Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM

Robonrome, its just simply absurd... one could pay a nice round trip to Miami for around $500, have a nice vacation, return with the lens on the camera bag and still have money left for another trip!!! And they wonder why they don't sell lenses and, as a response, they rise the price since they don't sell enough

Someone should send them to business school.

Rafa.

RafaPolit wrote in post #11255043
I'll swap places with you anytime 1click! Here it's US$3600

holy cow!! wow i feel your pain, that's horrific. (and assume everything is likewise similarly priced) How can they manage that though? Wouldn't everyone just import through B&H/Amazon? I can't imagine even the worst import fees would be enough to double prices??? If they are though I have to say i'd be rebel+kit and that is it if i lived there.

EDIT: or as you say, you could even get a vacation out of it and still come out ahead!

That's why nobody purchases anything here! We all import, as you say, via Amazon and either use a service that imports the items directly!, or just send them to anyone that's already making the trip. Of course the taxes are severe, but they just reserve too much margin of profit. That results in them not selling anything! The strong downside is that you cannot test anything before purchasing, as, since the prices are so absurd, no one has anything in stock, they just custom order if you are foolish enough to order through them.

Most technology things are priced similarly... though computers have seen a better ratio this last few months, this 'elite' type of equipment has not been so lucky. Smaller items are the clear winners as anything less than $400 and weighting less than 4kgs you can import free of any taxes (and only pay about $20 shipping). Bigger items do come through customs and then you are on uncharted territory... for instance, camera lenses do not have a category assigned to them, so you depend on the clerk dealing with your case to determine in which category it falls, which could lead to 20% import + 12% VAT + 20% safeguard. If you are lucky, you can get away with just 12% VAT (that you cannot avoid for anything!)

Yeah, our country's population has a much slower EOS-equipment growing-rate than most! LOL!

Rafa.

$1659 here in Calgary. Supposed to be here Friday

I've posted a new page to my blog ( http://imagesfromnatur​e.foliopic.com …non-70-300-l-is-day-2-398) showing the results of some quick tests on a bright sunny morning. First conclusion is that it focuses at 300mm with my kenko pro 300 1.4 TC. All points is faster than 9 point is faster than off-centre single point (I can't get it to focus with cantral single point). Images are sharp and well detailed (but obviously not as sharp as the bare lens). Its fine for static subjects but I doubt it will be up to fast moving BIF's (I may get the chance to try later today).

With the bare lens in good light the results are outstanding. I show a 1/20th crop of a Starling sat on my test aerial at 28m and its quite simply the best I've seen with any of my long lenses (better than my 300 F4L Is).

I'm keeping this lens

oldcanon wrote in post #11257593
I've posted a new page to my blog ( http://imagesfromnatur​e.foliopic.com …non-70-300-l-is-day-2-398) showing the results of some quick tests on a bright sunny morning. First conclusion is that it focuses at 300mm with my kenko pro 300 1.4 TC. All points is faster than 9 point is faster than off-centre single point (I can't get it to focus with cantral single point). Images are sharp and well detailed (but obviously not as sharp as the bare lens). Its fine for static subjects but I doubt it will be up to fast moving BIF's (I may get the chance to try later today).

With the bare lens in good light the results are outstanding. I show a 1/20th crop of a Starling sat on my test aerial at 28m and its quite simply the best I've seen with any of my long lenses (better than my 300 F4L Is).

I'm keeping this lens

Good to hear oldcanon. You back up my thoughts from when i used the prototype. W/E canon is doing with thier new IS glass is coming out fantastic!

Thanks for the feedback oldcanon. I hate Canon for not having made this lens f4 through all the range... that would have been a fantastic lens... but variable speed is just too much of a compromise for most I believe. By the way, what do you mean by 1/20th? Is that image on your blog a pixel-per-pixel crop or are we seeing a downsampled image? or perhaps even a blowout?

Thanks,
Rafa.

RafaPolit wrote in post #11259379
Thanks for the feedback oldcanon. I hate Canon for not having made this lens f4 through all the range... that would have been a fantastic lens... but variable speed is just too much of a compromise for most I believe. By the way, what do you mean by 1/20th? Is that image on your blog a pixel-per-pixel crop or are we seeing a downsampled image? or perhaps even a blowout?

Thanks,
Rafa.

Rafa i think the F/4 was not done through the range as to not canabalize the 70-200 F/4 sales. Canon could do it but why mess with a good thing

sorry Rafa, I wasn't too clear was I, its a 100% crop image around 1000pix on the longest edge, what I meant was 20%, not 1/20th ie: its about 1/5 of the original image, not resized or pp'd further

(I had the sigma 100-300 f4 lens, excellent image quality but a beast to hand-hold. If canon had made this one F4 I wouldn't have been able to afford it, or hand-hold it, so I'm glad they didn't )

oldcanon wrote in post #11259745
sorry Rafa, I wasn't too clear was I, its a 100% crop image around 1000pix on the longest edge, what I meant was 20%, not 1/20th ie: its about 1/5 of the original image, not resized or pp'd further

(I had the sigma 100-300 f4 lens, excellent image quality but a beast to hand-hold. If canon had made this one F4 I wouldn't have been able to afford it, or hand-hold it, so I'm glad they didn't )

oldcanon, Thanks for posting these. It is helping me decide. Can I ask a favor to post the original picture of the bird? I would love to see the zoom relationship to the whole picture.

Thanks! Again...

here its is Roroco

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif'

Awesome... Thanks.

Jethro790 wrote in post #11239768
With the prices Canon has been releasing thier latest pro level lenses for, the cost advantage has been lost for choosing Canon over Nikon. I guess it shows how confident Canon is with the market share they have developed.

They don't need to get to cocky, Nikon is kicking their a$$ in regard to camera bodies and accessories (think CLS) in several instances. As much as I like Canon gear, I'd go Nikon if I didn't have such an investment in Canon. Now that they have caught up with Nikon on many of the lens prices, they don't look as attractive...

oldcanon wrote in post #11257593
I've posted a new page to my blog ( http://imagesfromnatur​e.foliopic.com …non-70-300-l-is-day-2-398) showing the results of some quick tests on a bright sunny morning. First conclusion is that it focuses at 300mm with my kenko pro 300 1.4 TC. All points is faster than 9 point is faster than off-centre single point (I can't get it to focus with cantral single point). Images are sharp and well detailed (but obviously not as sharp as the bare lens). Its fine for static subjects but I doubt it will be up to fast moving BIF's (I may get the chance to try later today).

With the bare lens in good light the results are outstanding. I show a 1/20th crop of a Starling sat on my test aerial at 28m and its quite simply the best I've seen with any of my long lenses (better than my 300 F4L Is).

I'm keeping this lens

I assume that starling on the aerial is at 300mm, what aperture? Is it f/5.6? It would be pretty cool if that was wide open.

Yes, 300mm. I see that this shot was 6.3 but an early one in the sequence was 5.6 and apart from the fact that the starling has turned slightly so that its not in such good light it looks the same detail and resolution, I'll replace the image in pbase with the one at 5.6 so you can look again (rather than posting another boring starling on an aerial shot )
Too early in the morning - you want to see the 100% crop equivalent image at f5.6 of course, here it is:

http://upload.pbase.co​m/image/130235739/orig​inal.jpg