Apples to Apples

I bought a new lens last week.  I still feel a little guilty about it.  Lenses are EXPENSIVE but a good lens, can really make a big difference.  I've been thinking about this lens for a while and decided now was the time to finally upgrade.  And so far, so good.  I love it.  It's only draw back is that it is HEAVY.  Hand-cramping heavy. But I can see a huge difference in the photos that it takes to the ones that my old lens used to.

With my old lens, I could get lots of nice crisp action shots that looked great.  But when you zoomed in to see the details, it tended to look kind of fuzzy.

Before:

With the new lens, when you zoom in, the image remains crisp.  Quite crisp.  Which means if a dog is further away, I can zoom in quite a bit without losing out on quality.

After:

Both of these pictures were taken with the same shutter speed, the same ISO and at about the same time of day.

The new lens also allows me to open the aperture up more (let in more light) which gives me a bigger (and better) range of settings in lower light situations, a shallower depth of field (i.e. the focus is just on the subject, and not the subject and background) and a creamier, out of focus background which allows your subject to stand out more.

I have barely taken this lens off my camera since I got it.  Which is a good thing as it doesn't actually fit in my camera bag!