Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM review

What price for perfection in a super-fast telephoto camera lens?

Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM
Big and fast, the new EF 300mm is idela for sport and wildlife photography

Why you can trust TechRadar We spend hours testing every product or service we review, so you can be sure you’re buying the best. Find out more about how we test.

Sharpness

As part of our test of the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 IS II USM we've shot our SFR Plus chart at every aperture to check for sharpness and fringing across the frame. The resulting images are then fed through the Imatest Master software.

The graph below shows the results of the test, with each of the coloured lines depicting the lenses performance at the centre (in blue), and an average of the results for the middle of the frame (pink) and the image edge (yellow).

Canon ef 300mm f/2.8l is ii usm sharpness

Canon ef 300mm f/2.8l is ii usm sharpness

The graph shows that the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM performs well across the aperture range, with the best results for sharpness achieved between f/4 and f/7.1.

As usual the lens performs best at the centre, but at most apertures the edge performance is not far behind.

Fringing

Canon ef 300mm f/2.8l is ii usm fringing

Canon ef 300mm f/2.8l is ii usm fringing

This graph shows that signs of fringing are low across the aperture range. Despite the expected rise at the edge of the frame the amount of fringing is still very low.