Canon 70-300mm F4-5.6 DO IS

I haven’t bought a lens in a while…so I figured it was about time for another one :) On my recent trip to San Diego I hauled out my 70-200 F2.8 L IS lens for the maternity shoot. As awesome as it was, it is big and heavy, and I only used it for that one shoot. That’s a lot of weight to carry around. I had my eye on this 70-300 DO for a while now, and one popped up on the internet forums for an awesome price. It wasn’t mint, but I also didn’t want to spend the $1300 retail price for one either. So I got this one for about half that, and am pretty happy with the condition. Its got some dust inside, some paint’s worn off, and the zoom isn’t super smooth. So here’s the thing, its only 4” long @ 70mm, which is about an inch shorter than the 24-70 F2.8L. Now that is compact. It uses Diffractive Optics (that’s the DO part of the name) to make it so small (and improve chromatic abberations) and has a true USM ring motor with pretty good build quality. The downside is the slow max aperture F5.6 @ 300mm. But I figured I would be using this for travel, and if I need to take photos of something far away, its going to be in bright daylight. The other big downside is that its not very sharp. At least not compared to my prime lenses and the rest of my L glass. It’s a bummer, but you can’t have it all.