Thankyou DPR! Many excellent and useful responses here. I am reading them with interest. Some points to clarify.
Renting in my part of the world is not feasible. None of the local companies list the super-teles.
I am considering the 400/2.8 II as
one lens in a two-lens birding package. My main purpose in this thread is clarifying what I can expect from it so as to be either:
- better able to choose the other lens (most likely 600/4 II, 400/4 DO II, or just the old 500/4 I already have), or
- persuaded that I'd do better with a completely different strategy, probably not including an f/2.8 lens.
Tthe 500 I have is the old model, so size and weight are not factors between the two. The 400/2.8 II is 20g lighter than the old 500 (call it the same), 17mm greater in diameter (unimportant), and 60mm shorter (a small but welcome improvement). For practical purposes we can say they are the same.
What do I find lacking in the 500/4? It is a wonderful lens which has served me well for more than a decade - back when I bought it, I was shooting a 100-400 (which I still have) and pair of latest-and-greatest technology 8MP 20Ds. Canon had only one full frame camera (the 1Ds II) which, allowing for inflation, cost about twice as much as a 1D X II does today. Today the 500 remains a truly wonderful lens, although if something goes wrong with it, Canon may no longer have part - not a reason to sell it, just something to bear in mind. When I bought it, the 500/4 was the best all-things-considered compromise single lens for birding. Light enough (just!) for hand-held use; reach second only to the mighty 600/4 (there was no 800 back then); fast enough (just barely) for work in poor light. The same applies to the 500/4 II today, I think.
11 years on with the old lens, there are
three things I want to achieve, listed below. On an imagined unlimited budget, the best answers seem obvious:
(a) Better
hand-holding than I get with the 500/4 (too heavy!) or the 100-400 Mark 1(too short and slow). Not just hand-holding, anything which involves battling with the weight of the 500. (Including BIF, though this is not a major priority.) I've carried the old 500 together with a tripod 10 kilometres over sand dunes in a day a few times, and it's not fun. Nor am I getting any younger. You can only carry a big lens so far, and only hand-hold it for so long.
- BEST ANSWER: 400/4 DO II.
- SECOND BEST: 300/2.8 II (shorter, a little heavier, a little cheaper).
- ALSO CONSIDER: 500/4 II (heavier, but longer); or keep the 500/4 I (lots heavier!); or a 200-400 (short and heavy, but very flexible) or upgrade the 100-400 to a Mark II (short and slow, but very light and very cheap).
(b)
More reach (from tripod or bean-bag). Birders never have enough reach.
- BEST ANSWER: 600/4 II (same weight as the old 500, awkwardly long in any normal-sized car though, which is a factor).
- SECOND BEST: 500/4 II; or just keep the old 500/4.
- ALSO CONSIDER: 400/2.8 II with converters.
(c) Better results in
poor light, especially in rainforest. Many, many times I have wished for a faster lens in ill-lit habitats. Fill flash helps, of course, but there is only so much flash you can use if you want a natural-looking result, and only so far you can push the ISO.
- BEST ANSWER: 400/2.8.
- SECOND BEST: 300/2.8. (But 300mm is marginal for bird work.)
- ALSO CONSIDER: Nothing.
I can comfortably afford one of these three best answers; might just barely stretch to two, particularly if I sell the old 500; certainly not all three. So I have to find a compromise somewhere. My logic so far is that we can cross out (b). A 600/4 isn't all that much longer than what I have already. Very nice to have, but of the three "best answers" it seems to offer the least improvement for about the same money as any of the others. As for (a), at a pinch, I can just groan and carry a heavy lens around if I have to, or maybe get by with a minor upgrade from the old 100-400 to the new model. But nothing except a /2.8 will do task (c). All of that leads me to see a 400/2.8 as the sensible starting point.
So in asking these questions about the 400/2.8 II, what I'm really trying to do is get a better understanding of what the 400 might achieve (if anything) beyond its primary purpose (low light birding). In turn, I hope that that will help me figure out how best to deal with (a) and (b).
Responses above have helped to clarify this a good deal. So thankyou all!
.