new 70-200 2.8 IS. but does this look soft to you?

this was on a tripod, center focus on the "bears" at 200mm, f2.8

http://flickr.com …6/sizes/o/in/ph​otostream/

do you think this is typical? or are the 70-200's usually sharper? no sharpening in lightroom or photoshop

Is this is fullsize image or a crop? If it's the fullsize image it looks like it misfocused.

this is a full sized image. the bears' and the dictionary words are in focus. maybe the camera moved a bit on the tripod (its cheap) so could have focused there and moved up. dont look at the other books, they are blurry from the depth of field

Is this a 100% crop? It doesn't look like it because I'm seeing the individual pixels on that image. Are you at 300% - 400% crop?

um no, its the original full size image

quite disappointing for a $1400-lens.

i just did a comparison with the tokina. looks like this lens is plenty sharp. i shot the books at a 30 degree decline so it looks like the "dictionary" words are most in focus and the words above it are out of the depth of field.

flareak wrote in post #5651431
i just did a comparison with the tokina. looks like this lens is plenty sharp. i shot the books at a 30 degree decline so it looks like the "dictionary" words are most in focus and the words above it are out of the depth of field.

I was just about to mention that. "DICTI" looks pretty sharp. When I bought mine new back in December there was a issue with centering. One side of the picture was sharp and the other not so sharp. I sent it into Canon and instead of just recalibrating the lenses they replaced the IS unit and I think one other element. It came back superb across the frame.

I used to have the 70-200 2.8L, which is generally considered to be a bit sharper than the IS version. Mine was not sharp at f/2.8 at 200mm. Yours is perfectly consistant with everything I have seen and read about the IS version. It's not a sharp lens wide open at 200mm. Some people say they have very sharp copies, but I've never seen any evidence to support it. If you want a sharp, affordable telephoto, get the 200mm f/2.8L which can be had used for as little as $500, and it's much sharper than the zoom. I know this from personal experience.