I'd expect they wouldn't look great with the 1.4 extender. You already have 20 elements with the IS zoom right? Now you're adding another 6 elements or so with the extender? That's an awful lot of glass -- probably too much to maintain high quality. You'd also want to know if he was using the tripod collar when he shot the zoom with the 1.4 extender. If not, there's a significant risk of camera shake.
httivals wrote:
I'd expect they wouldn't look great with the 1.4 extender. You already have 20 elements with the IS zoom right? Now you're adding another 6 elements or so with the extender? That's an awful lot of glass -- probably too much to maintain high quality. You'd also want to know if he was using the tripod collar when he shot the zoom with the 1.4 extender. If not, there's a significant risk of camera shake.
You are right, it's a lot of glass. But the 2.8IS even has 23 elements and looks better in comparison.
I regularly use the 1.4x with the 2.8IS on my 20D for football/soccer and find that to deliver decent quality when stopped down to 5.6.
I've seen some astonishing shots with the 70-200/4 (non IS) and if the IS-version is not as good it would influence my desicion about wether or not to get this lens.
i did some tests against a wood fence this am. I shot both lenses 70,100, and 200mm f4 and f8 on a tripod. IS off. I used the 5d for this comparison. All shots in RAW and converted with Adobe CS2. All sharpening and noise filters were off
My findings suggest that both lenses are optically similar in the center. There is a slight advantage to the newer one at the corners. Overall, i think these lenses are very similar optically and unless the IS is critical then the small differences in the optics do not justify the cost distance. If you are shooting with any of the cropped Canon cameras then for all intents and purposes, these two lenses would behave the same. Here is one example from my test.
200mm f8. This is a resized view of the whole image
Here's a shot with the 70-200 f4 IS with a 1.4 Kenko Pro 300 DG teleconverter stopped down to f8. Again, the picture is straight from the camera (xt) with internal sharpening set at +1.
Having tried both the F2.8 versions (and several copies), I have not been impressed with either @ F2.8 nor at 200mm. Today I compared the 70-200/4 IS to some primes and other zooms and it has done fantasically. The tests focused on center resolution because at these focal lengths corners are pretty close to a non issue. All shots on a 1Ds2 & no post processing (just DPP in the neutral/center settings) -
That's actually a very good DO, but it doesn't hit its stride until F8 or so. I did some landscape tests too and the DO and others all looked very similar @ 25%. Around 50% the DO began to show some weakness. In print the DO is fine, 100% on screen crops with no post processing is cruel and unusual punishment
The difference between the 70-200/4 IS @ 135mm F4 and 200mm F4 vs the 135L and 200/2.8L II was slim and none. I can't believe how well the 70-200/4 IS has done in the tests. The primes do have much less vignetting (shooting full-frame) because they've hit their stride around F4. I would expect the corners to be better too, but today I was just comparing resolution.
The 70-200/4 IS is too expensive, but it is very good. I'll keep it and the 200/2.8 is going back to B&H and the DO is off to Ebay. The signature will get a bit shorter
Thanks for the test, John. It is actually very nice to see how well does the new lens perform. However, I am quite disappointed with the 70-300 DO... The 200/2.8 seems ok to me: the 70-200/4 IS performs so well in your test, that I do not really see how one could ask for the prime to perform any better...
