75-300mm or 70-300mm?

Please share your opinions about the following.

* 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
* 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM
* 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III
* 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

Which lense would you suggest for outdoor sports and wildlife shots?

I'm debating on purchasing the 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM or 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. However, I don't know much about either.

Thanks!

Don't buy the 75 -300 (any variety) if you can afford the 70 - 300. It's much better.

I just took a look at the 75-300 III, the one that looks like the kit lens. Wow! is that a slow focusing lens. It took ok pictures. Following in the kit lens lookalike. Next post is the IS version.

IS version

IS may have defeated itself. Maybe I moved to much.

The new 70-300IS is a vast improvement on the 75-300 variants (which are all optically the same), I have owned the IS and no IS versions of the 75-300, and as quite impressed with the improvements made with the 70-300IS in all regards (IS, focus speed, image quality, build quality etc...)

I'd go a little longer for wildlife IMO, but 300mm is enough I guess unless it's small mamals or birds then you will be wanting more reach. To be honest I'm not a huge fan of any of those lenses you listed. I'd look at the EF100-300 USM or maybe even the Sigma 70-300 APO (still slow focusing but about as good as you get in consumer 300mm optic's).

For the price range of the IS/USM models though you can get the Sigma 100-300 f4 which is a pretty good lens.

The new 70-300 IS, is far superior to the older 75-300 genre, in my opinion. I have recomended it to several of my friends that did not want to spend for the Ls or need more compactness. It also uses the 58 mm filters. They are very happy with it. I believe it is also better than the 100-300. For my wildlife pics, I personally use the 100-400L IS. It is much more of a handfull, but has good reach and great optics.