Wanting to upgrade my 55-250mm STM lens.

KentKanobe

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Hi everyone. I'm looking to upgrade my Canon 80D lenses. I currently have:
  • Canon 50mm f/ 1.8 STM
  • Canon 24mm f/ 2.8 STM pancake lens
  • Canon 40mm f/ 2.8 STM pancake lens
  • Sigma 17-50mm f/ 2.8 ex dc os hsm
  • Canon 55-250mm IS STM lens
I'm looking to get into more natural photography (like nature and wildlife) and I also like to travel. So when I travel I carry around my 40mm pancake , 17-50 and 55-250.

I started to look at other lenses to get better quality images. I was thinking about the 70-200 L lens (f/ 4 of course, the 2.8 would weigh too much while traveling for me). I wouldn't mind some better reach, either (like 300, or 400mm to get those long distance shots). Would I see a big difference in image quality between the 70-200 and the 55-250? I had the kit 50-300 and it was terrible, I found that I got way more detail from the 250 of the 55-250 than the 300 end of the 50-300. Will the same thing happen again with the 70-200 vs the 55-250? I did do some research and I found that my lenses are already quite sharp (with the exception of the 55-250mm), especially for my budget as a school teacher (especially now haha) and as a amateur photographer.

I did research on DXOMARK with the 70D and the lenses I was looking at and I saw that, for instance, the 55-250mm stm got a score of 12 (with a 8 perceived megapixels): Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM - DxOMark

The 70-300 L lens would give me 14 score and 9p-mpx, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - DxOMark

Those numbers show only a marginal improvement in quality, and spending around 1000€ for that marginal increase sounds absurd to do. I am thinking of the Tamron SP 70-200mm F/2.8 Di VC USD (Maybe the G2? I can't find how it performs on APSC bodies).

Either way, I'm looking to upgrade my 55-250 stm (great for travel photography and maybe getting into wildlife photography) and / or my Sigma 17-50. I really like my Sigma but if I can get something that covers more range as an all rounder, then that would be great as my day to day, carry everywhere lens. Of course, I'd really like a jump in image quality.

Can anyone recommend any good lenses that perform well on APSC bodies or made for APSC bodies? I saw some videos that stated that not all FF lenses work well with APSC bodies. Thank you all in advance.
 
Lens wise IQ isn't dependant on the focal length of the individual lens it's the quality of the glass of the lens. You obviously need to consider other factors to obtain consistently sharp picture.

My wildlife lens of choice when travelling abroad is the Canon 400 F/5.6L. It's an awesome lens and comparatively light compared with others in the same focal length range. 400mm is really the starting benchmark for wild life lenses. Sometimes less will do but often more will be craved.

I've used it on 1.3x, 1.6x crops and FF and it works brilliantly on all.

Not sure of your budget but for the money, especially second hand you'll struggle to find better bang for yer buck and it's an L class prime.
 
Let us know what you get and how it works for you. =]
 
Let us know what you get and how it works for you. =]
Sure.
I actually did a small experiment. After spending all day looking at lenses online, comparing them, watching Christopher Frost and Dustin Abbott review nearly every damn lens on the planet (lol) I've selected quite a few... For instance:
  • 70-200 f/4
  • 70-200 f/2.8 (tamron), incredibly sharp lens
  • 24-105 f/4
  • 100-300
  • 18-135 stm
  • 18-35 f/1.8 art also incredibly sharp
My experiment: Open Lightroom and filter all my focal lengths into groups. This is what I'd found:
  • Photos taken from 17-50 range: 3,250
  • Photos taken only at 17mm: 485
  • Photos taken only at 40mm: 800
  • Photos taken only at 50mm: 1,700
  • Photos taken between 24-105 range: 3,670
  • Photos taken between 105-250 range: 460
  • Photos taken at 250mm: 215
  • Photos taken between 70-250 range: 530
In all honesty, I have my photos really well divided. I realized that probably upgrading the 70-200 range is going to be less useful for me (seeing as I take less photos there) and I don't want to start at 24mm since nearly 500 of the 3250 photos 15% of the photos in the 17-50mm range are at 17mm. So I'm debating renting the Sigma 18-35 since that would cover my 17mm itch and my 40mm (and 50mm since 35*1.6=56mm) itch and have superb quality, and very wide open at f/ 1.8 which would be great for lower light situations. I'm not so sure. These are big decisions! Haha.
 
The 24-105 F4 if an l lens will only reach so far and for birding, wont work as well.
The 70-200 F4 I have and use it occasionally for birding, but mostly for telephoto macro and portrait.

If your going to spend money for long reach but dont have enough for a L lens, I would also look at the Sigma's Bigmas and find a good used one.
but dont get first Gen. they dont work with digital cameras.
 
Hi everyone. I'm looking to upgrade my Canon 80D lenses. I currently have:
  • Canon 50mm f/ 1.8 STM
  • Canon 24mm f/ 2.8 STM pancake lens
  • Canon 40mm f/ 2.8 STM pancake lens
  • Sigma 17-50mm f/ 2.8 ex dc os hsm
  • Canon 55-250mm IS STM lens
I'm looking to get into more natural photography (like nature and wildlife) and I also like to travel. So when I travel I carry around my 40mm pancake , 17-50 and 55-250.

I started to look at other lenses to get better quality images. I was thinking about the 70-200 L lens (f/ 4 of course, the 2.8 would weigh too much while traveling for me). I wouldn't mind some better reach, either (like 300, or 400mm to get those long distance shots). Would I see a big difference in image quality between the 70-200 and the 55-250? I had the kit 50-300 and it was terrible, I found that I got way more detail from the 250 of the 55-250 than the 300 end of the 50-300. Will the same thing happen again with the 70-200 vs the 55-250? I did do some research and I found that my lenses are already quite sharp (with the exception of the 55-250mm), especially for my budget as a school teacher (especially now haha) and as a amateur photographer.

I did research on DXOMARK with the 70D and the lenses I was looking at and I saw that, for instance, the 55-250mm stm got a score of 12 (with a 8 perceived megapixels): Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM - DxOMark

The 70-300 L lens would give me 14 score and 9p-mpx, Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM - DxOMark

Those numbers show only a marginal improvement in quality, and spending around 1000€ for that marginal increase sounds absurd to do. I am thinking of the Tamron SP 70-200mm F/2.8 Di VC USD (Maybe the G2? I can't find how it performs on APSC bodies).

Either way, I'm looking to upgrade my 55-250 stm (great for travel photography and maybe getting into wildlife photography) and / or my Sigma 17-50. I really like my Sigma but if I can get something that covers more range as an all rounder, then that would be great as my day to day, carry everywhere lens. Of course, I'd really like a jump in image quality.

Can anyone recommend any good lenses that perform well on APSC bodies or made for APSC bodies? I saw some videos that stated that not all FF lenses work well with APSC bodies. Thank you all in advance.
I think you might need to re-think some things. I needed more range to grab dog's running, got a 55-300 as my 75-210 Nikon simply wasn't long enough. Now I'm pretty sure some think the lens quality simply wasn't good enough but a dog running hard as it can from your right to left is really hard to focus on but both these lense's did alright just one wasn't quite long enough. Come to think of it when I did award shots, I removed the long lense in favor of an 18-140! So really don't know how good or bad the 55-300 might actually be. The running dog shots were all shot in high speed auto at high iso and still very rarely got eyes in decent focus. I think getting that with small high speed animals running flat out would tax any lense. Sometime's I think we ask more than is reasonable of equipment!

I think what your shooting might determine just how much lense you need. As with the dog's for me, I think any lense I might have use would have been up against the wall even if it was far better than I had. The hi iso and pretty open aperature was chosen to help stop motion even though I had to pan shots! I think it would be pretty ssmall of me to blame something like that on the lense. I found that now and then I got a dog with focused eye's. Suppose I could have only showed those shots to show my ability!
 
I think you might need to re-think some things. I needed more range to grab dog's running, got a 55-300 as my 75-210 Nikon simply wasn't long enough. Now I'm pretty sure some think the lens quality simply wasn't good enough but a dog running hard as it can from your right to left is really hard to focus on but both these lense's did alright just one wasn't quite long enough. Come to think of it when I did award shots, I removed the long lense in favor of an 18-140! So really don't know how good or bad the 55-300 might actually be. The running dog shots were all shot in high speed auto at high iso and still very rarely got eyes in decent focus. I think getting that with small high speed animals running flat out would tax any lense. Sometime's I think we ask more than is reasonable of equipment!

I think what your shooting might determine just how much lense you need. As with the dog's for me, I think any lense I might have use would have been up against the wall even if it was far better than I had. The hi iso and pretty open aperature was chosen to help stop motion even though I had to pan shots! I think it would be pretty ssmall of me to blame something like that on the lense. I found that now and then I got a dog with focused eye's. Suppose I could have only showed those shots to show my ability!
This sounds like another zombie post - the OP hasn't been heard from in nearly 3 years.
 

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