Well, I bit the bullet, I bought one.
I’ll give you my first impressions.
Physical:
• It is built like a tank. Put on a camouflage sleeve and it’s military grade. This is the ideal walking around lens for your next trip to the Hindu Kush.
• It oozes quality. And radiates your affluence. So get yourself a bodyguard when shooting streetlife in Muggerville.
• It is seriously ugly. Although with the hood on it may vaguely seem to resemble something familiar, it will not enhance your sexappeal.
• It is wide, short and heavy. You might want to rent a donkey while hiking through the Kush.
• Handholding it is awkward. The zoom ring is placed to the front of the lens, at the widest part. Zooming and trying to support the thing it at the same time will put your wrist at an uncomfortable angle and may cause shake, defocussing and inaccurate zooming. Solution: put on the tripod mount. Suddenly the ergonomics are perfect, the lens sits nicely balanced in the palm of you left hand, while your fingers are free to nimbly operate the zoon ring.
Optical:
I am no pixel peeper, so I read the various reviews of this lens from labs and RL photographers. They consistently deem it to be of high optical quality, a fine, pro level tool. As it should be at this price point. I have had little chance to form an impression myself, since the wheather here cycles between dark, dreary, drab, foggy, rainy, damp and other typical qualities of our depressive climate. So I did a quick and very dirty indoor comparison with a Canon 24-105mm f/4 L and a Canon 100mm f/2.8 L Macro. All three lenses were used on tripod, at 100mm, f/4, 1/60 sec, ISO 200, RAW, with bounceflash.
Results: Visual inspection on an iMac showed that the 70-300 was at the same level as the 24-105. Which is good news for me, as my 24-105 is a good copy that produces excellent results. The 100mm L Macro was quite a bit better though. Sharper, more contrasty and the images seemed clearer and cleaner. But of course that should be expected from a state of the art macro prime that was stopped down to f/4.
Begin rant:
Don't let the images on the internet fool you, this lens is not creamy white. It is a dull, light gray, the kind of grey you find on cheap office furniture, network printers and lab gear. One wonders how much marketshare Canon could steal from Nikon and others by just using a different paint on their telelenses. Let alone hiring some Italian industrial designers. Do they actually sell something in Italy?
End rant.
