Anybody owned, or used the Canon 400mm f/4 DO IS II on....

John Sheehy wrote:

Chris Wolfgram wrote:

their R series cameras ???

By now, anyone who knows me, or has looked at a few of my posts, probably knows how much I've hollered about Canon giving me zero choices between my beloved (but slow) RF 800 F11.... and the astronomically expensive 800 F5.6.

SO many X's I've dreamed about a "Glorified 800 F11".... in other words, a little faster, better build quality, rotating collar, FF focusing, etc.

Well, I think this lens, with a 2 X's TC is just about exactly what I'm talking about, on paper anyway.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1081814-REG/canon_8404b002_ef_400mm_f_4_do.html

With a 2 X's TC, 800mm F8... which of course would give me 1280mm on my R7. Then, if I could get by with 'only' 800mm, I could use it on my R5.

I'm SO tempted to rent this to see for myself. But it would be great to hear from someone who owns, or has at least tried this lens on their R series camera...

Still "a little pricey" I guess..... but a bargain, compared to some of the other Big Whites. Quite light, compared to those Big Whites too.

I've used it with the EF2xIII on both the R5 and R7; it works fairly well, but in order to get that one-stop larger aperture vs the RF800/11, you get slightly less global contrast IMO, and I don't think that the added IBIS works quite as well as it does with the RF800/11. The DO clearly has more resolution, but it may not be immediately obvious, due to the lesser global contrast, which can easily fool us into thinking "less resolution". If you do some extra sharpening, though, the DO punches right through the lower global contrast.

Of course, the DO has benefits like full-time manual override, which the RF800 doesn't have, although it is too slowly "geared" to be truly useful to get focus quickly in the ballpark when AF otherwise would fail. You can stop the DO down, but you really don't need to do that for sharpness; just for desired DOF. The DO can focus almost 2x as close. The "800/8DO" can be broken down to "400/4DO", etcetera.

Thank you. And at this price, of course I'd want it to be better than the 800 F11, at every thing. Hmmmm.