Canon EF 200mm f/2.8 L USM II - APS-C Review / Test Report - Analysis
Lens Reviews - Canon EOS (APS-C)

Distortion

As expected for a fix-focal lens the level of distortion is quite negligible. The situation remains about the same when attaching an EF 1.4x II converter.

200mm:

The chart above has a real-world size of about 120x80cm.

Vignetting

On the EOS 350D with its reduced format (APS-C) the (full format) lens exhibits slight vignetting at f/2.8 which shouldn't be much of a problem even at wide-open aperture. One stop down it is negligible even by lab standards.

MTF (resolution)

The EF 200mm f/2.8 L USM II (2nd sample) exhibited a very decent performance in the MTF lab. At wide-open aperture the resolution is very good and already quite even across the frame. The sweet spot is reached around f/5.6 with an excellent center to border quality.

When attaching a Canon EF 1.4x II converter the quality decreases slightly with good (wide-open) to very-good (medium apertures) ratings - this is based on the 1st tested sample of the lens which performed slightly worse.

Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!

Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH) which can be taken as a measure for sharpness. If you want to know more about the MTF50 figures you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations

The quality of the bokeh (the fore-/background blur at large apertures) is very smooth. The lens isn't overly prone to flare but using the hood is still a good idea especially with streaking light.

Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)

Similar to most other fix-focal lenses chromatic aberrations (color shadows at harsh contrast transitions) are extremely low and nothing to worry about.



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