Excellent lens for the money!!
***UPDATE*** - After using this lens for the last 30 days, ive decided to amend my review with this more aware update. this lens is of sub par standards. I read about it in many reviews. its a focusing issue I guess you could say. ive noticed if you're trying to get a subject in focus that happens to be a great distance away, such as an eagle in a tree on the back side of a river, it WONT do it. It will take the picture, but it wont be sharp. not by a long shot. there seems to be a sweet spot with this lens so to speak. any more than about 480mm of zoom while zoomed in on objects at great distances, this lens wont be sharp. I can go full 600mmm zoom on a hummingbird that only 20 feet away on my deck, and it will be razor sharp! but if I go full 600mm zoom on an eagle in a tree across a river? forget it. ive tried different f-stops, different ISO's, different shutter speeds... I got it pretty dialed in, but its not SHARP. my girlfriend says im being too picky. doesn't matter, I want my images to be sharp. this lens cant deliver it under extreme use conditions. if I back off the zoom while photographing the eagle, to say, 400mm, and then crop the image later, then I can get a pretty good image. but even then its still not as sharp as it could be. its obvious. seems distance of your subject is also a factor along with focal length. I caught an Osprey in flight just yesterday. he was about 100 feet away. I caught him at 1/1000, f-8, 300mm. razor sharp image. I tried doing the same thing at 1/2500, f-8, 450 mm. not even close. it looked like it was taken through a piece of clear plastic wrap. im not trying to bash here, because it takes awesome photos if you don't push its limits. but, well... you know...
I spent several weeks, several hours a day, reading articles, looking at specs, watching videos, and gathering information and what not on long lenses for wildlife/bird photography. this lens, the "contemporary" model, which functions in the exact same manner as the "sport" model, its only slightly smaller, consistently came up as being the best for my intentions, depending on the reviewer. so I went ahead and ordered it. price was $846 dollars. its heavy, as to be expected. about 7.5 pounds. came with the hood and the mounting foot. **NOTE** - my flimsy tripod literally would not support the weight, especially at full zoom, so I did several more days worth of many hours of research for a SOLID, tripod with a Solid gimbal head to match. glad I did. much better. the lens itself is very nice. works very well with my much older 2007 Rebel XTI. unfortunately, my XTI cant keep up with the technological demands of this lens. super fast shutter speeds and high IOS's are required in order to freeze the birds in flight. but my XTI just cant be dialed in to that degree. there a really cool setting on the lens where you can tell it what kind of shooting you're doing, with regards to distance. theres the, "30 feet and under" setting, which tells the lens to only adjust the zoom to deal with subjects within 30 feet of the lens, and theres the, "30 feet and over" setting, which works in the opposite manner. these two settings tell the lens, "don't bother with traveling the entire focal length in order to find focus, just travel within the distance parameters I have it set at." for example: if you have it set to the, "30 feet and under", setting, and you try taking a photo of an airplane flying overhead? it wont happen. it will only travel so far before it figures out the plane is much more than 30 feet away. so you'll have to switch it to either th "infinity" setting, or to the "30 feet and over" setting. its a big time saver if you're in a hurry to get a shot of a zippy hummingbird! it finds focus extremely fast, before they have a chance to fly away. on the opposite hand, if an eagle flies by 100 feet away, it will again find focus very quickly, instead of traveling the entire focal length, taking up time that could be used to get a quick shot off. I like it a lot. regardless of what setting you're using, the focusing mechanism is very quick and very quiet. gets there in a hurry. im still learning which settings work best at such and such zoom levels. ISO's this and f-stops that. certain settings will give you a soft focus, certain ones will give you a sharp focus. im still doing the trial and error thing to figure it all out, but like I said, my dinosaur XTI is having a hard time keeping up. over all, for the money, its money well spent! haha, its a very nice lens with a good reputation from just about all the dozens of reviews I read. will mount to any CANON camera with the EF mount, which is most of the modern DSLR's. I recommend it to anyone looking for a very nice alternative to the MUCH more expensive CANON 600mm zoom lens.Read full review
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