Well, last week I finally did it. I found the lens I was looking for online and bought it. It's the Canon 400mm F5.6L, a lens that is strangely difficult to come by. Difficult enough that many are suggesting it looks like Canon is about to introduce a replacement and is trying to keep stocks of it low, so as not to have a bunch of an obsolete model sitting on the shelves. It appears that that's not really the case though, it's just.. strangely hard to come by. Like Canon is committed to a fixed manufacturing rate and in the summer more people want the lens and it gets rare. Just how rare? Well I was on the email waiting list at B&H. The last time it came into stock it was gone about 6 hours after I got my email notification that it was in. I do not have it yet, however. It was originally estimated to get here Wednesday, but that was quickly moved back to Tuesday and based on the tracking info I think it'll get here on Monday. If it wasn't for the stupid weekend (how often do you hear that, right?) I'd have it by today, it's at the local distribution center just waiting for a weekday so it can be released. So I wanted to give a little background on why I chose this lens and what I learned in the process. Because dpreview is always loaded with people asking whether they should get the 100-400 IS, the 400 F5.6, or sometimes the 300 F4 IS. I didn't even have to ask, it had been asked so many times before I just saw what answers had already been given. First off, what about third party lenses? I know we have very positive reviews here of the Tamron 200-500 and of Tim's Sigma, of which I can never remember the focal length formula. Well.. call it what you will. Maybe I decided to become a Canon elitist snob. The situation is complicated, different reviews show different things, but the case seems to be that the Sigma zooms at least just aren't exceptionally sharp at maximum zoom. I've seen less info on the Tamron all around, I sort of irrationally excluded it based on the idea that third party wasn't as good. And I'll admit that. And I wanted exceptional sharpness. Not because I'm a pixel peeper (although I am one), but because I'm looking to do wildlife photography, and when you're shooting wildlife the word is that you can never have enough focal length. If you look on the wildlife threads on dpreview you'll see people using the $7,500 (man, the price increase really hit that lens hard) Canon 600mm WITH a 1.4x teleconverter. I tell myself that that doesn't matter because I have a 1.6x crop factor body, but that's not entirely true and I know it. But anyway, an exceptionally sharp lens means that I can afford to crop more heavily, up to the resolution limits of my camera sensor. Also it should take a teleconverter better. Also this lens has a good reputation for being extremely sharp wide open, useful considering that none of the options were particularly fast. On the Canon side I had the 400mm prime and the 100-400 IS to choose from. The zoom is awfully tempting, with the flexibility of zoom plus stabilization. In terms of value for the dollar it sure seems to come out ahead, it's a LOT more complicated, it has a lot more glass and the extra complication of the IS system. Yet it doesn't cost that much more. Canon is clearly making people pay through the nose for prime quality. But it has an unpleasant reputation for sample variability. After reading multiple reviews of it a trend became apparent. The really good reviews specified that they had to go through several copies to find a great one. Some have posted reviews claiming that their copy is nearly equal to or even better than the 400mm F5.6. But they fully acknowledge that those fantastic copies aren't common. Furthermore it has at least a slight reputation for degrading over time, something about the zoom mechanism wearing and the optics losing alignment or something. I had two thoughts on the matter. First off I REALLY didn't want to play the game of going through copy after copy until I found the great one. And I'm fully aware that every time someone else does that the stores are stuck with the rejects and have to try to sell them again. Meaning all the more low quality copies for me to dodge. Secondly I already have the 70-200 F4. So my less extreme telephoto range is already covered with a comparatively lightweight high quality lens. And anyway, for wildlife I expected to be spending most of my time at 400mm anyway, so I might as well maximize my quality at that range. And get a lighter weight lens that focuses faster at the same time (I guess the simpler construction means that the lens elements can move faster). I'll miss the IS, but I think this was the right choice for me. Everyone always says that this lens is a bit on the slow side, and they always say they want IS, and frankly for the price I think it should be either wider or IS equipped. I mean consider the 300mm F4 IS, it's both wider and IS equipped, but of course not as long. Going up to 400 means sacrificing both the extra stop of aperture and the IS for the same cost. But I'm well aware of those limitations, I know that I'll need either a lot of light, a tripod or monopod, or else higher ISOs. I considered the 300 early on, but frankly I knew it wouldn't be long enough and eventually gave it up. On the other hand this lens is said to be the best bird in flight lens for Canon cameras. The reason being that IS is worthless there, you need high shutter speeds to freeze the movement of the bird anyway, and this lens focuses faster and is lighter and easier to handle. Danielle, one of the better known bird photographers on the canon forums at Dpreview, swears by this lens. She claims it's superior to the much more expensive, wider and IS equipped teles because it's lighter and you can shoot it without a monopod (not so much for reducing shake but just because they're so heavy you can't hand hold them for long). She tells stories about shots she caught and other heavy lens users missed because she was more mobile. To be honest birds aren't my main interest, but I expect them to be my main subject just because they're easier to come by. Living in Chicagoland you don't have a great deal of exciting wildlife at your disposal. I can shoot rabbits, squirrels, and deer... my great mammal hope is to get a coyote, but with them being primarily nocturnal that's going to be tough. Also I'm hoping to get a beaver, I know we have them, and supposedly we have an otter around here somewhere as well. On the other hand we have a pretty good bird selection, and I have a number of excellent birding sites available to me, from Fermilab (which is apparently considered quite a good site due to much of the surface of the accelerators being kept wild) to a bunch of forest preserves. Plenty of marsh type environments to draw in water birds (I often see herons flying overhead and have seen them land in my neighbor's decorative pond and eat their fish).. and we seem to have a number of red tailed hawks living right in my city. So once this bad boy arrives at my doorstep and I spend some time testing it out and putting some serious miles on my feet walking the preserve trails I'll be back at this thread with a report on how it performs. And with pictures, of course. I'm so excited. I just have to say that. I've been wanting to branch out into wildlife photography for ages now, 200mm has always been so limiting to me. I know 400 still won't feel like enough, but I know I'll be able to use it. I have a whole new field beckoning to me. It'll probably be frustrating at first, I'm going to have to learn how to be quiet and unobtrusive, normally I just tromp through the forest making as much noise as I wish. But it's still exciting.
you are going to love this lens, it's imho the best compromise if you can't afford or don't want the size and weight of the 500 and/or 600 it's not so heavy that you can't use it all day, tack sharp, works great with a teleconvertor, and is probably the best hand held flight lens of any make i love mine, i don't use it that often, but when i do it's great at what it's designed for, daylight hand held wildlife
Well it has arrived, but I have a problem. I need a suitable target. It was storming today and all the backyard bunnies appear to be in hiding, even after the sun came out. I went on a walk to a local forest preserve to try to find something to point it at, but all I got were some butterflies and bees. And a neat little frog that was too close, the lens doesn't focus closer than 11 feet (which, again, I knew about, you can get more magnification on many other lenses because they'll let you focus closer to your subject). Pictures of distant objects, like banks of plants or an old barn, turned out awful. It may have been due to the high humidity, things at long range may have been degraded because of the conditions of the air itself. I got some interesting detail on the bee despite the range (that's really not an ideal target for this lens, I was zooming in to 100%, looking at every pixel to see detail on the bee, it was hardly filling the frame), and the butterfly pictures revealed several more insects on the plant that I didn't see with my eyes at all, but.. these are not pictures to post to show off the lens. This lens wants a certain type of subject, and I need to give it what it wants. Hopefully I can find a rabbit soon, or maybe I can track down some local groundhogs that I regularly spot from the road. Something cute and fluffy, I'm used to fur detail from shooting zoo animals with my 70-200. Next weekend, if nothing else, I'll probably be able to shoot some dogs doing an agility course, ya'know, running up and down ramps and such. Sort of a sports shooting style of thing, not this lens's strong point but an interesting test. Initial impressions though are that it's definitely bigger and heavier than my 70-200, no surprise but something I couldn't really imagine and just had to wait to experience in reality. It's certainly not a lens to use if you want to keep a low profile. It's big, it's white, it's going to attract attention. I pretty much have to hand carry my camera with the lens mounted on it, it's too heavy to be hanging by neck strap, that is the weight of the lens pulling on the camera might not be good for the lens mount. The larger lenses have their own dedicated strap attachment point, but not this one. My arms are going to get sore carrying it over a long period of time, at first at least, but they're just going to have to get used to it. I'm not complaining about any of that. The weight is unavoidable, compared to the big budget long teles this one is a lightweight. As to the lens standing out, well, except for zoo shooting I should be alone for much of the time I'm using it. A deer isn't going to walk up to me and comment that I must be able to see into space with a lens that big.
Finally, some pictures. These are all Mexican Grey Wolves, shot at my favorite zoo. I was absolutely thrilled as I was shooting, I'd never been able to get so close to them before, photographically speaking. I kept walking back and forth between the two best viewing positions (no glass or fence between me and the animals, I REALLY have to hand it to whoever designed it, they intentionally gave photographers some great angles) and shooting as these guys walked past. Which was another victory, I got my timing right and caught them on what I call "dawn patrol" although it was really well past dawn. Around 10am, but still they seem to like to go out and patrol their territory around then. I was actually having the problem of getting too close, I couldn't get the whole animal in the frame, and a lot of my shots were lost due to cropped ears or awkward framing. I'm exciting about this shot, and a couple others like it that I got. I need to work on it more to try to get just the right angle and the right body positioning, but I like it overall. It was one of those ones where I was just experimenting when I shot it, but when I looked at it back home I realized I had something. I've realized a mistake I made though, I need to work on my focusing. I was worried F5.6 wouldn't offer a narrow enough depth of field. It turns out that getting the focus just right is critical. The focus was off on all of the wolves walking towards me. I focused on the eyes, but then when I took the picture the distance had changed because it was moving and the focus was behind the eyes, more around the mane, or ruff, whatever the longer hair around the neck is called. Time to experiment with AI servo I guess. At least this means that even at F5.6 I can still get a decently dramatic narrow depth of field, even if it's not as thin as you'd get from the 400mm F2.8. If the color balance seems different on all of these, it's because I was unsure what it was supposed to be and was experimenting. My weakest area is figuring color balance, again I don't see better or worse, just different. I need some intensive help there, I really ought to attend a few photography classes at my local community college.. but I'm concerned I may be beyond help, aside from using a color balance tool in the field. My results have been inconsistent, but that's probably my fault. The focus on the moving wolves was tricky, and even if I had the focus spot on I may not have been too steady with how I held the camera, a number of shots came out blurred. My initial testing on plants made me think the focus was just off, I'd focus on one part but something else nearer the camera would be in focus. But I tested it with a focus chart, it appears to be spot on there. So I guess the fault lies with me. I've done a fair bit of pixel peeping at the results. As I've said, many shots came out a bit blurred, I have to search for the perfectly sharp ones. It feels like it's unpredictable, but it's still likely my fault, plus the fact that that I'm trying to get used to a whole new style of shooting. When I get the good ones though I'm very happy with what I'm getting. I've tried to compare with my 70-200 F4, in some situations it appears to be sharper but the comparisons can only be rough, the situations are always too different. Either one is a much closer look at the same animal due to the differing focal lengths, or else they both appear to be from the same distance because I got closer with the 70-200 but then had to be shooting through glass, which degrades image quality. I guess what I'm saying is I tried to see if the 70-200 appeared to be superior. And the answer is no. 400mm can be a very different focal length from 200mm, and I'm still adjusting. But when I've gotten good results I've been very happy with them, often they seem to beat the 70-200, but it's kind of an apples to oranges thing. My attempts to photograph real world subjects (versus using a test chart, which might make the effect more noticable) at narrower apertures has shown that it's pretty sharp wide open, I haven't been able to see any sharpness advantage to closing it down some. It's supposed to be great at wide open shooting, but I wanted to see for myself. As is I'm wondering how often I'll ever want to close it down. I mean, for greater depth of field of course, but mostly I think I'll want as much light as I can get and won't have that great a need for more DOF. Actually it was sharp enough that I kept on noticing all sorts of tiny details when I zoomed in. Like bits of plant matter sticking to the fur, or the fact that at least one of the wolves had crusted blood on the tips of his ears. Perhaps he was the omega, the lowest ranking wolf who and essentially pack whipping boy. It's an all male pack, I don't know what that does to pack dynamics. I find myself wondering if a lack of females might increase the aggression. Bokeh, the out of focus area behind and possibly in front of the subject, seemed fine to me. I'm not an expert on the subtle art of blur quality, but I've been happy with what I've gotten. Both in that it was more blurred than I expected (I wasn't taking into account the fact that the much longer focal length will mean a comparatively more narrow depth of field) and the quality of the blur seemed pleasant. That was one of the things that I liked about the head on portrait aspect wolf shots. You can see the plant covered ground that he's walking on and, to me at least, the depth of field effect on the ground adds a little drama. Some other notes about this lens. It has a very long minimum focus distance of about 11.5 feet. In comparison the Canon 100-400 IS has a min focus of just under 6 feet. It shouldn't be a big issue for me, I wanted it to get access to animals that were far away anyway. I've also been meaning to mention that it comes with a tripod ring, which is very nice but really starts to become an essential for a lens of this size. It means you can mount the lens onto the tripod rather than the camera. With the size and weight of the lens, the center of balance really is on the lens itself, mounting the camera to the tripod would put stress on the lens mount. The ring is removable (it kind of gets in the way for hand holding), and what's more, it'll fit on my 70-200 F4 as well. This is handy, because Canon charges an arm and a leg for the simple ring when sold separately. It's a nice, simple design, but it's not worth $150! That's beyond absurd. Which, I guess, means I'd better treat this thing real well. I really don't want to have to replace it. It also comes with a nice cushioned lens bag, or case, good for storage or transport. The 70-200 came with a sort of soft fabric bag that fit over it but didn't really cushion it, at most it could have protected it from scratches but I never really used it. Perhaps the most unique feature is the slide out lens hood. The lens hood isn't removable, at rest it fits around the end of the lens. You slide it out and click it into place to use it. I'm slightly concerned that with time and use it may loosen up, and I don't know if it's at all replaceable or if it is, how easy it is to get a replacement and install it. But it's really nice to not have to worry about an extra piece of plastic that I have to fit into my camera backpack when I'm taking the lens with. And I should never have to worry about it falling off, unless it IS removable and I somehow accidentally detach it while trying to extent it. I guess if I had to come to some sort of conclusion about the lens, it's that it's a specialized lens good for a specific purpose. Which Gary has already stated. I had to switch lenses in the zoo to be able to shoot some of the smaller animals that I could get closer to (both because of minimum focus distance because of light limitations). One of the stabilized zooms would give much greater flexibility. In terms of shooting wildlife it's still going to be a challenge. My sole birding expedition thus far yielded birds that were really too far to photograph well, or else poorly lit. But so far I've been kind of stampeding into the forests with little to no strategy or tactics. Clearly there is more to wildlife photography then marching into the wild and demanding that the animals line up to be photographed. Which is, I suppose, the point. I enjoy zoo photography, but I always feel like I'm cheating. It takes some work to make sure that it doesn't look like a zoo shot, but in the end I still feel like I need to put a "warning, not real wild life" disclaimer in the picture.
good job, esp for 1st time out with a new lens, you got the catchlight in the eyes in number 1, that's one of the most important aspects of wildlife photography, esp birds, it makes them come alive versus looking like a taxidermy exhibit i'm telling you, you are going to love this lens, on a tripod, with a teleconvertor, it's razor sharp at f8 for compressed landscapes
