very cool. now I don't feel as badly as before. thanks for your opinion. i will send this lens to canon factory anyway as I noticed some back focusing issues in my other shots.
mendofr wrote:
very cool. now I don't feel as badly as before. thanks for your opinion. i will send this lens to canon factory anyway as I noticed some back focusing issues in my other shots.
Are the back focusing issues at 200 MFD to about 3 meters?
In such a flower shot AF easily can compensate/cover up any back or front focusing issues.
My copy has a back focus at 200mm MFD to 3 meters. From 3 meters to infinity the back focus is gone. I had it checked by Canon Service. They told me they could let the lens focus properly at 200mm MFD. But that most certainly would mean a decrease in performance on other FL's / focus distances. I believe that the mis focus you are experiencing is part of the way the lens was designed.
Try if you can get better reults by focusing manually at 200 MFD with flat test surfaces (like a newspaper on a wall or something).
I was about to send this lens back for a replacement or refund on Monday, but decided to test it in the field again, I did not even bother to try MFD at 200mm knowing it sucks anyway, but the performance in any other focal range is pretty darn good. I believe this one is around 12ft
I ran a series of 135mm and 200mm test from f/4.0 to f/8.0 comparing this lens to my 100-400L in a control environment, test subject measured at 9ft. if anybody interested you can see it here: http://www.pbase.com/yauyi/lens_test
yauyi wrote:
I was about to send this lens back for a replacement or refund on Monday, but decided to test it in the field again, I did not even bother to try MFD at 200mm knowing it sucks anyway, but the performance in any other focal range is pretty darn good.
Color reproduction, contrast, and bokeh quality of this lens is very nice, I might just keep it and deal with the MFD problem at 200mm.
I came to the same conclusion and never regretted it for one bit. Besides the 200mm MFD "issue" this is a very fine lens
mendofr:
How does this look? Does this mean I have an acceptable copy?
The only way to see how this lens performs at 200 mm and MDF is to compare 135 and 200 mm shits (both at MFD). This type of image, you included, is difficult to access but I do not find it as sharp as I would find acceptable for this zoom, at 135 mm. It is probably more typical for 200 mm and MFD.
I looked at your tests and I think that your 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS is very good
My 70-200 f/4.0 L IS with 1.4x TC and 8 feet was much sharper than my 100-400
I looked at your tests and I think that your 100-400 f/4.5-5.6 L IS is very good
My 70-200 f/4.0 L IS with 1.4x TC and 8 feet was much sharper than my 100-400
mendofr wrote:
To yauyi:
Looked at your pictures and I the shootout between 70-200 and 100-400 look the same to me. I guess I'm not much help. : )
In that series of test when subject was 9ft away, here is what I found:
At 135mm, my 100-400 did not catch up in sharpness till f/8.0.
At 200mm, no matter which f-stop the 70-200 simply can not touch 100-400.
But the 70-200 has better bokeh, and I think it has a tiny bit more punch in color reproduction than the 100-400 as well. It's hard to pick which is a better lens, they both complimented each other very well.
mendofr:
Do the pictures have acceptable sharpness for this lens? Do I need to send this to Canon? Thanks for your help again.
I think that your 200 mm at MFD is fine and that 135 mm could have been somewhat better. I have to admit that I have a better feel if the lens is sharp when I am testing myself.
