First grab shots with new lens

[MARINERMAGNUM]

New lens arrived today and I just went out in the yard to shoot a few and see if I got a clunker but the sharpness is there and I'm quite pleased with it so far.

I wanted a lens that would really reduce PP time in sharpening,etc. and luckily I made a good choice. VERY fast focusing!

I was stuck in a rut trying to get the 500/600f4 so I gave it up,but i did have enough saved for this lens and new extenders. I almost grabbed a 50D,but that would have pushed this lens back awhile and bodies come and go but good glass has staying power.

Hopefully,there will be some light tomorrow so I can try it with extenders.

These were shot handheld,iso 200,in-camera sharpness set at 1,Raw converted to jpg in DPP,cropped in photoshop-no other adjustments/sharpening whatsoever.

Canon 30D,300mm F2.8L IS

100% crop of focus point to show detail-no sharpening added.

I was amazed at the shallow DOF! The side of the apple is sharp,and toward the top,it gets out of the focus area. Like most images,it's hard to see the quality online but the color,contrast and sharpness are better than I expected. Very happy! [wife isn't]

[Dbl]

You will love this lens MM! You can pick a 300 or 400/2.8 lens shot out of a crowd. I find I do virtually no sharpening with this lens in PP. Congratulations MM, and buy your wife some roses

[finnbay]

you will be very happy with this lens, and the good news is that the wife eventually got used to it! May be Canon's sharpest lens. Looking forward to more images!

[MARINERMAGNUM]

Thanks man. I'm stuck putting in her new dishwasher this weekend,so the lens may not even escape from the gun safe!

[Dbl]

LOL or buy her a dishwasher, whatever it takes. Really it will be worth it. I can't imagine not having this lens!

[Steve Foss]

Great to see you got the sweetie, MM. Good job!

One note: Setting in-camera sharpness in the 30D's picture styles won't impact a RAW capture. Picture styles settings only affect a jpeg capture.

[MARINERMAGNUM]

Great to see you got the sweetie, MM. Good job!

One note: Setting in-camera sharpness in the 30D's picture styles won't impact a RAW capture. Picture styles settings only affect a jpeg capture.

Thanks bud. If what you say is right,then there is really no sharpening at all? not even the +1 in camera? That would be very re-assuring as to the lense's ability.

[Steve Foss]

MM, Canon in-camera picture style settings (sharpness, saturation, contast, etc) only apply to jpegs. RAW images are unaffected.

However, when opening a RAW in DPP, DPP will automatically adopt whatever picture style settings you've chosen in-camera to initially display the image.

Here's how it's been described to me: "The picture style you choose has no effect on the RAW data. It simply tells Canon's software (DPP) to choose that picture style when it first displays that file for you. It's letting you do your own JPG or TIF conversions more quickly by trying to predict in advance the picture style you are most likely to use when the time comes to "develop" the file. That's all. No matter what settings you choose in camera, a Canon RAW file is a RAW file, entirely unaffected by those in-camera choices."

When choosing a picture style in DPP to convert a RAW to a TIF or a JPEG, "neutral" is the one that seems to deliver the least manipulation, according to my reading.

BTW, I'm rapidly moving away from RAW capture. My latest reading indicates that with today's technology, there's so little difference in the quality of a large print 16-bit RAW capture vs an 8-bit jpeg capture that the eye can barely tell them apart. I haven't experimented with large prints RAW vs jpeg for a couple years (the difference was noticeable then), and I'm willing to believe what the print lab pros are saying. Plus, with CS3 you can take a jpeg and "develop" it using the same type of RAW preview screen available only with RAW images in previous versions of Photoshop. I'll be upgrading to CS3 or CS4 soon. I haven't shot RAW for two months and likely won't any more.

And when shooting jpeg I minimize all saturation, contrast and sharpening on the in-camera picture style settings so I retain control of those characteristics in post-processing. In the 30D picture styles, that would be "neutral" or "faithful."