EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

I Just bought this lens a week ago, and so far, I have been very happy with it. No, it is not a high end pro lenses, but for the money, I believe it does a very nice job, even at 300mm. I photographed a Grey squirrel yesterday, at the 300mm range. 1/125th at F11

This lens is a great telephoto. It doesn't have as much magnification as those built in mirrorless cameras you'll see these days like the Fujifilm HS-50 with it's 24 to 1000 mm 42x mag but still does the job nonetheless! There is no stabilizer so yes, listen to the other people in the reviews, use a tripod or shoot with a high ISO and fast shutter speed. Otherwise things will blur, all the time, every time (not badly if you have a stable hand grip). The focus is totally manual which is really neat so the lens functions even without the camera on! It's quite fast too, albeit a bit noisier than those fully magnetic driven newfangled AF systems like the ones in the new 18-55 mm lens. It won't focus if you have a total blur though so use it manually to give the camera *something* to work with instead of a totally blurry starting frame. Also this thing weighs a fair bit, hilarious after using the stock 18-55 mm lens for years! Not too heavy though and it's not massive like those dooky white monstrosities you'll see sometimes.

Great purchase! Love it!

First off I'm going to say that I bought this lens used for $100. I read plenty of reviews and most of them talked about how the amount of sharpness gets really low when you get around 300mm. This is true. From my testing, 75-200mm seems to be the sweet spots for this lens. I shot a few pictures out in the woods at 75mm f/4 of my Dad and the bokeh was pretty awesome. I also shot some pictures of birds at 300mm and it's just very unsharp the second you crop. The only way I've found to get good bird shots is to be really close to them. This is very difficult unless you're at a popular park where the birds are fairly used to humans. Here is a picture I took at 300mm and is only very slightly cropped [...] I was only a few feet from this bird. As you can see it's a sharp image due to VERY minimal cropping. It is difficult to fill the frame with these little birds let alone get close to them. Here is another bird at the same exact place [...] This was shot at 155mm, it was at Clingman's Dome in Gatlinburg which is a very popular place which makes these birds fairly used to humans. I put down some nuts right next to myself and it walked right up and took them and that's how I got this picture. Pros and Cons Pros: Takes great portraits at 75mm Very inexpensive for what it is Fairly well built for the price Cons: You lose almost all sharpness once you crop above 250mm The zooming is not very smooth Overall, who would I recommend this to? I would recommend this to any beginner photographer who wants to take pictures of their family or friends that may also enjoying wildlife photography. This would also be a great lens for someone who doesn't really care much about photography but wants a nice zoom lens to sit on their porch and take pictures of wildlife from far away (birds, deer, etc) TL;DR: Overall great value, absolutely worth the buy.

I'll try to be as objective as possible, being as this lens is entirely an entry level lens. Though I also feel I should outline my disappointment with this lens, as someone who's trying to take the step up from "entry level photographer". Build quality is about par for the course, what you'd expect for an entry level lens. Zoom ring has a bit of play that makes it feel flimsy, but not enough to really bother you. Focus ring is a bit more on tact. Though the front element extending and rotating like crazy during focusing or zooming is a bit annoying when using a polarizer. Granted, who uses a polarizer on a Tele? Auto focus is also about par, it'll do the job in decent enough lighting. Though the further you get from 75mm the worse it seems to do (in many more ways than one) with focus being rather slow, and somewhat inaccurate. Picture quality is actually pretty commendable at 75mm (ideal portrait focal length) straight from f/4, though that quality disappears as you turn the zoom ring. At 300mm it's a pretty sad performance for sharpness and chromatic aberrations, even when stopped down to f/8. Final thoughts on this lens would be that if you're a grandma looking to shoot little Jimmy's soccer game, then by all means get it. You won't find a better lens for the price point. Though if you're looking into getting serious about photography, this lens will only wet your palette and invoke a thirst for more. I actually wanted to only give it a 3.5 star rating. The only reason I stuck with 4 is because it pairs surprisingly well with a raynox 250 for macro.

The lens was okay. Delivery was a problem but that was not the sellers fault

I owned this lens for my old 35mm Rebel decades ago and decided it was a great option again at this price for my T8i. It has it's faults, like slow auto focus in lower light, but nothing I can't live with at this price. If you're a beginner and you're looking for something to get you a little closer to the action, this is an excellent choice. It's a sturdy, well made lens that is easy to use. I use it mostly for outdoor nature photography in bright sunlight, but I've also used it at car shows in convention centers with florescent lighting. It works well in both of those conditions for me. At this price, for what it is, I highly recommend it.

Excellent addition to my camera. Fits perfectly and works well with the automatic focus feature to my camera. Would recommend.