Lens options, hypothetically speaking

[icassell]

Now, not to offend anyone, for someone like me who only uses photography as a hobby, will the differences of IQ really matter?

Only if it matters to you. That depends on your eye and your taste. If you ask the question "can you tell the IQ apart between the two lenses?", the answer is yes.

 

[Inst!nct]

im getting the 70-300 IS this weekend, very excited, so i have some bias

 

[Derrel]

Well, sometimes hobbyist photographers are the most-discerning photography practitioners. Sometimes it really,really helps to have the exact right lens for the job; if you need a 300mm lens, 300 is great; if one shoots baseball of field sports and needs a long reach zoom, then an 80-400 or 100 to 400 stabilized lens is the right tool for the job.

As far as differences--the older Canon 7x-300 IS lens was clearly not a very good lens, and even on casual shots, the purple fringing it showed on my buddy Steve's early Rebel days shots was pretty obvious. Same with Nikon's 70-300 G series, the original, low cost one, not the new VR-G model--loads of purple CA in that lens, toward the longer end of the zoom range. Both Canon and Nikon have really stepped up their game on these new high-end consumer 70-300 lenses with stabilization; these lenses are very capable,new designs,designed for today and the future.

IQ differences among lenses are largely masked by 6, and 8 and 10 MP sensors in my experience; on APS-C, 12 megapixels and up starts to show the better lenses as being better lenses, and the lesser lenses show that they are lesser lenses; I would say buy with the future in mind when moving into these $800-$1000 class zooms. Right now it's 15-18 MP in Canon APS-C at the medium price point.

 

[fiveoboy01]

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SHOOT.

This was asked 2-3 times and you did not answer it. It's impossible to recommend what to buy without knowing what your primary subject is.

 

[bahandi]

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SHOOT.

This was asked 2-3 times and you did not answer it. It's impossible to recommend what to buy without knowing what your primary subject is.

Thanks for this, but I asked a hypothetical question, not for a recommendation. Zoom is always fun, and as mentioned, 100mm could really go a long way (excuse the pun). However, budget has been brought up as well as IQ.

If people really want to know why I asked this question, it's because I was at the back of a gymnasium trying to take a picture of my niece during her Christmas concert; I was shooting with a 28-135.

My gut instinct told me that had I a 200mm lens, I could've got in closer, but why stop at 200 when I can go to 300? So I looked around, and the 4 lenses I posted were the options available to me when I did.

Focal length vs IQ vs stability vs use of natural light. Factors that I hadn't considered when I told myself that I needed a longer lens.

 

[Overread]

If your shooting a concert and your not allowed flash most of the 200mm and 300mm zooms are going to be too slow in aperture. The best you could get away with in zooms would be a 70-200mm f2.8 and even that might be too slow unless you up the ISO in your camera (at this point a higher level camera body with better performing ISO is your major limitation to image quality). If you wanted to go to 300mm you would need to look at the 300mm f2.8 options - which are seriously not cheap

Flash or getting closer with a shorter focal length lens with a larger max aperture would be the ideal situation (and if your shooting from the back agian flash will be limited in what it can do- especailly if your just using one single flash)