Straight out of the box. This is a refurbished lens, BTW.
Taken with the EOS-1D, wide-open at f/4, at ISO 800, on under overcast skies. Handheld -- no monopod or tripod . . just the IS and me.
First, this thing is incredibly light. And without the hood, it actually looks small. In some ways, it actually seems more manageable than the 100-400 IS. The improved IS is one of the reasons, I think. No more waiting for those gyros to spin up. The IS seems to simply turn on instantaneously.
Both of these shots were taken pretty near the minimum focusing distance. They were both converted using YarcPlus, with ARF-2 turned on. I changed the WB to cloudy instead of Auto. I also used CM-3 to give higher saturation. I then did some levels work in Photoshop to improve contrast (I routinely do this on shots in cloudy conditions that don't use fill-flash). I then sharpened using Fred Miranda's CS-Pro, using a level of LOW.
First, a shot to demonstrate the bokeh. I'm quite pleased with it. it was taken at 1/800.
www.neonlightsimaging.com/images/berries400.jpg
Next, an infamous "brick wall" shot, which is used to show sharpness. Of course, being hand-held at only 1/350 isn't the best sharpness test in the world. But it's a measure of the entire system (including photographer).
www.neonlightsimaging.com/images/bricks400.jpg
These are 100% images (now downsizing), full-frame. I saved as JPG-8 to make them somewhat manageable in size.
For a size comparison, I put my 70-200/2.8 on one 1D body, and the 400/4 on the other 1D body. No lens hoods (the lens hood on the 400 really makes it seem huge).
I just noticed that (unlike the other big white lenses), the 400/4 DO IS doesn't have "focus preset" capabilities. I really haven't used this much, but to some people (mainly sports photographers?) it's probably very important. Of course, they're more likely to want the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 anyway.
I was amazed with the lightness of the 400mm the first time I handled it. I just about launched it into the air when I picked it up. :-) Do you have any shots of specular highlights in the bokeh with the 400? I'm curious how they look. The bokeh test shot you posted turned out really nice.
I got my 400 DO from B&H this week as well. I have put up a small pbase gallery consisting of eight images for people to analyze (1) sharpness of the lens, (2) its color and contrast rendering, and (3) bokeh. The address to the gallery is:
There still seems to be a lot of interest in the 400DO. Here is a a shot with the 400 DO at ISO 800. 100th @ f5.6. Note the bokeh. I could not have gone up in the tree with a heavier lens. There is a time and place for every lens. You can justify anything if you want to.
As an aside, I took some "real world" shots today. Controlled ones, and not exactly great ones (or even wildlife). But it does address things that couldn't be addressed in the chart-testing we did in Dallas yesterday.
I used a tripod, mirror-lockup, and a remote release. Turned off the IS on both lenses. And took a picture of a mailbox, with some nice things in the background to give various types of bokeh.
I tested the 100-400 and 400/4 DO at f/4 (400 only, of course), f/5.6, and f/8.
I used manual exposure. Everything seems to be pretty much the same exposure, except the 100-400 at f/5.6 -- I guess it was a bit brighter then.
I used Fred Miranda's CS-Pro on the LOW setting. White-balance was taken from one of the shots (picked it in YarcPlus) and applied to all shots. ISO was 200. YarcPlus was used with ARF=2.
Here are the shots. All saved as TIF 16-bits upon conversion, then saved as JPG-10 for display here.
