Canon EF 70-200/4 L, IS or no IS?

Hi,
Any CPF member with this lens?

I have started to think about buying the 70-200/4 L lens ( I have thought about it before but never got there).

The one with IS is most tempting to me but here in Sweden it costs twice as much as the non-IS version.

Is the IS worth the extra money? Can you take sharp photos that you wouldn't be able to get sharp without IS?

I guess that most of my photography is in bright light and then it doesn't matter to much but there will of course also be situations with less light.

My current camera is a EOS 400D (Rebel XTi in USA). It works fine, maybe I will upgrade in a year or two.

I have the non-IS version, gift from my wife when she was my girlfriend. It's awesome glass for the money BUT if I had a choice I'd go for the IS.

I have the IS. If you're just shooting outside in bright light then you probably don't need IS, keep the shutter speed above 1/250th as a bare minimum if you have a 1.6x crop sensor camera. Keep in mind that IS will help with camera shake but not with subject movement - ie a person or object that is moving.

But ff you get the non-IS you will always have that little voice in the back of your head wishing you got the IS version though I have used mine down to 1/30th and 1/60th second and get a lot of decent results, most of the "bad" results are caused by the subject moving rather than camera shake.

Thanks for your input!

I think I will get the IS version just for the reason you mention bbb74:

bbb74 said:

But ff you get the non-IS you will always have that little voice in the back of your head wishing you got the IS version though

Click to expand...

There will be those occasions where there is 1 or 2 steps to little light for taking photos with the non IS version but it might work with the IS.

I will wait a little before I buy it, it's not a lens that I really need but more for fun and it does cost some money...

Well, I did walk by a camera store today and now I have a EF 70-200/4 L IS. I guess I didn't wait that long to think about it...
It did cost a little more then best price online but not to big difference.

I have done some test shots and looked at them on the camera screen (but not on computerscreen yet) and the IS effect is noticeble. Great!

What I didn't think of before is that the IS effect is very noticeble also in the viewfinder during photography and not only on the pictures.

I didn't expect the IS to be as loud as it is however. I thought I should have to put my ear next to the lens to hear it but I hear it clear and pretty loud when the camera is in my hand, I also hear it click on and off.

I'm excited to find out how it works when I get some real use for it.
It feels and looks like a great lens.

Good work, its a great lens. Its normal for the IS to be audible - at least you know its ON that way Yes its very handy to have the IS enabled when looking through the viewfinder it really does make a huge difference. Your camera may not support it, but on more recent ones (eg 60D definitely does) you can do a "movie crop" mode in video mode, where just the centre of the sensor is used. I've only ever used it that way once in real life, but I also did try it to see how long my tripod shakes after I stop touching anything out of curiousity. For a laugh I tried handholding with and without IS - without IS I couldn't really see anything. Its effectively a 200mm x 1.6 sensor crop x 7x movie crop = 2240 mm focal length!!

I have the non-IS. Very sharp, bice lens. Lets face it, back in the days of film, a 70-210 (std length back then) F4 was a fast lens

That said, it's become a 'travel lens' as I I replaced it with the 2.8 IS

I own the 70-200 f/2.8 IS and have taken test shots with and without IS turned on. For handheld shots you can't beat IS. If you shoot mainly with a tripod, you can probably get away without it. If you have the extra money to spend, it is well worth it!


JB

Canon's philosophy seems to be that the the same lens in the L (low dispersion glass) version with IS is double the cost of the non-L non-IS version. Since my 100mm Macro is always used on a tripod & usually stopped down around f/16-f/22 there was no need to get the L model. My 28-135 zoom is image stabilized & I've never managed to blur a shot with camera shake ... and that's even more important on a 200mm lens.

On a crop sensor body the 200 looks like a 320 & that means about 6.4X magnification. As bbb74 said earlier you'd want to stay above 1/250 second without IS (or stay above 1/60 second with IS). Two stops is huge in some situations.

I used the lens in a church before christmas.
It was without flash, focal length mostly 70 mm.
Shutterspeed 1/15 gave a lot of sharp pictures handheld (and of course some blurry also!)
I'm satisfied with my purchase.

As a side note, yesterday I took some pics with my cheap Canon 50/1.8
That lens produces very sharp and crisp pictures.
Canon has faster L-lenses that are better but to a much higher cost.
That little plastic 50/1.8 is very good for the price IMHO.

I have the IS version and it is without a doubt, worth every penny. After trying to make non-IS lenses work for some time I sold them all and went solely IS. My ratio of acceptable pics definitely went up. I primarily rely on the 24-105F4LIS and the 70-200F4LIS for almost everything these days (I shoot mostly outdoor action with the occasional studio product shoot).