Anyone have a Canon EF 100-400mm IS Lense?

cbay · Jan 18, 2006

Hello All!

I am intrested in purchasing a Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM Lens, i need to do a little saving but i am determined to add this lens to my gear.

I have seen one thread about this lens: http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37985

But.. I would like to have a look at some more images and personal reviews.

So if anyone has this lens and has got pictures I would love to see then

usayit · Jan 18, 2006

I have the lens. It is a very popular lens and one of the first Canon marketed with IS and my first "L" lens. Very common zoom with Canon wildlife photographers. It is compatible with the 2x and 1.4x teleconverters but you will loose AF capability with all but he 1 series EOS bodies. Push and pull zoom design took some getting use to but I later found it extremely quick. I can now zoom throughout the range a lot faster than with the now popular twist design. Image quality is very good. A bit soft once zoomed out to 400mm but can be compensated by stopping down a notch. At 100-200 range, my 70-200mm f2.8 definitely will out perform. With a max aperature of f4.5-5.6, its a bit slow. The image stabalization works well on this lens and does compensate a bit for the slow aperature. On the other hand, the max aperture ( lack of ) will be noticed in sports photography if that is your intention. I've shot a few polo games with this lens using higher ISO settings with good results... even in less than desirable lighting. I bet if I had a chance to shoot a polo game with a super-telephoto prime such as the 400m f2.8, I'd definitely feel the difference. Overall I would recommend and there is a reason why this lens is so popular. Alternatives would be the sigma "bigma" 170-500mm 5-6.3 which I believe is cheaper.

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