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.

Since I can't kick, I shall click.

It's been almost year since I started playing with DSLRs. And friends and relatives have been asking me why I've suddenly picked up the camera.

All along, or since young, I've never thought I'd be interested in photography. I've always been the soccer guy. Field soccer, street soccer, or other ball games. Photography seemed a boring hobby, and I always left the shooting at outings to other people or professionals.

All was going well until I lost the ACL during a friendly match in June 09. Ironically it was on NJ's newly laid artificial pitch, one of the few places one could expect to get injured on. It was a harrowing experience. I pivoted on the right leg while swinging the left to clear the ball, and soon enough, a 'pop' went off and I lay on the grass. That's when I knew something had gone horribly wrong. In hindsight, I think the cause was a lack of warm up, since we were late for kick off, no time for proper warm up. Well, a lesson to be learnt there.




It was only 2 months after the first injury before I started running again. Soon, I got back to playing soccer. The doc said that if I could do the things I did before, op was not necessary. I was back to playing level and it felt as if I had not been injured at all. (although MRI reports are most of the time true) So I continued playing for 1 year, till August 2010.




I was playing with my usual Saturday khaki at Serangoon. This time round I was jumping to control the ball and landed awkwardly on my right leg. The knee was jarred and I experienced the same excruciating pain I did in NJ. If the ACL wasn't torn then, it felt like it did this time round. School was starting in less than a month's time. The injury worried my mum, whether it would affect my ability to travel to school etc. I did, in the end.




I was defiant, went back to soccer, and injured it a few more times. Each time it happened, I cursed my luck and the damn knee. Needless to say, a few more rounds of worrying for my folks. That's when I decided, no more soccer until I go for the op and get back to shape again.

Since then, I started playing with cameras. My cousin's Nikon D40 which was collecting dust at their home anyway. Brought it to Vietnam for holiday, and they made me the "chief photographer". That's how I started gaining interest.

So I had been shooting more and more. Camera-wise that is, and less and less physical soccer. I still watch matches though, supporting the red of Manchester. Soon enough I had realised photography had started becoming my hobby, replacing soccer. That is something I still find hard to believe, up till now. Then I got my own 550D, and have seen gotten lost in the world of shutters and lenses.

I still love soccer though, and really miss the times when I could play freely, without injury. I do wish to put on the boots once more. That's only after I successfully get the knee fixed, put in loads of strengthening and rehab, get back to full fitness, then return to rule the courts.

Till then, I'll have my cameras to distract me from the ball.

Canon 85mm f/1.2L review

I recently got the chance to play with the Canon 85mm f/1.2L lens. Some say it's the best portrait lens for Canon DSLRs, some say it sucks in more light than the black hole. So i got to try it out, albeit on my cropped 550D.

The 85L makes a pea out of the 550D (size-wise)

It is a heft of a lens, weighing in at a wrist-snapping 1kg. The sheer weight made a feather out of my 550D body, and after holding it for an hour, you could feel the strain in the wrist. Soon enough, you'll be forced to doing wrist gymnastics, or just change to another lens.

Why is it so heavy? Just take a look at the sheer amount of glass that accommodates the massive f/1.2 aperture. The moment I got hold of the lens, I took off the front and rear caps and this is what I saw:



Immediately I could hear the tune of Lonely Island's Jizz In My Pants going off my iPhone. I almost did. The clarity and size of the glass inside makes you forget about its wrist-snapping weight and begs you to mount it on to see how well it shoots. No pun(s) intended.

Lazing around in Chinatown

On the 550D, the field of view is equivalent to 135mm on a full-frame camera, due to the 1.6x crop. Thanks to its reach, I could take some interesting "paparazzi" portraits of people without getting in their face. In day conditions, focusing was good enough, not snappy though. The USM was always labouring hard to shift the massive glass around to focus.

The focus window

Focusing from minimum focus distance of 1m to infinity took slightly more than 1 second. Certainly not the fastest one around.

When shot at the widest f/1.2, the background bokeh is creamy and good enough to eliminate distractions in the background. It also allows for quick shutter speeds, so you can freeze the action. (or subject in the act)

Smoking life away

Did I mention the bokeh is creamier than your regular oven-baked macaroni and cheese.






The 85L performs great in the day, but how does it do at night?
I was at Esplanade on Friday night and that was the time and place where people go to unwind, after a hard day at work. Great location to snap more "paparazzi" shots.

It's been a long day at the office.

She did not have to worry about work

The lens had difficulty auto-focusing quickly at night, especially with moving subjects. The difference in focusing performance at night compared to in the day is as distinct as, well, night and day. Many a times you'll experience the focus mechanism go from close to infinity and back, before dumping question marks all over you. When you do eventually get it right, the moment's gone, subject's gone.

For still subjects though, chance of accurate focus is slightly higher. And when you do, you will be duly rewarded with wonderful bokehlicious pictures.

Just about the only still subject I could find below the Helix Bridge

My photo-khaki, Benjamin, working on his Olympus PEN E-PL2.

Some flower. Or sunflower?

Moving from outdoors to indoors. This lens performs well enough indoors, provided you have room all around you, not forgetting that its minimum focus distance is 1m. Coincidentally, I had my baby cousin to be my innocent little model.

Innocence personified.

Isn't she cute.

Once again, autofocus is quick and snappy due to the amount of light in the living room. And it's such a wonderful lens to use for portraits, once you get the focus spot on.


The Canon 85mm f/1.2 is a sensational lens, the monster aperture lets in so much more light than my regular kit lens. And as a portrait lens, it performs superbly, rendering anything other than the subject in focus blurrer than the sotong we eat. Not to mention the excellent build-quality of this grenade. However, the weight of it will not make good friends with wrists and arms when taking hand-held shots, unless there's a sturdy tripod willing to bear the load. The USM (Ultra-Sonic Motor) mechanism contradicts itself here, with slow focus speeds, worse at night. Still, it is a incredible lens for what it can do.

The Canon 85 f/1.2L. What a lens.

All in a day's work. My first "product" video on the Canon 85L.

And I took the plunge and got the Billie.

Bags. Camera bags. Messenger bags. School bags.

I've had the Crumpler Western Lawn Messenger bag for two years now and it has served me really well in the past 2 years. It's amazing how much I can stuff into this small-looking bag. I've also bought the Crumpler 5 Million Dollar Home when I bought my first DSLR (Canon 550D with 18-55mm kit). So far so good, bright green colour, but I've recently realised I was getting a little too old to be carrying Crumplers around. And that's when I stumbled upon the Billingham brand.

I began looking through their catalogue and thought their designs were really traditional-looking. Many users have commented that the bags were of superior quality and had the looks as well. They seemed a little too pricey for me at first. But after Chinese New Year, things rapidly changed.

Barely 2 days after the last day of CNY, I took the plunge (albeit having done lots of research and checking out the best prices in town). I got a friend to bring in the Hadley Pro.

It came in this really cool bag.

And here it is. The Billingham Hadley Pro in Khaki-tan trim. I chose the canvas one instead of the fibrenyte because I'd love the bag to age gracefully on canvas, rather than fibrenyte.


The bag came with a nice leather tag as well!

The front features the quick release leather straps and accompanying brass fittings.

Here's how it looks when you open the front flap up.
Also present are the twin flappy pockets.

The carrying handle feels absolutely solid. No worries about carrying it on the handle when the weight is too much for my shoulders.

Leather on canvas.

Leather and brass.

The Billingham tab.

This bag is actually a camera bag, as suggested by the padded insert compartment.

In the compartment, I can fit in (from left to right)
a Canon 50mm f1.8, a 1L Nike water bottle and another 24-105 f4 lens.

Here's how they look, standing against the bag.
The bottle can fit in the bag nicely, for the bag to be closed comfortably.

24-105 f4 / 18-55 kit lens / 550D

Nike bottle / 550D with 50mm f1.8 mounted / 18-55 kit lens
All three items fit in nicely, without any tight spaces at all.

Behind the insert, I can even slide in my 13" MacBook Pro.
And the MBP would fit in all the way, enabling the bag to close properly.

The insert can be removed too! And the bag becomes a nice messenger bag. Good for school.

2 textbooks, a foolscap pad and my MBP can all fit in there.

How about the pencil case? No worries there, I can even fit a calculator, wallet and iPhone in the twin flappy pockets in front, which can be made even bigger by unbuttoning them.


There is a zippered pocket at the back as well.
Capable of slotting some documents like passports or small notes.


The size of the pocket seems to suggest it may accomodate A4-sized documents, but the entry point wasn't generous enough. I couldn't fit my A4 pad in, unless I really tried to squeeze and cramp it in, which defeats the purpose.

Overall, the feel, looks and capabilities of the bag have sort of neutralize the pain of the cost of the bag. It certainly looks nothing like a Crumpler, but I believe with its build-quality, it can endure years and years of handling my current and future photographic gear, schooldays and the frequent photo outings in future. Now all it lacks is a film camera, which will be fulfilled when my grandfather's Nikon FG returns from the repair shop.