any info on canon 100-300 usm lens? looking for zoom with portrait capabilities. Thanks in advance.

Darren

-- (docnlaw@yahoo.com), November 04, 1999

Answers

Should be lots of information about this in the archives. I just sold mine, so you're too late on that account. At 100mm, its quite sharp. At 300mm, its a little soft, but still good. Its a ring USM lens with internal focusing, unlike the 75-300mm counterpart, which has the usually inferior micro USM (exception: EF 50mm f/1.4 USM). It has full time manual autofocus, which allows you to adjust focus without switching the AF motor off. It has a non-rotating front element, and zooms by rotating the barrel. If you are very tall and need to take a picture of your feet (for whatever reason) the barrel *will* slide a bit when pointed downward, until you can only see your shoelaces. The lens has a metal mount. I used this lens for quite a while, and got many good photos out of it. Its build quality, handling, interface, etc... is superior to that of the 75-300mm, but optically, they are very similar.

But here's the question of the day. Are you going to be using this lens as a longer telephoto lens as well as a portrait lens? Or are you simply going to use this as a portrait lens? If this is indeed going to be a portrait lens only, I have to suggest the Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM or Canon EF 100mm f/2 USM. These would be *far* better as portrait lenses, allowing shallower depth of field, far greater sharpness, and better contrast. There is more information about this in the static pages on photo.net, too.

-- Harvey Yau (hayau@ic.sunysb.edu), November 04, 1999.

I have used my 100-300 USM for head shots during weddings and such. Works great. It's true that it's not the sharpest thing at 300 but who ever said that portraits need to be sharp? Still, 100mm is better for most portraits and f:4.5 isn't fast enough at 100mm to blur the background much. The 75-300 is faster at the wide end and so is a bit better, but still is not enough, IMHO.

-- Jim Strutz (jimstrutz@juno.com), November 07, 1999.