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Canon 100/400 mm lens

Started Jan 23, 2014 | User reviews thread
artistguy Senior Member • Posts: 1,175
Re: Canon 100/400 mm lens

I've owned the 100-400, the 400 5.6, and the sigma 135-400. The 400 5.6 wins hands down for colour, af speed, contrast and sharpness IF all you want is 400mm. The 100-400 is a very flexible lens (that's why Canon paired it with the 24-105 as a kit offering when the original 5D was introduced), it's not perfect though, dust gets in with the push pull design and it's not the sharpest when combined with the x1.4 converter. The little sigma is light weight and plastic but does the job for those on a budget. There are of course others that I have not owned.

There's certainly room for a third party to introduce a competitive lens. I gave up trying to do birding with these slow lenses, it became obvious to me that 5.6 at 400mm was too soft, and f8 and sharp was far too slow for small birds in typical UK lighting conditions. The conclusion I reached was I needed another couple of thousand pounds at least for a faster lens  to attempt reliable captures.

 artistguy's gear list:artistguy's gear list
Panasonic FZ1000 Sony a7R Canon EOS 7D Mark II Canon EF 35mm F2.0 Canon EF 85mm F1.8 USM +7 more
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