rudagray wrote:
I'm wondering since that 70-300/4-5.6L IS has 67mm front why did they not make it a 70-300/4L IS... maybe 77mm front?
Because they're keen to differentiate the 70-200 constant aperture line from the 70-300 variable aperture one to keep the sales of the 70-200/4s healthy.
I wish they had released a 100-300/4 IS instead though. Sigma has one, though without IS. And $1500 for a 70-300/4-5.6 seems like a bad joke so far, much like the pricing of the DO.
I remember the outrage in the Sony community over the price of their 70-300 G: a whopping $800. It was rather compact, sharp and BLACK. This one better have a sensational image quality to justify the price.
The only thing that is kinda unexpected to me is the amount of weight reduction Canon have achieved on the 400 f/2.8 II....the new lens spec says 3.85 kg which is very similar to the current 500 f/4 weight. We'll probably be looking at a similar weight trimming on 600 f/4 II.
That is quite a remarkable achievement which brings those lenses within the range of limited hand-holding for many users. A powerful spec particularly when viewed in combination with the 4 stop IS.
Another issue addressed finally: the all black hood mount flange should hopefully eliminate those unsightly paint rub marks left by hoods on the current as well as past supertelephoto lenses.
If one is shooting sports and such for living, the decision to buy 400 f/2.8 II should be easy even at $11k. However, for an amateur like myself with a limited need for the lens, it will hard to justify the purchase. Well, much less expensive (and much heavier) 400 f/2.8 IS MkI will still be around for many years to come.
[rant]
To be honest: these superteles are a matter of irrelevance to the majority of the shooters. How much of the photogs around the world are either big agency employees or wealthy enthusiats who can't get enough reach for birding, surfers, or safaris? There's a lot of "1Ds/5D2, L, big white" snubbery around, to be sure, but not everyone can be a part of that for purely financial reasons.
Even if the majority has the income, they're not ready to divert a significant share of it to buy something that doesn't bring comparable return. Looks like the big boyz (C, N, S) are pushing more and more for the photography to fork two ways: ultra-expensive pro work (hence the focus on big whites and phasing out the non-L lenses in favour of the feature-laden L [semi-]equivalents) or "snapshoting" (hence the other focus, on uninspiring kit superzooms like 18-135 for people who, at times, don't even know that their 500D's lens can be replaced). Whereas the area in between these two branches just isn't there: midrange lenses like the non-L primes and quality non-L zooms are given the short stick - either nonexistant or not updated for, like, forever. I for one, don't see a distant future for people like myself who are either doing it all for fun but are serious about quality, or the part-time journos who can't spend $1500++ per lens just because they don't earn as much. We're consigned to the used market or the alternate manufacturers in the long run.
Lars Johnsson wrote:
I'm sure the new ones are good. But not that good If you didn't like the 1,4x quality before, I don't think you will use the new 2x either
Come on Lars I was hoping for the best and you're like the older kid who tells the younger one that there is no such thing as Santa hahahahaha
Aug 26, 2010 at 06:19 AM
Lars Johnsson Offline • • • • • • • Upload & Sell: Off
John P Mulgrew wrote:
Come on Lars I was hoping for the best and you're like the older kid who tells the younger one that there is no such thing as Santa hahahahaha
You have to buy the new 300/2,8 & 400/2,8 instead of the extenders for your 200/2.
"Actually, the 400/2.8 IS II with the new 2x TC might be as good or better than the 800. There is no way of telling atm."
For me, that is the most intriguing question (well, question within a statement). If it turns out to be true, I suspect there may be a plethora of used 400s, 500s, 600s and (a few) 800s on the B&S thread. I myself would be tempted to sell my 300, 400 and 500 to get the new 400
PS: If my wife read this, please note that it is not in my handwriting
Is it me, or does the fisheye zoom MTF make no sense at the wide end? If it's 8mm circular, there shouldn't *BE* any MTF beyond 12mm because that's the radius of the image circle. So, what is the curve describing?
wickerprints wrote:
Yeah, but it's f/4. I don't like slow glass. I'd rather have the extra stop rather than to be able to zoom a fisheye, because I can think of plenty of low-light situations for a fisheye where f/2.8 would be highly preferable to f/4--whereas I can't imagine a lot of demand for zoom from a circular to a diagonal 180, especially for $1500.
Who does not want faster glass? But it would probably be double the weight and price. This product's being aimed at xxD, xxD and 5D crowd so anything higher would not make this a universal solution.
*shrug* I don't need it, personally. But I think there are others out there who would like a lightweight 600mm DO lens.
A 600/5.6 DO lens would be less than 2kg by my reckoning and priced to be beyond the 800. It would sell dozens.
My impression is that these new lenses are part of their strategy to recapture that market. But at these prices, I think they've miscalculated. I also think they've not quite understood why they lost that market share. It wasn't because Nikon started making AF-S VR superteles to compete. It's because Nikon has done a better job with their AF system in their bodies, and keeping the MP count low has allowed them greater tolerances. I agree it is part of their strategy but the MSRPs are just that MSRPs and give it 701 days and we will see price parity with Nikkor glass. Now iti s up to Nikon to lower prices to put some pressure on Canon.
Canon's approach with high pixel density sensors is a tough road. A lot of flaws show up once you make the sensors that dense. The resolving power is so high that you start to be able to observe more lens aberrations and diffraction, but you also set the bar higher for AF accuracy. For the life of me I can't figure out why they haven't done something about their AF system. The 5D2 AF is a joke--and that is coming from someone who owns one and loves to shoot with it--the 1D3 had problems, and the 1D4 is still not quite where it should be for a flagship product. We can talk all day about equivalent print sizes but in the end, when you advertise a high-MP body, you're invariably going to get people who expect it to be accurate at 100% crop. They don't buy 21 MP so that they can downsize it to 12....Show more →
Canon just sold a product for their main market: the crop-happy photojournalists. Though I wonder how they like the working with noisier images
DocsPics wrote:
"Actually, the 400/2.8 IS II with the new 2x TC might be as good or better than the 800. There is no way of telling atm."
For me, that is the most intriguing question (well, question within a statement). If it turns out to be true, I suspect there may be a plethora of used 400s, 500s, 600s and (a few) 800s on the B&S thread. I myself would be tempted to sell my 300, 400 and 500 to get the new 400
PS: If my wife read this, please note that it is not in my handwriting
Based on the MTF, I think it is safe to say that both will be good enough for high quality imaging.
To put it into perspective, the MTF of the 400/2.8 IS II with the new 2x TC is twice as good as the MTF for the bare 400/5.6 L, known as a very sharp lens.
The AF perfomance will likely be a more important deciding factor than optical quality.
If you didn't like the 1,4x quality before, I don't think you will use the new 2x either 
