New 100-400L, seagulls, and good Canadian price.

Kevin Jorgensen wrote:

Ember42 wrote:

thanks! Always good to know what the vulnerabilities of an expensive piece of kit are. I will have to develop my technique to avoid that failure mode.

I find it remarkable that you're taking advice from someone who had to ask you if it was the ''trombone'' as he put it. Canon doesn't make any other 100-400s, something I would have thought he knew. Take it from someone who uses this lenses every day, never heard of this problem, which is strange given its supposed to affect 10% of these lenses.............. and never had the problem. Go out and enjoy your lens, don't baby it.

Oh you mean the f4.5-5.6 do you?  Don't be so condescending.  I was just checking that I was talking of a particular design that caused the potential problem.  I should obviously have known otherwise I would not have launched into such a long winded explanation.

I tell you that the problem is very real.  I did a research on the web at the time - maybe 8 years ago.  The web was full of guys saying "pay no notice as I am personally as happy as ..., I have had no trouble, whee-aw you are mad and don't know your lenses" and a reasonable number complaining of bitter experience, displaced bearings, sticky trombone, defunct IS and Canon's out of warranty repair bills.   A straw (very inaccuate) poll between those ecstatic with no trouble and those miserable after a big out-of-warranty repair bill gave a rough 10% with this identical problem.

I am not trying to spoil happiness, just warning to not be too slap happy with the travel, the trombone seems to be a good way to quicky identify the zoom action as against the internal zooming 70-200mm f2.8 IS which is a much better lens and seems to be used by many "up and comings".

And of course if you notice any stickiness of movement and tell-tale faint line traces on the barrel it has popped one or more of these very small bearings out of the ball races which are dragging and causing the "sticky" effect. You had best send it for a warranty repair as trying to clean the lens movement can only lead to disaster.

My problem was caused by chasing aerial bird shots so it moved me to comment.  Eight years further down the track I have had no further problem - guess I am now in the 90% category.  The lens will take normal amounts of abuse it is just that here is no soft-stop buffer in the lens and whilst it can take a whack or two there is no knowing just how hard a whack it will need to cause damage.  Notably the zoom lock on the repaired lens was adjusted tighter when "off" when it came back and did not allow such rapid accelleration when operated.  Initially it was very free when set to "off".  Maybe my lens was faulty ex-works?  In which case I had an expensive lesson.

... and a lot of others complained about it being a "dust pump" - I never subscribed to that argument.