Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras
Review by Frank R. Shoemaker Jr. "Frank" : Outstanding Lens!

I have used a different brand 70-300mm zoom before which worked well, but it was noisy and slow to focus. The Canon 70-300mm is absolutely silent and extremely fast in focusing, and produces absolutely outstanding photos. So good in fact, that I have posted a few of the images under this lens for you to judge yourself. Photos that I took at the Atlanta Zoo, under all types of lighting conditions. The lens produced incredible photos. All were hand-held shots, most of which were at the full 300mm range. And the IS is incredible. I had one photo which was taken in the shade and I was shooting with aperture priority and wide open. I did not realize how well the IS stabilized my photo till I looked at the exif data on my Flickr site - the shutter speed was 1/10th of a second, hand-held, and at 275mm. What more can you say about a lens, to obtain sharp photos like that. This lens is an absolute winner for me! For a sharp, fast, quiet lens with a tremendous zoom range, this is the next lens you want to buy!

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras
Review by pveman : Quite happy with the lens

After debating between this and the 70-200 L series I decided to purchase this lens. I have been pleasantly surprised by the results. I also own the 17-85 and the 50mm 1.8 lenses and I have found that I have gotten the "most pleasing" results from this lens. The pictures have been very sharp from my 20D - even in the 200mm - 300mm range. I've also been happy with the quality of the bokeh.

The primary drawback I see is that the AF tends to hunt a fair amount when confronted with low contrast images. That being said, I used it for some flying bird shooting at the wildlife refuge and was surprised to see how many of the shots were in sharp focus. However, it was a little bit of all or nothing. Several shots were also wildly out of focus. Since the lens is fairly slow to focus, you never know what you're gonna get with such a fast moving object against the distant sky.

I had much more consistent results when shooting soccer, softball and football in the park. The AF speed did not present an issue for any of these activities and the results were excellent.

I wish the lens were a little less expensive but I the prints I have gotten from my 13 X 19 printer have been worth the extra money.

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras
Review by David Vandevoorde : Fast AF, Excellent IS, good sharpness

I bought this lens to replace an EF 100-300mm (USM) that we had from my wife's film shooting days (not a common lens to have, apparently; the 75-300mm seems to be more widespread). That older lens produced some surprisingly good pictures (quite sharp), but handheld shots were hard to get right at long focal lengths.

The image stabilization feature of this lens works remarkably well, but it's quite a bit noisier than that of the EF-S 17-85mm IS (my first IS lens; you hardly hear the IS gyrations at all on that one). The sharpness is quite good (probably a tad better than that of the EF 100-300mm, although it's not a foremost strength of this lens in my opinion). I was surprised by how much faster I can acquire focus with this lens, even though reviews suggested that it still falls short of L-series lenses (see e.g. the "flying gull" shot I uploaded to the "customer images" set).

If you want to shoot hand-held at 150mm+, I don't think this lens has much competition under $1000 for Canon EOS users.

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras
Review by Bryan Duggan : "The hidden L lens..."

I bought this lens about a month ago when I purchased my Rebel XT.

I was initially dissapointed by the image quality but it turned out that I actually had a bad filter on the lens. Once I removed that cheap filter the lans came to life and has blown me away!!

If you read some of the forums there are actually Canon owners complaining that this lens is too good and has effectively devalued their expensive "L" lenses!

The only negative thing that I can say about this lens is that the front element rotates while focusing, making using a circular polarizer somewhat cumbersome. The Image Stabilizer really is a technological marvel though and will leave you wondering why every lens doesn't come with it (the answer is that it adds to the weight and IS isn't cheap).

This weekend was the first time the weather cooperated enough for me to try it outdoors. I went to a small local zoo and took a picture of a red fox from about 30ft away... through 2 wire fences... in sub-par lighting. I didn't expect much. The picture actually came out and is so sharp I am having it framed.

Buy this lens!