Conclusion

Until the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM was released recently, if you wanted a 70-300mm lens with awesome optics, you had to go for the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM. It offers excellent element quality, great build, and fast focusing using the ring type ultra sonic motor. The image stabiliser is good to four stops so that fact that it only goes to f/4.5 isn't that much of an issue. Chromatic aberration performance is exemplary and we only have two real gripes; one is that the zoom creep is terrible and we would prefer the zoom ring to be at the front element, the same way that the L lens is. For a lens costing over a thousand pounds, I would expect there to be no creep at all, but maybe that's just me? There is a locking switch but it only works at 70mm.

The great thing about the Diffractive optic lenses is that there's very little in terms of real competition. In fact, the nearest lens in terms of quality and technology is the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L IS USM which means that using this lens, you'll have something more unique and specialist. I hope that Canon take the decision to widen the range of the DO lenses so that the technology comes down and those amazing elements can be passed down through the range. If we needed a telezoom with incredible quality, this is a lens we would certainly consider.

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4.5
Ease-of-use	4
Image quality	4.5
Value for money	4