Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 as an upgrade to 70-200mm f/2.8 for sports?

atolk wrote:

Karl_Guttag wrote:

The RF100-500 is a pretty fantastic lens in terms of image sharpness with a 5x zoom range, and focus speed. It also will focus very close for a telephoto lens (3 feet or 0.9m focusing distance with 0.33x magnification). So it is a good outdoor sports lens where the distances can vary drastically such as with baseball (Pitcher, batter in the box, batter running, and the fielders).

Noted.

My (and many others) only big complaint with the RF100-500 is the way it works with the RF TCs. For example, if you ever get say the 1.4x TC you can't go below 300mm x 1.4 = 420mm. So you are limited to a 700/420 = 1.66x zoom range). On the good side, having the 100-500 is like having an extra 1.2x range over the typical 100-400mm. For people that just want the long focal length, it is OK, but for people that need the dynamic zoom range, it is a big problem.

No plans to get an RF TC at this point. So if this is the only complaint, phew.

I thought that too at first, but then I got the 1.4x TC "just in case I needed it" and found it very frustrating. The RF100-500 with the 1.4x TC is still very sharp, and I wanted the extra length. But the severe loss of zoom range made me take it off the camera and put it in the bag.

Thanks to the ISO performance of the R6 (I would highly recommend looking at using RAW/CRAW with DxO with Deepprime for noise reduction), you might get away with it for indoor sports but a 70-200f2.8 would be a better choice indoors. I think the RF100-500 would be better than 70-200 plus a 1.4x TC in overall performance (sharpness and focusing while giving up only 1/3rd to 2/3rd over most of the range).

Thanks! I get my NR for free in Topaz Sharpen AI, but I only use it on 0.1% of the photos because the rest either don't need it (sharpening) or are not worth my time. When shooting JPEG, I get NR also for free with the in-camera high-ISO NR on the assumption that the manufacturer knows their noise best. For RAW, I get NR, when needed, in LR and consider it adequate. I shoot high volume, and my NR has to be mass produced. Does DxO with Deepprime lend itself to bulk processing? This conversation will veer sharply now.

I use DxO PL5 on a picture-by-picture basis.  There is also "PureRaw" which uses the same underlying technology but is more geared to just RAW conversion. In "shootouts" and the opinions of some pros, DxO PureRaw is probably a little better, but if you already have Topaz, you are probably fine for most purposes. I am highly disappointed by Adobe RAW conversion, which is very noisy even at moderate ISOs (say ISO400 to 1,200).

What is your take on CRAW? I tried it briefly. The images are tiny (7 MP on R6), and the remote subject fills the frame nicely at 200mm. But if I shot RAW/JPEG and cropped in Lightroom to the same dimensions as CRAW, what would I see? Same exact quality/resolution? Or does CRAW add anything more than just a 1.6 crop? I understand it is there for anyone using EF-S lenses -- are there really such users? But for an EF or RF lens, is there a use case for CRAW? If you shoot R5 as many who reply here do, you do not have to deal with a drastically reduced CRAW size. I know you only brought up RAW/CRAW in the context of your NR advice, so we don't have to get into the RAW vs JPEG, only CRAW vs RAW.

You seem to be confusing CRAW with cropping. They are completely different subjects. Normal RAW is "losslessly compressed," meaning that all the original values can be retrieved.  It turns out that allowing for a very little bit of lossless compression can significantly reduce the amount of data with very minimal loss in image quality.

I have not done an extensive comparison but have looked at several comparisons and read/heard pro reviews. It turns out that only in extreme situations such as recovering serious shadow details or very high ISOs and if you look extremely closely can you see a difference in C-RAW versus RAW.

The benefit of C-RAW to me is not the saving of memory as memory is cheap, it is that buffering when bursting data take longer to fill and less time to empty. Also transferring massive numbers of images is easier. With cameras that can take up to 20 frames per second, you can take a lot of pictures in very little time. There is a lot to be said for "spray and pray" when shooting action. You will get that one great shot in the middle of a sequence, but you need to download and sort through them all to find that shot.

I don't know about Sigma 150-600 (contemporary ~$900 or sport ~$2,000) other than there have been reports of focusing issues. Some say the new firmware for the R5/R6 and or Sigma lenses might fix it but I have not seen this verified (see: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66153095). I think in any event, the RF100-500 is likely sharper and will focus faster, and is lighter (about 25% lighter than the cheaper/lighter contemporary model) which will help with handling.

Thanks, good data! I will probably pull the trigger on the the 100-500 before I finish replying to all who posted on this thread.