum can be heard, and also felt. It's like the engine of a Subaru at idle, some may like it, some may not. I'm okay with it, as long as it produces sharp pictures like this in the day.

Here's another shot, this time of the parade commander saluting the Reviewing Officer.

200mm @ f4


100% crop

Once again, the image is so sharp you can almost smell his sweaty uniform. This lens inspires confidence in the photographer. You can almost never miss a shot.

An unfortunate casualty. Probably exhausted from the 24km march earlier.

March past

POP lo!

At the end of the parade, I was proud of my cousin, having completed the 2 months in BMT, endured the gruelling 24km route march and then finished with the final Graduation Parade. I was even more satisfied with the performance of the Canon 70-200mm f4L IS lens. The fast enough aperture, coupled with the IS workhorse, gives very high quality output that doesn't disappoint. It is light enough to handhold in day shots and is built as if to go for war battles. One gripe is the noisy IS mechanism. But that's just nitpicking. Superb lens for the occasion.

Now I'm sad I'd have to return it tomorrow.