EF 100-400 f4-5.6 L IS USM II

[weepete]

Hello TPF!

Not visited in a while due to life circumstances just meaning I wasn't getting the opportunity to get the camera out as much as I had before.

Recently had a holiday, and spent some time in some bird hides which has prompted me to finally upgrade my aging "Tamzooka", which has developed a bit of a squeek, and temprimental AF meaning I lost a bit of confidence in it.

So, a 2nd hand (but as new condition) Canon EF 100-400 f4-5.6 L IS USM II arrived in the post today .

Not sure yet if I'm going to miss the 600mm of my old lens, shooting at 400mm definitely means a bit more work to maintain a nice background, and from some quick tests the way my 5DmkIV handles the auto ISO setting seems to be a bit different, with a bit more of a tendency to blow out the highlights.

I need to have a play, and do some sharpness testing (initial impressions are it's close to my Tamron, but may just have an edge), but the AF speed is great and focus seems to track much better.

 

[weepete]

I got out today and did some sharpness testing in the back garden with some interesting results.

The TLDR is the Canon 100-400mm is sharper across the whole focal range than the Tamron 150-600mm.

Sometimes the 100-600mm had similar sharpness in a small area, but the Canon definitely had it. Even at 400mm and upscaled the Canon was sharper than the native 600mm of the Tamron.

Most interesting was the auto ISO behavior, where the Tamron was underexposing without some EC, and the Canon was bright in comparison, pushing the exposure more to the right of the histogram. Using Auto ISO and f8 had 1 to 1.25 stops of difference between them both, so I'll need to bear that in mind when I'm shooting.