Scott Stoness wrote:
I think you should read your profile - 1dx, 24-70 II, 70-200 II - all of this equipment could be accomplished with 5diii, 24-70 v1, 70-200 II
I put down a payment at B&H on the 21st. I am traveling to South Africa in just under 3 months so I hope to have a lens by then. Don't know what to hope for as the sales guy on the phone said that they had orders for more than 70 lenses. Well we shall see, as I am an international sale I have already paid in full. I hope a lot of those were people that ordered from numerous places so that I will move up in line when people actually need to ok the charges to their credit cards.
Unless I won the jackpot, unless I am do photo businesses like Frits van Eldik, Joshua Holko or Andy Rouse ... I do not think this lens will ever come to my hand
WayneTK, not saying your lens is soft, but the picture is. Maybe not in focus, maybe bad seeing. Plus which, with that much of a disc showing for Jupiter, you probably ought to see some moons as well—two of Jupiter's moons are quite bright, and are even potentially visible to the naked eye under very dark skies at high altitude. Plus two equatorial bands ought to stand out, which are there but very poorly defined. Or maybe you had to use such a short exposure to get detail for our moon that you couldn't record Jupiter's.
So I just talked to my local US dealer, who I pre ordered the 200-400 from in Feburary of 2011. They said that supplies are very limited, and that they expect to get only one lens allocated to them from their larger order. It turns out that I was the first to pre order with a deposit, so I will be first in line for that one lens. They did not have a shipment confirmation from Canon yet, but expected the lens to arrive next Monday or Tuesday. If all works out, I will try to post some first impressions, but hopefully we should have some reports from Canada well before then, including perhaps some pixels per duck analysis with examples.
By the way, there is not any good or strong logic as to why I really need this lens, except that I expect to use is a moderate amount, and that I have wanted a Canon version for as long as the Nikon version has existed. And I also view the 1DX as a perfect match for the 200-400, along with my 1D4 if I need some additional reach. I also do not really like the Canon 100-400, even though I have used one a fair amount.
I was just informed by B&H Customer Service Dept. that they are expecting to receive initial shipments of the lens next week. If that is true, then those of us who are early pre-orders likely have another week, at a minimum, to wait. It looks like our friends to the north have bested us on this occasion
I plan to give it a good workout at an event here in town over the weekend... just did a few shots at the store and AF works fine, both on stationary and moving subjects. Action of the TC seems smooth and with just the right amount of resistance. Zoom ring is maybe a bit tight for easy two finger operation handheld, but we'll see. Compared to my 400 IS v.1, it's noticeably lighter. Initial IQ looks about on par with that 400 and AF equally fast. They had a used 100-400 in the store, so I did a quick comparison and AF is much slower on it vs. the 200-400 and shooting something about 30-40m away, the 200-400 is sharper w/o. Framing is also about the same. It was handheld, but my gut feeling is the 200-400 might be *slightly* looser. I plan to compare it against the 400 prime for this and also compare close focusing angle of view.
