yeah I know what you mean well gl on finding a new lens

I bought the 55-250 yesterday, should get here tomorrow. I'm going to compare the two and return whichever one I like less. I have until Jan31 to return thanks to Amazon's holiday return policy. I'll probably post sample pics on here so you guys can see, but it's been rainy/dark here and looks like it will be this weekend. So I'll probably take some low light inside pics both handheld/tripod and post it up. I expect the 55-250 to win, but we'll see.

edit: here's a pic I took with the APO macro. Handheld at 300mm, shutter speed 1/60 @ISO 400. I couldn't believe the quality from handholding at such a slow shutter speed at max zoom. This is an extreme crop, I'll post more later possibly. Ignore the shininess of the box - it's glossy cardboard. But focus on the detail of the letters. I was really surprised by this sharpness of a lens without IS @ 300mm and a slow shutter speed. Looks like I got a good copy.

BTW this is from about 25 feet away.



This post was edited by bergmann on Nov 13 2008 03:43pm

haha thats nice so I guess you are going to play around with both of them for a few months
will be interesting to see the photos

EDIT:
thats a sharp pic indeed. well 1/60 isnt that slow shutterspeed. when I shot some of my night photos handheld I used shutterspeeds between 1/5 and 1/10 with IS on and if I kept my hand steady most of the photos were quite sharp

This post was edited by Futurama on Nov 13 2008 03:48pm

Well it's pretty slow for 300mm handheld with no IS. The general rule from what I've been reading is that your shutter speed should = your mm for best performance. So at 300mm I should use a speed of 1/300. Obviously you can get away with a lot more than that, so I'm not sure how accurate that rule is.

well lol to tell you the truth Ive never had other lenses than my 17-85 IS USM and I always had IS turned on
though ive noticed that at 85 mm I had to use a faster shutter speed than at 17 hehe im not a pro here and most of the stuff I learned about photography are either through try and fail or reading guides and forums online