Here are my favorites from this year's State Fair...
The first two were shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II, the third with an EOS 1D Mark III. All three were using an EF 70-200mm f/2.8L lens stopped slightly down to f/4 to get good subject separation from (occasionally very busy) backgrounds while getting a bit more sharpness than if I'd been shooting wide open.
That latter was a thing I had to learn the hard way. Like a lot of people, I had the whole "I paid for a ginormous aperture and I'm gonna use every bit of it!" thought process going on for a long time.
The 70-200/2.8L is the original, non-stabilized version; a well-loved example that a blog reader made me a stellar deal on. That lens is the reason I do most of my paying work with Canons again (I'd been shooting Sony) and has taken a lot of my favorite portraits since I got it back in 2018...
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