© samu­rai: Kage-Warrior, lens: Canon.

If a Samurai swears by their swords, a pho­tog­ra­pher swears by their lenses. Nearly 8 years since the first ver­sion was intro­duced, Canon today announced a new replace­ment to their leg­endary white-bodied tele­photo pro-grade zoom lens, the Canon EF 70–200 f/2.8L IS II.

What’s so spe­cial about this lens that I bother writ­ing about it? Well, trust me, this one’s different.

Focusing dis­tance is to the lens what the shut­ter delay is to a cam­era body. One can always wait a lit­tle longer, or move aback to get the shot, but we also loose the crit­i­cal moment. Another way would be to cook some magic in the labs, and let these obscure design­ers, sci­en­tists & engi­neers move their wands around and cre­ate the impos­si­ble. And that what Canon has achieve today:

A reduced min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance of 1.2 metres (3.9 ft) and improved 0.21x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion will allow pho­tog­ra­phers to get closer to sub­jects with­out need­ing to swap lenses – greatly ben­e­fit­ting time-pressured news and events pho­tog­ra­phers who require flex­i­bil­ity. An updated Image Stabilizer mech­a­nism also offers a shut­ter speed advan­tage that’s equiv­a­lent to four stops, reduc­ing the effect of image blur result­ing from cam­era shake in busy shoot­ing environments.

What you see as a mere .2m (20cm) closer, is years-of-work of num­ber crunch­ing, glass-polishing, super-high-tech-craze back at the shop, their clos­est com­pe­ti­tion, Nikon, released a sim­i­lar lens last July, and they only man­age to cramp 1.4m. Trust me, 20cm can cost you your job on the front­line, imag­ine you’re shoot­ing the world’s most impor­tant per­son deliv­er­ing speech in a room full of jour­nal­ists, that 20cm became your most valu­able dis­tant you’d ever hope for when you fail to… ergh, focus! Oh that squeak­ing sound of failed motor movement!

Changes are good, but what Canon has achieved in the last cou­ple of months are more than good, they’re sen­sa­tional… big, bright 100% viewfinder cov­er­age on a not-so-high-end cam­era body? Check. Better sen­sor that doesn’t involve the buzz-selling megapixel count? Check. A weather-proof cam­era body that would not break after the rain? Check! Check! Check! Canon is break­ing the ice, peo­ple. Pay atten­tion, and you’ll thank them later.

Leica, Nikon, Apple and Sony (who helped low­er­ing cam­era costs & beauty stan­dard), you guys deserve the cred­its too, I’m happy that finally you can quit fight­ing like a baby and start com­pet­ing like a man with your lat­est toys, keep it boys! Cause we’re going to be at the fin­ish line, wait­ing for your next sen­sa­tion to come.

(PS. They even throw in a new lens case that you might finally use)