Mike Lewis
Staff Member
So after renting this lens initially I went out and ordered one, and mine finally showed up yesterday after a 5 week wait. Between the rental and a day with my own copy of the lens I have not had much time with this lens yet. I did post a couple of shots I got with the rental in the Wildlife forum, and yesterday I got a few tree trunks and birds in awful light to verify that my copy is sharp (it definitely is) but nothing more to post yet. But in case some others are on the fence about this lens I wanted to pass on some impressions about this lens so far, as I am fairly confident my views on these things will not change over time.
Image Quality:
- This seems to be an L lens all the way on image quality. From what I see and what I have read and looked at online this manages to approach the IQ of the 500mm f/4 Canon supertele lenses at a fraction of the cost.
- f/7.1 at 500mm is slower than many are used to but at least on the R5 this lens can still make wonderful images with lots of detail. In lower light it will not compete with an f/4 lens, but as stated above the cost differential shows what it takes to get to f/4 with a pro lens, and the 100-500 is certainly easier to handle. At 400mm this lens is only 1/3 of an f-stop slower than the EF 100-400 - really a negligible difference.
- I feel like this has a visible edge in IQ over the Sigma 150-600 I just sold, but once again, to be expected given the cost difference. The Sigma is very good on IQ though especially for the cost, and the main reasons I upgraded to this lens over that one are weight/handling and the effectiveness of the stabilization.
Handling:
- This lens seems lighter than one would expect, no doubt due to the use of composites instead of all metal. It feels very robust though to me and I am confident it will hold up in the weather and with any normal handling no problem.
- The weight seems to work well even with a 'naked' R5 although I know many advise on using a battery grip. I am always mindful of overall weight though so do not plan on adding a grip and think it is fine without one on the camera.
- The extending while zooming is a fair trade for it being shorter for storage. This gets compromised though if one uses an extender as then the lens cannot be used between the 100 - 300 zoom ring settings and therefore cannot be fully retracted with the extender on. I rented the extender and found the IQ to be still very good, but the extra length started to make it harder to hand hold, which is a use case that will not be exclusively how I use the lens but one that is important to me. So for now I have not pulled the trigger on the 1.4x RF extender. I will wait to see how I do constrained to 500mm at the long end.
- Having used other Canon L quality extending zooms (like the EF 70-300 L this lens replaces) I am confident in the weather sealing and also do not expect big dust problems.
Stabilization:
- I have more to shoot to truly characterize this, but I think the combo of the IBIS of the R5 and the IS in this lens are really working well for static objects and perched birds. I need to do more BIF shooting to understand how things work there as there are at least some reports of possible issues, although in my limited usage I have not seen that.
This is now the most expensive lens I have ever bought but I feel like I will be very happy with my purchase as this gives me the ability to walk around with my regular camera bag and have full coverage from 16-500mm, with the ability to shoot scenic and wildlife now without having to carry a 4th lens.
If anyone has any other questions let me know and also hopefully I should start to post more from this lens now that it is in my bag everyday.
ML
Image Quality:
- This seems to be an L lens all the way on image quality. From what I see and what I have read and looked at online this manages to approach the IQ of the 500mm f/4 Canon supertele lenses at a fraction of the cost.
- f/7.1 at 500mm is slower than many are used to but at least on the R5 this lens can still make wonderful images with lots of detail. In lower light it will not compete with an f/4 lens, but as stated above the cost differential shows what it takes to get to f/4 with a pro lens, and the 100-500 is certainly easier to handle. At 400mm this lens is only 1/3 of an f-stop slower than the EF 100-400 - really a negligible difference.
- I feel like this has a visible edge in IQ over the Sigma 150-600 I just sold, but once again, to be expected given the cost difference. The Sigma is very good on IQ though especially for the cost, and the main reasons I upgraded to this lens over that one are weight/handling and the effectiveness of the stabilization.
Handling:
- This lens seems lighter than one would expect, no doubt due to the use of composites instead of all metal. It feels very robust though to me and I am confident it will hold up in the weather and with any normal handling no problem.
- The weight seems to work well even with a 'naked' R5 although I know many advise on using a battery grip. I am always mindful of overall weight though so do not plan on adding a grip and think it is fine without one on the camera.
- The extending while zooming is a fair trade for it being shorter for storage. This gets compromised though if one uses an extender as then the lens cannot be used between the 100 - 300 zoom ring settings and therefore cannot be fully retracted with the extender on. I rented the extender and found the IQ to be still very good, but the extra length started to make it harder to hand hold, which is a use case that will not be exclusively how I use the lens but one that is important to me. So for now I have not pulled the trigger on the 1.4x RF extender. I will wait to see how I do constrained to 500mm at the long end.
- Having used other Canon L quality extending zooms (like the EF 70-300 L this lens replaces) I am confident in the weather sealing and also do not expect big dust problems.
Stabilization:
- I have more to shoot to truly characterize this, but I think the combo of the IBIS of the R5 and the IS in this lens are really working well for static objects and perched birds. I need to do more BIF shooting to understand how things work there as there are at least some reports of possible issues, although in my limited usage I have not seen that.
This is now the most expensive lens I have ever bought but I feel like I will be very happy with my purchase as this gives me the ability to walk around with my regular camera bag and have full coverage from 16-500mm, with the ability to shoot scenic and wildlife now without having to carry a 4th lens.
If anyone has any other questions let me know and also hopefully I should start to post more from this lens now that it is in my bag everyday.
ML
