Reviewed By: John Ayling on 16/05/2007,     Customer Rating: 

I am a photographer, I mostly use this lens for doing wildlife photography (e.g. birds, wolfves), but also for close-up photography of objects difficult to come close enough. With the Rebel XT, the 100-400mm range in fact gets a 160-640mm lens (1.6x crop factor of the camera).

The lens allows several options to choose from depending on your photography habits. I sometimes use it mounted on a tripod not using the IS, but especially for wildlife photography I prefer more flexibility and always use it with the full IS turned on. The IS is pretty good even at the long focus end it leads to sharp pictures. Then I only recommend doing a sequence of 3-4 pics of the same object - later when reviewing the photos enlarged on your PC you will see that some pics are a tiny bit sharper than others.

The AF works very well, too. You only have to estimate the distance of your object to use the focus switch for either smaller or larger distances. This allows the AF to find your aimed object faster and more reliable.

This is a push & pull zoom lens in my opinion nothing to worry about. I personally like the option to change the zoom range fast between near and long end of the zoom. With a ring you can also adjust the simplicity to push/pull. This ring sits close to the manually adjustable focus ring - when turning one of these rings, you might sometimes turn the other neighboring one, too.

The lens is heavy, but very solid built. Considering the quality and comparing the price with other Canon prime tele lenses it is a very good choice giving a lot of flexibility in the focal length and a certainly comparable sharpness.