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Reviews
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Views
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Date of last review
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14
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94945
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1/21/2012
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Recommended By
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Average Purchase
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100% of reviewers
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$631.67
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| Reader Review Rating Averages |
Readers' rating for
Construction Quality
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Readers' rating for
Image Quality
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Readers'
Overall Rating
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9.79
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10.00
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9.86
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NVO
Registered: January 2012
Posts: 2
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by NVO
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Review Date: 1/21/2012
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $800.00| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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Uniform, creamy contrast across the frame, tack sharp, AF-friendly
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Cons:
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Somewhat unbalanced on 5D2 body
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Excellent image quality on full frame, across the frame - very uniform. Rich, creamy contrast in darker areas. And yet it's tack sharp - when properly focused. I expected precise focusing to be quite a problem at 200mm, but actually 5Dmk2 autofocuses it more reliably than 85/1.8. After some trial and error, it seems that there's no real benefit in using live view in daytime shots - only at night time.
Long-exposure night shots in the city at F/5.6 and F/8 are great - bright lights have neat 8-ray stars around them, but no disturbing blooming. Very clean transition from light to dark. Wide open bokeh is excellent, - no "onion rings" or colour shift. Cat's eye effect is moderate: peripheral out-of-focus lights are shaped like an American football, with well-rounded corners, otherwise they look the same as in the center of the frame.
Perhaps the only complaint is about physical balance of weights on 5Dmk2 body. The all-metal barrel is quite front-heavy, and yet it's too narrow - hard to support firmly by hand. The problems goes away with attached battery grip and an L-bracket.
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redvsion
Registered: August 2010
Posts: 4
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by redvsion
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Review Date: 10/1/2011
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $600.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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IQ, weight, size, handling, price... everything.
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Cons:
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Jack.
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I don't think I've ever seen a bad review for this lens, and there's a good reason for that: it's damn near perfect.
Sure, I can nitpick. There's no IS, but that would add to the size/weight. It's not weather-sealed, but it's one of the cheapest L lenses you can buy. A 135mm f/2 with a 1.4x extender is more versatile, but that combo costs almost twice as much.
Otherwise, what you get is a relatively compact telephoto with superb image quality and if that's what you need, look no further. It's *very* tight on crop (320mm) which is great if you're stuck at a distance (or are just plain lazy), but can be fairly limiting. Personally I preferred the extra reach. Low-light work is exceptional - its size allows for hand-held shutter speeds well below 1/200 without too many misses.
This has been my first - and so far only - L lens. Coming from cheaper gear, I was concerned about the jump in price, and I'm still weary about spending over $1000 on glass. This thing, though? Underpriced. I use it nearly every time I shoot, and I'm impressed with almost every shot.
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MartinM
Registered: November 2008
Posts: 29
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by MartinM
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Review Date: 7/29/2011
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $750.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Sharp, Fast AF, Compact Size
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Cons:
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No IS, no sealing
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Very nice addition to my low light prime park. This prime is sharp and fast focussing. Addtionally I can add the Extender 2x II to enhance my daylight reach of my 70-300L to 400 F5.6 without loss of IQ or AF speed.
The only drawback is the lack of IS and weather sealing.
A Mark 3 with the IS and sealing of the 100L would be really cool.
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dannyhorlok
Registered: May 2009
Posts: 2
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by dannyhorlok
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Review Date: 9/21/2009
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $745.00| Rating: 9
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Pros:
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relatively small size + weight, AF speed, build quality, it's black, super sharp, wonderful bokeh
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Cons:
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no IS
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i have fallen in love with this lens!!! it really shines in the daylight, and the AF performance is achingly good ...giving me super sharp images. and don't even get me started on the bokeh... creamy and dreamy - non of my other lenses are capable of producing anything like this kind of bokeh. and i soon got used to the fixed 200mm focal length - superb head/shoulder shots were made effortlessly.
indoors, i up the ISO to 1600 whilst shooting at f/2.8 on my 450D, and that seems to do the trick, in terms of stopping the action and eliminating camera shake. another cool thing i've noticed was that people don't notice that i am taking pictures of them, as the lens is relatively small, and also black. as i'm standing quite far away from them, capturing candid moments is easy!
the build quality is very high, and if this lens had IS (without compromising it's other qualities), it would have pretty much zero faults
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climber
Registered: April 2009
Posts: 11
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by climber
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Review Date: 4/21/2009
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $700.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Excellent image quality, construction, speed, accuracy, dreamy bokeh, BLACK
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Cons:
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NONE
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I was looking for something special, light and inconspicious. I was looking for a fast lens with the best image quality and bokeh.
Forget about the white L zooms, forget about the IS. Back to the roots.
Have you ever tried a portrait at 200mm at f2.8? The bokeh is sweet and dreamy, simply out of this world.
I use this lens a lot with a 1.4X TC and there is almost no loss of IQ. Canon 200mm f2.8 L is one of the best lenses out there.
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upnorthfar
Registered: September 2008
Posts: 3
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by upnorthfar
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Review Date: 9/24/2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $600.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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sharp, lightweight, black
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Cons:
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-
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Excellent sharpness throughout the image. I bought this lens for a special low light wildlife shoot and was supposed to sell it afterwards. I just can't, it's such a sharp and nice lens.
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Badmono
Registered: August 2008
Posts: 15
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by Badmono
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Review Date: 8/22/2008
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $400.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Great IQ - Great Price - Great Lens
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Cons:
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Absolutely None
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A fabulous and underated lens well deserving of the 'L' tag the IQ and Bokeh are wonderful I always leave it fitted to one of my camera bodies
Not quite as sharp as the 135 F2 but it's longer focal length suits me more often than my 135, but not as often as my 400F2.8 IS which is the other lens always fitted to a body.
I bought this lens after selling my 70-200 IS 'Hell' seies zoom.
This IQ from this lens makes the 70-200 zooms IQ look distinctly secondrate.
Thouroughly recomended - if you need this focal length just buy one you won't regret it.
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thomiz
Registered: January 2007
Posts: 16
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by thomiz
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Review Date: 1/8/2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: None indicated| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Sharp, fast, light, small
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Cons:
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Could have IS
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A wery fine lens indeed. My best in my current lineup of lenses. This is a "go everywhere" short telephoto, and on the 20D it turns into 320mm which is nice for telphoto shots of wildlife and some birds. The bokeh of this lens is exelent and it can be used for nearly anything from portrait to landscape. The lack of IS is sometimes missed as you need high speeds to handhold this lens.
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Wolfini
Registered: January 2007
Posts: 10
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by Wolfini
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Review Date: 1/5/2007
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $520.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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IQ, AF, size, price
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Cons:
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(focal length on crop, weight)
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This is a really great lens. Actually I have the "old" version with the built in lenshood.
IQ is great in every way: sharpness, contrast, color, flare, CA, I really cannot imagine a better lens here.
Combined with a Kenko 1,5 TC it´s still very good, and even with a 2x TC (Kenko Pro300) it´s very usable as a 400mm, although there is some softening with a halo-like effect.
Construction is also very good, but the downside of this is, that the lens is quite heavy when you want to carry it eg on hiking trips.
Unfortunately I don´t use this very much, as it´s too long on crop for my everyday needs like portraits, and for outdoors it´s a bit too heavy. But it is a wonderful zoo-lens!
Still, as I payed only EUR 400 (used) I cannot imagine to ever part from this great lens.
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photogjack
Registered: July 2006
Posts: 9
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by photogjack
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Review Date: 12/8/2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $700.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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razor sharp, light weight, fast focusing
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Cons:
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absolutely none
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This is an amazing piece of glass. Stunningly sharp, very fast to focus, lightweight, discrete (especially if you are used to using one of the giant white zooms). I started using this instead of my 70-200 2.8 L (IS) and have never regretted it. 11 stars out of 10.
jack
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dccps
Registered: November 2006
Posts: 13
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by dccps
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Review Date: 11/30/2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $645.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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outstanding sharpness, fast lens, well constructed
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Cons:
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none
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One of the finest telephoto lenses I've ever used. Great on a reduced size sensor, equivalent to a 300mm (rounded off) optic with an f/2.8 aperture. If you want to capture action during an evening football or baseball game, then GET THIS LENS! Much lighter than 70-200 and covers the field of view most will default to anyway.
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tpilot
Registered: November 2006
Posts: 1
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by tpilot
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Review Date: 11/28/2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $550.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Great optics, fast and one of the best bargains out there
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Cons:
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None to date
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This is one of Canons sharpest lens, up there with the Canon 135 2.0 which is regarded as the sharpest of Canons lineup. I have the Mark 1 version which has the built in hoo
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David Hay
Registered: November 2006
Posts: 8
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by David Hay
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Review Date: 11/11/2006
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: $570.00| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Short,fast, black.
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Cons:
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None.
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Mine is a Mark 1. I bought it second-hand from a professional, battle scars and all. It had a filter on the front from new so the front element was unmarked.
Very,very sharp images. Fast AF but the manual focus on mine is very slack feeling after a lot of professinal use. The built-in lens hood is not long enough to make much difference.
I used it recently at the Edinburgh Festival (while my 70-300 IS was getting fixed) and the results were excellent. You could cut out street performers from the crowd with the shallow depth of field. It was so sharp it was cruel. You could even see skin blemishes under all their make-up.
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psulonen
Registered: October 2005
Posts: 6
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Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM review by psulonen
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Review Date: 10/20/2005
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Would you recommend the product? Yes |
Total Spent: None indicated| Rating: 10
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Pros:
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Optically awesome, built like a brick outhouse
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Cons:
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None that aren't inherent to what it is
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OK, I actually had the Mark I rather than the Mark II, but since the only difference between the two is the design of the hood (the Mark I had an integrated slip-on-slip-off hood while the Mark II has the regular reversible twist-on-twist-off design), I figure I could post my comments.
First off, optically this is an awe-inspiring lens -- as good as equally sharp at all apertures, beautiful contrast and clarity, beautiful bokeh, literally no optical boogers worth mentioning. It'll even take a teleconverter without breaking a sweat. This, friends, is as good as it gets optically.
The same goes for build -- it's very confidence-inspiring in feel, and focuses lightning-fast and accurately.
Why did I sell mine, then? Because I didn't really have a use for this kind of beast. While much lighter than an f/2.8 telezoom, it's still a pretty big and bulky beast, and for telephoto were "zooming with your feet" is often not an option, it's a fairly limiting lens.
But if your main interest is, for example, wildlife, I can't think of a better Canon lens for the mission -- when you need both the bright aperture for those dawn or dusk moments, and every gram in the backpack counts, you can't really do any better at this focal length.
Another situation where I found the lens highly attractive was fashion-type shooting: you do need to back up a quite a bit, but the telephoto compression does good things to the features, the control over depth of field is great, and, of course, optically this one is the bee's knees.
In a nutshell, an awesomely good lens... with a fairly limited range of potential applications. If one of those applications is your thang, it's a bit of a no-brainer. If it isn't, it's a dust-collector.
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