I'd suggest renting the longer IS lenses. I bought a few and just didn't like them. I thought maybe it was a bad lens and did the warranty thing but had the same issues once it came back from warranty repair. I won't go into a ton of detail, but I had problems with the sharpness of the auto-focus and shallow depth of field. I did see the benefit of IS when I was zooming in and in lower light conditions, but with good light and/or a tripod/ability to take a steady shot, I recommend to everyone to use a non-IS lens. Plus it's cheaper.