Customer Reviews

Canon Lenses (Magic Lantern Guides)

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As an amateur photographer, I purchased the book to help make lens choices for landscape photography. The book succeeds in jazzing up a fairly dry topic and is more illuminating than culling lists of Canon lens specs. The authors, unaffiliated with Canon, endeavor to give a map into the almost bewildering array of Canon EOS 35 mm lenses. The authors are professional photographers with somewhat complimentary interests, which leads to a more balanced appraisal of various lenses. Neither however necessarily favors fixed focal length lenses over zoom lenses and both are sensitive to tradeoffs of price, weight, speed, and context of use. Their assessments are tempered by practicalities; inasmuch as hikers, backpackers, or travelers have limited space and weight budgets: it may be preferable to carry one zoom to several fixed focal length lenses.

The authors have used all of the lenses that they canvas. Lenses are discussed individually; a photo shows fine detail on the lens; and each lens is accompanied by a chart that usefully tabulates properties such as lens construction, length, weight, etc. Extenders and macro lens accessories are also treated. Sixteen pages of colored photos, as well as additional BW photos illustrate capabilities of particular lenses. The discussion of Canon Tilt-Shift lenses and the photos taken with TS lenses are excellent. The sections on ultra-wide angle and wide-angle lenses are personally valuable.

The book does not cover all Canon lenses. The copyright is 1995 and Canon continues to design new EOS lenses. One hopes that the authors will expand the book in a second edition to include the rest of the lenses. Nonetheless, I was able to use this book to help make lens choices more efficiently. The authors' viewpoint about the quality of recent zoom lenses was key. If the book were up to update, I would award it five stars.