Lens Recommendation

Question

Looking for a lens that will allow fast shooting of sports photography, have the range for scenery at a distance, but yet have wide angle capabilities for reasonable close up pics.  I have a 70-200 F4/L IS, 55-250 F/4.0-5.6 L and the standard 18-55mm that comes with some ofthe older EOS models.
I find the 55-250 is not wide enough on the low end and soft on the longer zoom.    I would like a lens that can still shoot the sports photography and yet be capable of shooting close ups at wide angle. 
Any recommendations?

Answer 1

cicopo wrote:
"Super-zooms compromise in optical quality to the point that you may as well just use a point & shoot camera -- you wont see the performance of DSLR capabiltities coming through when you use these lenses."
Sorry but I disagree BIG TIME. I get some pretty good shots from superzooms including consumer grade ones. DSLR's have very low shutter lag times, better AF systems & better view finders plus when shooting action they aren't usually held out in front watching the LCD so people are forced to use better technique.  Superzooms may not be perfect when compared to primes but they offer tremendous versatility and that's a big plus to a whole lot of amateur photographers.
Most zoom lenses tend to offer a zoom range which provides about a 3x magnification factor from the wide end to the narrow end.  A 24-70mm for example... 24 X 3 = 72 -- so that's about a 3x zoom.  A 70-200... 70 X 3 = 210... again about a 3x zoom.  A 3x zoom range is not so ambitious as to create lots of other problems.
When light passes through any single lens element, it bends (which is the whole point) but each wavelength component of the light bends at a different amount.  That means if you only had a single lens element, all the various colors of light would not actually come to focus at the same distance behind the lens.  A lens focused perfectly for "green" light would not also be in focus for the "reds" or "blues".
To counter this, you can use two lens elements arranged as an achromatic doublet -- which helps re-converge the chromatic dispersion problem -- but it's not perfect.  You can use apochromatic triplets to do a better job... and keep going with techniques to make a better image.  
You can optimize this fairly well if you're just trying to create a single focal length.  If you're trying to cover lots of focal lengths, then it becomes a bit more complicated.   You can also control the issues better if the zoom doesn't try to be too ambitious about it's zoom range.  That's why I mentioned the 3x range.  Some slighlty more ambitous zooms may try to go to a 5x zoom range (e.g. a 55-250 would be an example).  
And THEN you get the super-zooms.  These lenses go well beyond a 3x or even 5x range.   A 10x or 11x would not be unheard of and the 28-300 is an example of a lens that exceeds a 10x range.
It's difficult to provide a 10x range and still maintain good optical quality.
Keep in mind that we don't use most of the pixels we shoot.   You'd really need to blow up an image to 100% size such that you can see every pixel.  
The chromatic dispersion is nearly non-existant along the central axis of a lens... and increases the farther away you are from the central axis (corners are worst).  The f-stop you are using also has a lot to do with things.  As the aperture gets smaller, the chromatic abberation problems are reduced and the image appears to get sharper... until you pass the point where diffraction comes into play (usually after you pass f/8 it starts going the other way).
If you go look at the MTF curve charts for the Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM lens... and then go look at the MTF curve charts for the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM ... the less-ambitious zoom is not just a little better... it's a LOT better.  And you'll find this comparison is pretty consistent.  You'll be hard-pressed to find an exception to it.  (you would need to a comparitively high-end super-zoom (like the Canon "L" series) and then compare it to a very low quality consumer-grade zoom to find an exception.)  The the greater the zoom range (when thought of as magnifciation factors) the more the lens is disadvantaged for being ambitious.
It's a fair generalization to say that super zooms... almost without regard to price tag (becuase the Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM is not an inexpensive lens) generally cannot compete with their less-ambitous siblings.
This is NOT to say that super-zooms have no place.  They can be tremendously useful.  You have to consider how an image will be used after it's exposed.  If you're publishing them on the web then it's actually very hard to tell the difference between a good lens and a fantastic lens because we don't use most of the pixels we capture. The image is down-sampled to a reasonable web-size and nobody gets to scrutinize the fine-detail.  If the image is going to be printed on very large size and hung in a gallery... you probably want to be fussier about the optical quality of the lens.
Tim Campbell
5D II, 5D III, 60Da