burnt embers

Today I have some images from tests of a couple of borrowed lenses that I put onto my Canon Elan 7N film camera as well as a Canon 5Dii digital. Other pictures from the film test are part of my 52Rolls project and published simultaneously to this one (here).

I borrowed a Canon EF 70-200mm/f2.8 IS II USM and an EF 300mm/f4 IS USM (no digital images included from this lens). The film was a fresh roll of Kodak GB 200. The digital photos are at ISO100, for the digital images, you will see EXIF data in the gallery below.

I have never used an image-stabilised (IS) lens on an SLR (or DSLR) before and am very impressed with their performance at lower shutter speeds. I found with the DSLR that I got reasonably sharp photos handheld at 1/20 and 80mm and better-than-nothing shots at 1/15th and 120mm (see below), normally I would hesitate to hand hold those focal lengths slower than about 1/250. The film quality let me down a bit, and a fairer test of the lenses with a film camera might be done with a less grainy film.

Overall, these lenses perform extremely well, they are very sharp, focus quickly, and focus quite close too. If only I could afford it, I would have both these in my kit. Since I can rent lenses like these locally it is really good to know just how well they work.

 

 To open a large view of any image in the gallery below, click on it and navigate with the arrows to the others