I read the review too. I Hope he tests another sample.
It's alot of $$$ for this kind of behaviour! Appears stellar from f2.8 - f4.
Looks like Lloyd has confirmed the issue with another sample....
I'm not a Canon user, so I have no horse in this race, but overall I think we need to remember that lenses quite often involve compromises. If, ten years ago, you could have told me that zoom lenses I use today would be as sharp as they are and in some cases realistically compete with primes, I would have laughed, but today, that's a real possibility these days with the best ones. However, to get to this point, I think the designers have to make choices. The Canon 70-200 L-II seems to be quite excellent (and relatively free from the "issue") at closer ranges, but suffers from it at the longer distances. So a photojournalist or event shooter who works in the closer and moderately close distances, and probably not at 5.6 or 8 a lot would likely not have much of an issue with the lens - and in his scenario would likely be very happy with it since he shoots in the functional areas where the new lens is quite strong. Someone who wants the lens for landscape or long range work, particularly past 135 or so mm and at F/5.6 or F/8 would be better served with something else.
I'm on the Nikon side of the house and we went through the same sort of thing with the new 70-200 too - a stunningly sharp lens, slightly biased towards closer/moderate distances as well, yet it performs well stopped down at distance, but the trade-off there was that the lens, at 200mm and closer distances, isn't providing the same field of view as a 200 prime and in order to get to the same field of view you need to step closer to your subject about 3-4 feet. Changes the perspective of the image for those who used it as a 200mm for very tight shots close in. Not a deal killer for me personally, but man, some folks went livid over that design choice (trade off) and to them the lens is not a good fit for them at all. The Nikon trade off works better for me than the Canon trade off, but for an event shooter, particularly one who works at or near 200mm and close in, the Canon trade off might work better. Point being, I'm pretty sure with the considerable lens design talents of either manufacturer that IF they could have made a perfect 70-200 they would have done so, but they ran into the same obstacles everyone else does and they made choices - in this case the brands made different choices - but perhaps this serves as a reminder that quite a few lenses, and definitely a few on Nikons side of the house, are designed with a purpose in mind - some lenses work better in the close/moderate range, some don't, some are biased for extremely high center sharpness but expected edge issues wide open, some aren't. You can optimize "all in" for sharpness, but take a hit in terms of distortion or bokeh - the list goes on and on. The great thing with the subjective reviews from someone who is picky (as Lloyd Chambers is) is that we can discover where and what these design trade offs might be, and this helps us decide whether the lens is better for us or not. It's not so much for the brand bashing that often goes on in the forums, but rather to let us make our choices for our "next lens" more intelligently. Test charts and graphs may miss this sort of thing, whereas well done subjective testing doesn't - there's more to a lens than it's MTF performance at one distance...
-m
