Digital Diversity

Canons 70-200 range are fairly well known for their high quality and being some of the best zoom lenses you can buy from Canons range. There are (at the time of writing) 5 versions of this lens available. 2 versions at F4 and 3 versions at f2.8:
Canon 70-200 F4
Canon 70-200 F4 IS
Canon 70-200 F2.8
Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS
Canon 70-200 F2.8 IS mkII

After using the canon 55-250 IS for some time I found it a great set of focal lengths for shooting nature and wildlife that I can get relatively close to. For this reason I have had my eye on getting one of the 70-200′s as a replacement. The problem with these lenses is price. They aren’t cheap. The most reasonably priced one by far is the Canon 70-200 f4 without IS (image stabilization). To get the version with IS costs almost double the price and that is something I cant afford to do at this point in my life. So this clearly led me to purchase the non IS version.

Canon 70-200 F4 L, size - 76x172mm, weight - 705g

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A while back I wrote an article about my first time going to the zoo with the intent to take decent pictures, rather than just on a day out with friends. That was back when I was using a superzoom bridge camera (Panasonic FZ28). I came away from that trip with some images I was very pleased with and was surprised at the decent quality shots such a camera allowed me to get over the likes of a cheaper compact like my Ixus 75.

I have been back to the zoo since then with my DSLR (Canon 500D) and thought it would be good to share my thoughts on what advantages I had this time round with a more advanced camera.
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I wrote an article a while back about the starter lenses for your DSLR. This was to help you work out what you want to get in the future and also give you a nice range of focal lengths to work with. In that article I mentioned I wanted an ultra wide angle lens for its very wide field of view and the way it distorts perspective.

Ultra wide on a crop sensor like the 500D (1.6x) is about 10-12 mm. This equates to the same field of view as 16-19.2. There are several options of lenses you can choose from. For my Canon 500D these were a few of my options.

• Canon 10-22
• Sigma 10-20
• Tokina 11-16
• Tamron 11-18

I wanted a lens that went as wide as possible so for me that ruled out the Tokina and the Tameron. This left it between the Canon and the Sigma. I read a lot of reviews and the two lenses are fairly equal. Image quality wise, the Canon tended to just about win but when I looked at the price the Canon was £200 more expensive. The image quality difference was small enough that you cant really see the difference without pixel peeping so that really wasn’t a factor. Both were very well built lenses as well. I also really like the finish on the Sigma EX lenses. Seeing as the lenses were fairly equal overall, the price was the deciding factor for me so I went online and ordered the Sigma 10-20 F4-5.6 HSM EX DC.
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