Best all-round bird and wildlife photography lens at this price level. (Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 L IS USM Lens)

Member Name: ermine

Product:	Canon EF 100-400mm F4.5-5.6 L IS USM Lens
Date:	28/08/09 (204 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Excellent image quality and versatile zoom range for wildlife

Disadvantages: Quite a heavy lens, and f5.6 at the long end means high ISO is necessary for handholding at times.

I got my Canon EF100-400 IS lens for bird photography, and it is a fantastic lens for all-round bird and wildlife photography. Image quality is excellent as you'd expect from a Canon L series lens, and the image stabilisation works very well - it is possible to handhold the lens down to 1/100 and still get very good bird pictures provided the subject isn't moving much.

Weighing in at over 1.5kg including the tripod collar (supplied) there's no getting away from it, this is a heavy lens. That is the price of performance unfortunately, and it does add considerably to the weight of the kit-bag.

Bird and wildlife photographers always want more reach, and adding canon's 1.4x teleconverter is the obvious way to do it. Unfortunately this combination loses another stop making the 400 end f8. Even masking the contacts to fool my Canon 350D into trying to autofocus with it gave poor results. The autofocus took so long to settle that the combination was almost useless for bird photography, it was quicker to switch to manual focus and use the focus confirmation beep.

The lens is f5.6 at the long end, which is a little bit slow, meaning that running at ISO400 or higher is often necessary on overcast days to get the shutter speed down.

This lens is an excellent combination for mid-level DSLR bird and wildlife photography, fast enough to get good shots of birds in flight and long enough to get good pictures of birds at typical binocular range - if you need a scope to see a bird properly then it is a little bit too far away and a longer lens would be needed, though the EF100-400 will still get a good record shot.

Note that battery life is not particularly relevant to this product - there are no batteries in it. Canon's IS does draw a little power to stabilise one of the optical elements but I have not noticed it shorten the DSLR battery life relative to other lenses.

Summary: A great lens for entry-level DSLR bird and wildlife photography.

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