Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM Lens

This is one of Canon's most amazing zooms. The 28-300mm range gives you unparalleled flexibility. It is a marked improvement of their fantastic EF35-350mm, offering image stabilization, a zoom ratio of almost 11:1, smoother operation, faster autofocusing, seemingly sharper and higher contrast images and the ability to choose 2 focus distance ranges. It gives you a 7mm improvement in wide-angle capability, sacrificing 50mm of telephoto. It's the perfect daytime sports and news lens, especially if you only have one camera body. It's heavy but very solidly built...and expensive. My only regret is that Canon took away the capability of using a teleconverter with this lens. All told, from what I've seen, it's probably the best of the ultra-ratio zooms.

Yes, the lens is VERY heavy...but since I now have to carry one lens in my bag instead of three...I think it is worth it's weight. The lens is great for close up and far off. We travel alot and now I don't have to stop to change the lens...I can just shoot.

Canon's EF 28-300mm L is a beast in every sense of the word. This lens, mounted on a 1D series camera creates one of the most versatile cameras imaginable.

I took this lens to California, and traveled up and down the coast, shooting from a tripod, handheld, and from a helicopter. It is a heavy lens, but considering what it does it isn't too heavy. I've used it to shoot models, food, wildlife, architecture... you name it.

The zoom mechanism is push-pull, with adjustable friction. This works out quite well from rapid composing, and allows simultaneous zooming and manual focus; turns out that is a real plus in some situations.

IS (Image Stabilization)works amazingly well on this lens, better than any other Canon IS lens I've used. even at 300mm, lens shake is almost never an issue, handheld photos at 1/50 second at 300mm are possible. IS on this lens even works when it is tripod-mounted to couteract shutter vibration, which is rare (usually you need to turn IS off for tripod work).

Focusing is lightning-fast, and images are sharp at all f/stops. Seriously, at every focal length and f/stop this lens delivered images that looked like they were shot with a prime lens. The main price you pay is size, weight, and of course the cost of the lens itself.

There are many 10X zooms out there, but this is the only one that is truly professional grade, and highly deserved Canon's L label, and is definitely worth the money if it's capabilities are what you need. If you can only mount one lens on your camera for the trip of a lifetime, this is the lens you'd want.

I used to own this lens, eventually sold out because I wanted upgrade to Nikon equipment, I missed it's flexibility and not need to change lens often. it is very heavy but lighter than my currently owned canon 300mm f/2.8l IS USM, 200mm f/1.8L USM, 600mm f4l IS USM, good for travel and only one lens in bag. for more pic about this lens, you can check out my blog at www.devilgorgor.com

more scraches than expected, even the ring to manual focus is very heavy.So the total for the lens was average not really a very nice "like almost new lens.
Also the lens connection plate has bumps from fixing the lens to the camera. So in my opinion it has worked a lot.

the lense is a bit expensive for the price. the seller might have bit up the price at the end. paid $400 more then what I want to pay for the item.

this is an excellent lens. pictures come off wonderful!

the only bad thing would be that it is too heavy :( you may find it hard to manually focus when holding it in your hands, when mounting on tripod should be fine.