Thoughts from owners on the 100-400 L

[HiFiGuy1]

JeffersonPoster,


I like the shots of the cars from last year's Petite Le Mans, because they show the sharpness achievable, but practically speaking, those could have been made with my 28-135. This is useful information, too, because I amdefinitely still learning about perspective and reach. How faraway did you have to be to capture those?Were theycropped? Nice motion blur on the wheels of the second one, too, BTW. I see by your example that I want to be less than 1/1000 somewhere. Have you had luck with 1/500?


40Doodle,


How the heck do you get animals to stay still long enough tocompose andmanual focuson a tripod? I seem to barely be able to do it handheld! Good work.


Bill,


I love the shot of passing the champagne! To me, that is great composition. It's okay on "parking" the Porsche. I have done the same thing. Still trying to work out shutterspeed/handholdability/sharpness myself. You want the wheels to look like they're spinning, but the car needs to be in focus, right? [] I really admire shots I've seen where the car is sharply in focus, but the wheels are a blur of motion, and the background looks like a watercolor brush stroked it. Skill and years of experience, I guess.


Bird pics were great! I really like the saturation and sharpness of the juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk shot. Very nice. Also, the Loon portrait was beautiful, I think.


I have seen enough to say that I definitely think the 100-400 is for me. Thank you all for your generous comments.


I just found out that I will have to replace my double wall oven, which will be $3100 plus installation, but I will be saving for the 100-400 immediately after.

[jeffersonposter]

A couple more shots from the 08 Petite Le Mans that are 1/500, f5.6, 100mm. On a 1.6 fov camera, 100mm will equal 160mm. Even with IS, if you shoot 400mm at much less than 1/250, your keeper rate will decrease. I was shooting at a higher ISO to keep shutter speed a little higher for a sharper image.I was close enough that much more than 150mm would have been way too muchI was shooting in Av mode and setting aperture and ISO to get shutter speed. At the beginning of the year (08) I had the 28-135 kit lens and was told by a "PRO" that I should increase ISO for faster shutter speed to increase sharpness, because the Canon EOS cameras signal to noise ratio is very high. This is true. You can shoot at ISO 800 and see very little noise. I increased sharpness and shutter speedat ISO 500. Later Iwent to a 5D full frame,and I nowshoot center focal point in Center-weighted Average Metering in AI-Servo. For bikes and spoke blur you pretty much need 1/250 or less (ISO 100-125).I now shoot some sharp (1/1600 to 1/8000) and adjust ISO down to 125 for blur on others. I still like Av mode so I can control my background blur (constant F stop) you don't get with Tv mode.Also on the 30D I use +5/3 steps exposure compensation because my images were too dark. Yours may be different. I was maybe 30 ft. away and the first image had a little Straighten tool (kind of like crop), and the second image just some standard blacks,fill light, sharpening, contrast in RAW, then conversion to sRGB and Unsharp mask (80%) in P.S. Elements 7, (much easier to use than CS versions).


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JeffersonPoster

[40Doodle]

Jefferson,


Now your talking...some of my favorite ALMs vehicles (C6-R and Flying Lizards Porsche). Petit is a great event and I've only been once, but I still remember the brain-rattling sensation of being next to the fence-line when those Corvettes thunder by. Nice pics and auto racing is one of the reasons I bought the 100-400 (air-shows too).


HiFiGuy,


Photographing birds on a feeder is a bit easier because they do hang around long enough for me to set a manual focus. Another thing I've done is to pre-set the manual focus on a point where the birds will occupy, then when they land in that spot I'm ready to snap away. The squirrel was all over the place so I had to lose the 1.4 Converter and let the 40D take over the focusing. Right now, I'm in the stage where I'm still learning how to use this lens and making plenty of mistakes. But I can already tell that this is the lens for me and I hope to see many years of use with it. Good luck with your hunt.


Rick

[Keith B]

100-400 is the best air show lens hands down.