I recently sold my Canon EF 200mm f/1.8 USM telephoto lens on ebay. You can read about it in an earlier blog. What I had planned on doing was maybe to pick this lens up this summer when Canon runs their rebate programs. However, I was shocked to see they had already began a rebate program this past week. They even had double rebates on this lens when you bought a new Canon 5D Mark II. Since I already own this camera and don’t know anyone who needs to buy one, I simply opted for the $500 single rebate. I’m also a big fan of Bing Cashback and have used it for a year or two for online purchases. With Bing Cashback I was able to save an additional 7% on this lens. Both of these incentives add up to a $825 savings on this unbelievable lens! This lens is known as the replacement for the legendary Canon 200mm f1.8 which I recently sold. Those were pretty big shoes to fill but this lens does a marvelous job doing just that. The big selling point of this lens is the 4 stops of image stabilization which makes this lens capable of shooting handheld photos at 1/5th of a second. The IS also makes this lens perfect for DSLR video, which I’m really starting to get into. The aperture is 1/3 stop slower than the 200mm 1.8, but with the high ISO abilities of today’s digital SLR’s this isn’t really a big deal. Another area where the 200mm f/2.0 excels is in it’s unbelievable sharpness. The 200 1.8 was renowned for being one of the sharpest lenses Canon has ever made. I’m going to step out on a limb and say not only is this lens sharper, I believe it’s the sharpest lens canon has ever made! The color and contrast that come from this lens are simply incredible! I had an opportunity to try it out last night at a lacrosse practice of some friends of mine. The lighting on the practice field was not very bright and the color balance from the light changed every 10 yards on the field. My Auto White Balance got dizzy from having to change every shot. I finally settled on a fluorescent color balance that gave decent results but had to patch up every image in Aperture 3. These are a decent example of what this lens is capable at fast speeds and in dark places. It’s the absolute g0-to lens for indoor or night sports! I’m going to visit Louisville in the next few days and will hopefully get some nicer photos to post. But for now, these will have to do! I hope everyone is enjoying your spring break if you are lucky enough to have one! -Chris-
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