Canon ef 28-300 F3.5

[Justinm]

February 24, 2012 at 2:21 am

Hey all,

Looking for some feedback on the above lens. Am thinking of making a purchase on the above as a general one for all lens for weddings and was wondering if anyone has any comments on it as an all rounder.

Cheers in advance

[The Fine Print]

March 8, 2012 at 7:13 am

FIrst. I’m not brand biased: I have used both the Canon 28-300 on a 5D and its Nikon equivalent on a D700.
But whereas to me the Nikon 28-300mm is actually pretty amazing, this lens isn’t, despite sharing a few issues with the Nikon:
a)Both lenses have a lot of fall-off at the wide setting until you stop down a fair bit.
b) distortion is bad (and so is the Nikon’s), although distortion filter software can address that.
c) It’s not that sharp, although sharp enough. The Nikon sparkles here.
d) It weighs a fair bit, I think around 1700g (much more than the Nikon at about 1100g), but it’s still manageable.
e) Minimum focus is 70cm, which is actually very good (Nikon goes to 40cm!!!)

So whereas on its own it seems ok, you can feel the generational difference….I feel Canon is going to replace this lens with something nicer soon.
In summary: It is a fine lens if you only want to carry one (on a full-frame body, on another body it makes even less sense), and it’ll do what you need it to do, but I’d look for a 17-40 and a 70-200 f2.8 or f4 IS, augmented by a fast prime (e.g. 50mm f1.8 or 85mm f1.4).
It is also too expensive. At almost 3x the Nikon’s price and 5x the, dare i say it, Tamron’s consumer lens’ price, I’d seriously look into other options. Tastes, quality demands and budgets of course differ.