Canon 70-210mm f/3.5-4.5 USM Review

I found a second hand Canon 70-210mm f/3.5-4.5 USM for around £80 on eBay, and after reading numerous reviews which generally portrayed it as being one of the best lenses (for the price) Canon has ever made thought I couldn’t go wrong for under £100.

My first impressions of the lens were:

-The zoom is very light; when tilted past about 45 degrees either up or down, the lens creeps or retracts completely... Not much of an issue for me as I like to have a hand on the lens in most situations, but a possible problem for tripod users.

-The supposedly super quick USM w/ FTMF is nowhere near as quick as my Sigma 18-50mm f/2.8 EX Macro; this is my first USM lens, and although it really is quiet, I’m not impressed at all with the speed. (It is by no means slow, but after hearing of it being the best AF System, from my experience, it’s not...)

After taking the lens for a walk around town (my new home town actually as I just moved here for University; Lincoln, UK) I began to discover its strengths and weaknesses... I’m sure it’ll take me a while to get used to the lens, and the % of ‘keepers’ will go up with time, but using it solidly for a few hours gave me a pretty good idea of the lens:

-The Manual Focus ring is quite stiff; when trying to quickly refocus (in this instance, when I was testing it out on some swans) the stiffness of the lens was the hindering factor... I'm sure technique will come with time, but if this is in your style, don’t expect great shots relying on quick focus corrections straight away – the force needed to turn the focus ring throws you off making it impossible to track with birds. (...of course, if you had a camera with a strong servo-focus mode, this would be less of a problem, however my lowly 20D doesn’t perform very well in this respect.)

-The lens is incredibly sharp wide open for real-world shots compared to other lenses I own; wide open, it’s sharper than my Sigma 18-50mm f2.8 and my Canon 50mm f1.8 – though stopped down to the same aperture these are both much sharper. (I have no other lens, however, in this focal range to pit it against.)

-Bokeh of this lens is very, very smooth; if you have a look at the (f/4.5, 210mm) shot of the fluorescent light, it is almost unrecognisable due to the strong background blur.

-Colour and contrast are also very good, spot on in fact. Images are vibrant, yet not overly so...

The below images have had very minimal editing applied; generally, they have been cropped and had minor level adjustments made... I tried to shoot most images (and believe ALL of these final images represent this) wide open at mainly the short and long focal lengths, as these are what I myself personally use the most... Specifics are shown below the image.

Focal Length: 210 Aperture: 4.5 Shutter Speed: 1/1000 ISO: 400


Focal Length: 210 Aperture: 4.5 Shutter Speed: 1/250 ISO: 400


Focal Length: 210 Aperture: 4.5 Shutter Speed: 1/800 ISO: 400


Focal Length: 105 Aperture: 4.0 Shutter Speed: 1/400 ISO: 400


Focal Length: 70 Aperture: 3.5 Shutter Speed: 1/200 ISO: 400


Focal Length: 210 Aperture: 4.5 Shutter Speed: 1/3200 ISO: 800


Focal Length: 70 Aperture: 3.5 Shutter Speed: 1/40 ISO: 800

These images show some tripod shots of a ruler under controlled lighting as a 600x400 centre crop. All images were taken at 70 and 210mm respectively, using ISO 200 on Aperture priority, NOT full manual:

210mm - f/4.5


210mm - f/5.6


210mm - f/8.0


70mm - f/3.5


70mm - f/4.5


70mm - f/5.6


70mm - f/8

As you can see, the wide open performance of this lens is extremely good at 70mm, showing no practical benefit from stopping down past f/5.6. However at 210mm, although still very usable wide open (bearing in mind this is a small crop of an 8mpxl image), DOES benefit from stopping down; the sharpness of the 'number' stays relatively unchanged, or rather it is less apparent... However looking at the scale on the left of the cropped image, the difference in sharpness between f/3.5 and f/8.0 is very apparent.

In conclusion, this is a lens capable of some very good shots, though I haven't owned anything in this range for a long time, it is in a wholly new level compared to the newer consumer glass I've used before and easily available today, however sells for a much lower price on eBay. This is well worth the investment if you can find one; with a faster maximum aperture which is very usable, I would (and indeed, did) choose this over the much newer Canon 55-250 IS.