To me, the CANON 200MM F2 has always been a Holy Grail sort of lens, that you often heard of but rarely seen. As a professional portrait and wedding photographer it has been a lens i have coverted for a very long time.

Durable; Full metal construction; Great Features; Great Picture Quality

Bulky; Super expensive

The Canon EF 200mm f/2L IS USM Lens is the highly-anticipated replacement for the long-discontinued but legendary Canon EF 200mm f/1.8 L USM Lens . This replacement lens was number 1 on my personal most-wanted Canon lens list - And I am in no way disappointed with it.

I bought this lens because Canon (CPS) stopped servicing my original 200L 1.8 lens. I reluctantly sold the original 1.8 version and bought the 200L IS 2.0 in 2009. I used this lens for well over 2 years till I sold it. The 200L IS 2.0 is sharp and makes lovely pictures but... Let me explain.

Fast subject acquisition; great IS and great IQ

The magic of the 200L 1.8 is not here

Amongst Canon's large, ultra-fast telephoto prime lenses, the recently unleashed EF 200mm f/2L IS USM Lens is purposely designed to provide pin-sharp images in low-light levels. As the name reveals, this intuitive lens offers an outstanding blend of a 200mm focal length with a maximum aperture of...

A professional-grade telephoto lens, which sports a fast maximum aperture of f/2, image stabilisation and silent focusing with full-time manual focus override. This is quite a specialised lens, costing around ￡4600, so we'll take a close look at how it performs in this review.

This is like the holy grail of lenses and I've used so many high-end ones from every top manufacturer. People often compare this lens to the 300/2.8 but the two are very different. The 200/2 is a versatile lens with the fast aperture and wider field of view.

You haven't seen a lens until you've used this one; Nothing more can be said: http://www.flickr.com/photos/genotypewriter/5080867269/ As you can see, I get much sharper images than the lenstip guys; 1Ds3 has an overly strong AA filter compared to the 5D2 as well

Nothing..; well the white lenses are prone to paint peeling off easily when you knock them about..; especially on the lens foot but can be taken care of; Again, nothing specific to this lens