First Look: Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM II – Perhaps Canon’s greatest lens!

I had the good fortune today to get my hands on a pre-release copy of the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens. This lens features improved glass elements, faster auto focusing and amazing image stabilization improvements. It’s crazy here at the Olympics so I don’t have much time, but this is a case where a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
I present to you images taken handheld from a man with carpal tunnel syndrome and tendonitis on my Canon 1D Mark IV using this amazing lens: (click for originals as these screen shots are low res samples with compression artifacts)

 
Screenshot of a 100% Crop (200mm @ 1/60 sec ISO 400 – no flash)

Screenshot of a 100% Crop (200mm @ 1/15 sec ISO 100 – no flash)

Screenshot of a 100% Crop (200mm @ 1/15 sec ISO 100 – no flash)

Screenshot of a 100% Crop (200mm @ 1/8 sec ISO 50 – no flash)

           These photos were shot as RAW and ZERO post-processing has been done on them. I simply exported them (without cropping or alignment) as JPEG from DPP (provided by Canon USA on site) from a Lenovo W700ds(replaced by the W701ds – the best photography computer in the world) and uploaded them to Smugmug. What you see is as raw as it gets, and the screenshots from Lightroom above shouldn’t be judged too harshly as they are low quality representatives of the originals.
In my online gallery, I’ve even included some shots where people were blinking to prove that these weren’t static subjects – they were indeed talking, breathing, blinking, etc… There are no monopods, tripods, or support used for these shots – simply freehand point and shoot in manual mode with auto ISO. IS was on and set to mode 1 and I used non-center AF points for most of these shots.
The 1/8 sec image probably impresses me the most given the fact this is nearly a 10 pound setup being hand held, and I have a result that can EASILY be sharpened to perfection. In fact, if I didn’t have to go down to ISO 50 (which is interpolated rather than a true ISO 50), I think the results would have been better. The images at 1/60 were clearly phenomenal and at least 2 stops better and several times sharper than what I would get with the original 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM.
More to come when things aren’t so crazy. Time to eat! :-)
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Update

If you have the 1D Mark IV then I recommend you check out my Canon 1D Mark IV New Users Guide / Shoppers Guide. I am still in love with my 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM and feel it is the best lens Canon has made under the $5000 price point. It’s just an amazing piece of glass that was made to go with the Canon 1D Mark IV!

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