Time to zoom in on Chardon's Clock Tower

- CLICK ON ANY IMAGE TO ENLARGE -

Chardon, OH is the center of the "snow belt" in Northeast Ohio. It is also the county seat for Geauga County. The town has a traditional town center square and at the north end of the square is this beautiful county building.

I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the Canon 100-400mm L zoom lens. All of these images were taken on the Canon 20D which has 8.2 mega-pixels. You'll see by examining these images that good glass (lenses) is more important than lots of mega-pixels.


Let's start out at 100mm. Lots of detail and good saturation.

Stats: Canon 20D 8.2mp 100mm 1/800th f9.0 ISO 400


Let's move up to 200mm. Again, plenty of detail and saturation as we get closer to the clock.

Stats: Canon 20D 8.2mp 200mm 1/800th f8.0 ISO 400


The weather vane was cropped from the second picture. It still has plenty of detail. You can easily read the 1869 sign. No signs of chromatic aberration (red/blue fringing) either.


And finally, a close-up of this beautiful clock. The sun is spanking the dial and the colors are glistening.

Stats: Canon 20D 8.2mp 400mm 1/800th f7.1 ISO 400

I admit that this was probably an easy test for the lens. The sun was bright so getting a good exposure was easy. The lens performed as it should for an 'L' series. What I liked was the ability to crop into the images and extract the most interesting objects.

The simple rule here is get good glass if you can afford it. It's more important than the camera body and is the best investment in the long run. Camera bodies wear out or become obsolete, but lenses generally last forever.

Copyright 2007 James D. Fisher
All Rights Reserved.