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This journal discusses photography in all its guises with an emphasis on the art of making photographs.
You are currently browsing comments. If you would like to return to the full story, you can read the full entry here: “Canon 400mm f/5.6 ‘L’ lens – Part I”.
Posted in Lenses
Thanks Thomas for this review.
For now i’m most in the “shorter” side, but with my 300@f4 I think this lens could be great for landscapes, as you said, as well
Take care.
Don’t know if you’ve seen this – I thought it was interesting to see the amount of work that goes into assembling these things.
http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/tech/l_plant/f_index.html
I love my 400mm f/5.6L lens although I discovered this lens by accident. I was searching for a Canon 100mm “L” zoom and found the 400mm f/5.6L on eBay at what I considered a very attractive price. I decided to try this lens and rationalized that my 70-200mm f/4L would cover the lower range of the 100-400mm zoom and that I would probably be using the 100-400mm at full extension most of the time. I did want a lens with IS but, then again the 100-400mm zoom IS is one of the older versions and not quite as good as the newer IS versions. I also supposed that despite the IS on the 100-400mm zoom, I would use that lens on a tripod or monopod most of the time anyway.
The 400mm f/5.6L lens is fixed focal length and doesn’t use push-pull zoom. I have nothing specifically against a zoom lens; in fact the majority of my lenses are zooms. However, I don’t like a lens that has a push-pull zoom. I owned a Canon FD zoom lens once that was a push-pull type and I hated it. If the Canon 100-400mm L IS zoom were not a push-pull type of lens, I would have considered it more seriously. However, the 400mm f/5.6L prime is more suited to my shooting style.
I do use the 400mm f/5.6 on a tripod or monopod all the time. It works extremely well with the rather inexpensive, and usually overlooked, Manfrotto gimbal mount (Manfrotto 3421 camera Support). I recently shot the Unlimited Hydroplane Thunderboat Races in San Diego’s Mission Bay using the 400mm f/5.6L on the 3421 mount atop a Giottos MT8180 tripod. The combination was superb. I was able to follow 150+ MPH hydroplanes with no problem and the exceptionally fast auto focus of the 400mm f/5.6L lens provided gnat sharp imagery that I consider superb.