Can you tell which photo was taken with a Canon $1200.00 lens?

One photo was taken with the Canon 70-200 2.8L series lens, the other, EOS 75-300 4.0-5.6.

I've been shooting with my Canon D300 (original Digital Rebel) for about five years. I just recently decided that I want to take the quality of my picture picture to the next level. Sure, when it comes to lenses, I may have skipped a few levels.

One might say that your not taking advantage of the L series lens attached to an old Rebel. I would somewhat agree with that, but I would expect a significant improvement from the lens I was using. I'm sure there are a lot of technical aspects to image quality that I'm not going to pretend to understand. I just know what I see and sharpness is one of the main qualities I expect with a high end lens.

Here's how the pictures were taken. In a high school parking lot on an overcast day, I measured 55' feet from my subject, Mr. Penguin. Why 55' feet you might ask? Couple of reasons; first it seemed like a distance that you would encounter in a real world situation, where for whatever reason, you couldn't get any closer. The other reason, the lines on the parking lot measured perfectly at 55' feet. Besides, I don't think that it's a distance that's so far away, you would expect to get a decent photo.

Both photos taken at 55', f13, 200mm and 205mm using a tripod. The camera was in AE (aperture priority), Auto Focus set to on, and format RAW. I set the focal length using the numbers printed on the lens. I was off by 5mm with one lens, the other was maxed out at 200. I really don't think that would compromise this test. I also want to point out that focus was aimed directly at the penguin's beak.

Now, you might ask why these setting? I actually took several pictures using a progression of aperture settings. I didn't see any difference in terms of image sharpness, so I picked f13.

If you click either one of these images, the original full size image will display. Other than converting to .jpg format, there was no other post production work. What you see is what the camera produced.

Canon 70-200 f2.8L	Canon 75-300 f4.0-5.6

Now that you've had a chance to look at both images, you may know which image was taken with each lens. You may have also cheated and looked at the status bar of your browser and saw the file name, which gives away the information.

Regardless, in my opinion, there isn't much difference between the two images. It may be that the Canon L series lens is not what it's hyped up to be. Or, it could be that there's something wrong with my camera. I don't suspect my camera being faulty, because images taken within 10 feet, are sharp as a tack, regardless which lens is attached. Unfortunately, we can't always get that close to the subject were trying to shoot.

To further illustrate image quality, I took the two images above and cropped at 100 percent a portion of the image. I really wanted to get close to the penguin, and show you the lack of differences, if any, between these two lenses. Again, you can click on either of these image to open in a new window.

Canon 70-200 f2.8L	Canon 75-300 f4.0-5.6

After seeing these result, why would anyone spend $1200.00 or more when the $200.00 lens works just as well? I don't think anyone would, which leads me to believe there's another problem. Or, what you see is exactly what you get from these lenses and my expectation for the L series lens is way too high.

I would welcome anyone to help me understand why the image of the penguin taken with the Canon L series lens is not as sharp as a tack.

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Thanks for reading.