Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 Lii IS Lens

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Zoom Lens

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Telephoto Zoom Lens increases the speed, performance and optical quality of the EF 70-200 f/2.8L IS USM while maintaining all of the characteristics that have made it a legend for professionals and advanced amateurs alike. This lens features one fluorite and five UD elements for increased optical quality and reduced chromatic aberration. It has a minimum focusing distance of 1.2m/3.9 ft. at all zoom settings, which is useful for photographers in smaller spaces trying to get closer to a subject. A next-generation Optical Image Stabilizer, provides up to 4 stops of correction at all focal lengths. Plus the EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM is dust- and moisture-resistant and designed for use in the challenging environments typical of rigorous professional use.

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens delivers impressive image quality, focuses accurately very fast and has top-of-the-line build quality, 4-stop Image Stabilization, weather sealing and a very useful focal length range.

The Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens’ real world image quality and image quality improvement over the original version are impressive – much better than I expected. The 70-200 f/2.8 IS II is very sharp wide open from the center of the image circle right into full frame corners at all focal lengths. Of the three copies I evaluated, the second traded some 200mm image quality for slightly improved 70mm image quality. The with-extender tests at 280mm and 400mm confirm this of course. Feedback from others is that the “sample 2” lens is indeed an outlier – but still very good. Contrast is especially impressive from all three lenses – a noticeable improvement over the version 1 lens. Stopping down increases sharpness only very slightly.

More noticeable from stopping down is the clearing of a small amount of vignetting in the corners. A small amount of vignetting is visible in full frame corners with a wide open aperture and is most noticeable at 200mm (just over 1.5 stops). At f/4, vignetting is essentially un-noticeable except at 200mm where another stop of aperture reduction continues to reduce the light fall off. The 70-200 II’s vignetting results show a slight improvement in the wide and mid-focal length range compared to the 70-200 I, but the strongest vignetting focal length, 200mm, shows similar corner darkening. The 70-200 II’s 200mm vignetting results are similar to or better than the other available-at-review-time 70-200mm lenses including the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM II Macro Lens and Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di Macro Lens.

CA (Chromatic Aberration) is practically non-existent in the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II – which is a small improvement over the version one lens that shows a small amount of CA in full frame 200mm corners.