Initial Impressions: I am blown by the 100-400L on my Sony A5100 (with Metabones IV)

My daughter gave me the task of picking a super-telephoto lens longer than 200mm for her Sony A7. She is doing a hell lot of jobs/assignments, mostly concerts, theater and events, occasionally family, portfolio, very rarely weddings. She uses only manual focus lenses with focus peaking and she is brilliant in that. So with this task I wanted a lens that is excellent for MF, longer than 200mm, not too big and heavy, has stunning image quality and affordable (less than $1000). I had a look at a number of lenses: the Sigma/Tamron 150-600 lenses all were bulky/heavy and terrible for MF and their AF on the Metabones adapter was really poor, too. The Sony FE 70-300G looked cool, but it was expensive, and being a focus by wire lens, not really fun for MF. The Canon 100-400L II was excellent but very expensive. The Sony 70-400 A-mount had no image stabilizations and again very expensive. So I gave a try to the Canon 100-400L original edition push-pull. Push-pull wasn't a problem since my daughter loved the Canon FD 80-200/f4L tremendously. Actually she is really a virtuoso on push-pull MF shooting. The 100-400L has quite decent IS even on Sony cameras, and the AF is far better than the Sigma/Tamron lenses; actually quite useful.

Before passing the lens over to her I was experimenting with it on my Sony A5100, and I was blown away with the versatility and image quality. Actually this is my second Canon EF lens for my Sony: the first one was the EF-S 24mm (a gem).

The 100-400L on my daughter's A7. She found this combo quite manageable to hold and operate. She was surprised that the lens had quite decent AF.

All photos in this set were taken handheld. This shows how much details can be had with this brilliant lens on a Sony camera.

The 400mm compression effect is mesmerizing. I think we'll have a lot of fun with this lens.

I took this shot with the touch screen of my A5100: tap to shoot with a 400mm lens, amazing.

I am not a fan of young girls smoking, but what can I do. The whirling smoke as was clearly captured from this distance .

This is another epic moment, captured with the 100-400L.

This is my combo: the 100-400L on A5100 mounted on a Metabones adapter. The LCD viewfinder with the giant eyecup is excellently convenient since I wear glasses.

Another nice example for details from a remote shot.

The 100-400L can also be used as a movie lens on the Sony camera. Definitely not as smoothly as on a 70D/80D/M5 but quite OK, and I love focus peaking for videos.

Experimenting with Canon 100-400mm/f4.5-5.6L Push-Pull Lens on Sony A5100