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 p.1 #1 · New and improved 100-400! | |
My current walkaround lens for the 40D is 24-105L, love the setup and it cover most of my shooting. But I needed a longer reach for one of those special occation at the zoo, park, outdoor sports and whatnot. I had a very sharp 70-200 F4 IS last year but sold it because it didn't see much action. This time around I thought about getting another 70-200 F4 IS, but then sometime I found 200mm ain't long enough because I also like to shoot some backyard birds and stuff like that.
I did some research for few weeks and came across some unpleasant stories about how the 100-400L were often soft in the long end, I was warned that the 100-400L needed to stop down to F8 or F11 to gain some sharpness, and the optic is inferior to that of the 400 5.6 prime. I'm not impressed by the MTF result of this zoom lens from photozone either. But then I also saw a couple people on other forums reported that their copies are very sharp even at wide open, and was told that the recent production of this lens may be improved quietly by Canon. Although I was skeptical and can't find enough posts to support their claim, but I really like the idea of having a zoom, and the IS is useful for handheld shots, so I decided to take my chance and ordered one from Amazon with overnight shipping yesterday morning, they have the best price that I have found so far.
Well, I got my new toy today  the size and weight reminds me of the 70-200 2.8 IS I once had, kinda hefty, no complaint with the push/pull zoom either. I took it out for a quick spin, So far I'm very happy with the optic quality of this lens, I'm a very demanding person and have a bad habit of pixel-peeping at 200~300%. But the result I get is much sharper than I had expected, stopping down to f/8 only gain me better DOF so I'll be using this lens wide open most of the time. Contrast and color are very nice....typical L quality, IS work as advertised, not as good as 70-200 F4.0 IS but nevertheless it's 2-stops better than nothing.
The lowest shutter speed I'm willing to handheld at 400mm is around 1/350, keeper rate almost cut in half when I go lower. Though the AF speed is slower than my 24-105 and both 70-200 2.8/4.0 IS that I had, other than that I don't have much to complaint about.  So, could this lens be the "new and improved" version of 100-400L that some people talked about recently? I notice a few minor changes on my copy comparing to those that I saw awhile back, the switches are flat, and they label the IS to On and OFF instead of O and I, and there are a few logos on the lens (CE, a recycle looking round arrow with 10 inside, etc.) Build date on mine is UW0217 (Feb 2008), brand spanking new! lol
Edited on Mar 20, 2008 at 09:01 PM
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