Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Its a great lens, the IQ is excellent for a zoom with this sort of range and the build quality is just what you'd expect for this sort of money and 'L' series. Ok, the IQ is not as good as the Canon 400mm primes, but you can take this out for a walk, and it zooms :-)

The trombone zoom is easy to use even if you're used to the 'normal' twist zoom. It's supposed to be something of a dust pump and to deposit dust on the sensor, but so far I've had no problems. Focussing is generally quick and there's little or no 'hunting' for a correct focus, particularly if you have the minimum focus distance buttons set to help the lens.

The IS is effective, but as it's first generation, there's only two stops available and you need to switch it off if you're using a tripod. You can switch it for panning shots. After a couple of afternoons out with the lens I think I can say it also eats the battery on my 400D so I make sure I've got a spare if I think I'm going to be using it a lot.

The f4.5 min aperture means you're probably going to be using it with ISO 400 on anything but the brightest day if you want to keep the shutter speed up for hand held shots or moving targets.

It's heavy. Not too heavy to prevent me from taking it out for two or three hours walk or using it hand held without too much problem, but it might be a good idea to try holding something of similar weight if you've got doubts.

It's quite long. Stood on its nose I can just fit it into the Lowepro Nova4 bag I use. If your bag isn't as high, you might have problems.

There's a 'friction' ring for adjusting the stiffness of the zooming action and you can move it from no resistance at all to completely locked. This ring sits next to the focus ring and there's always the change you'll turn this instead of the focus, but as I'm almost always using AF it's not been a problem to date. I always make sure I've got the lens locked when I put it in my bag, but I've had a number of occasions where it unlocked itself and has fully extended as I've removed it from the bag.

Then carrying case is solid and actually quite useful. It has a shoulder strap and a loop for stringing it through a belt and will take both lens and lens hood. The lens hood is, well, a lens hood.

In terms of design it's not the newest, and there may be room for improvement, but it's difficult to find another (Canon fit) zoom lens of this range and quality even at around £1000.

I have had mine for about 8 months and have taken about 300 shots with it.

It has in every way surpassed my expectations for image quality on my Canon EOS 5D. Sharpness and contrast is really stunning, this is the best long focus zoom I have ever owned. For example I shot some seascapes across the bay from Westward Ho in Devon. The Saunton Sands hotel is over 5 miles away. It is possible to count the window panes on that building and to determine the gender of persons in the car park of the hotel. Close up it has given superb nature shots of butterflies and flower blossoms near to its closest focus of 1.8 metres. It is also an excellent portrait lens giving sharp images and pleasantly out of focus backgrounds.

The Image Stabilisation feature allows use at full focal length at slow shutter speeds. I used 60th second with success which would be a tripod only speed with an ordinary lens.

So what are the drawbacks. Well it cost over £1000 and it is a heavy item to carry around. Nonetheless I took it with me in a rucksack on a recent tour of Ireland and used it for about 15% of my shots.

If I lost it I would definitely buy another

I really like this lens.

When you look at Canon's range of super tele lenses (zooms and fixed focals) the options are fairly limited unless you have seriously deep pockets and can afford one of their top of the range fixed focal length tele lenses for the ultimate in image quality. For the rest of us mere mortals there are lenses like the 100-400 IS L (it's still hardly cheap though!!).

The lens offers a 2 stop image stabilizer which whilst not as effective as some other lenses which offer up to 4-stops of stabilisation is definitely welcome as trying to get clear shots with a 400mm zoom is a challenge no matter what and I'll take any aid I can! The IS has 2 modes, one for panning and one for all-round stabilisation.

The lens is VERY well built. It's heavy and feels very substantial, you will know about it after a day lugging it around in your kit bag. It's white too and when fully extended with the hood on you will not go unnoticed. To counter the weight of the lens it comes with a collar so that when you put your lens/camera combo on a tripod it's the lens taking the weight and not the camera body and lens mount. The lens does not zoom with a 'normal' ring type control, what you do is push/pull the lens to the required focal length. It's quick but probably less accurate than a ring type control. I can't mark the lens down for this because I reckon this design choice has been made to keep costs down and to make a zoom of this range affordable to people like me! There is a collar on the lens that can be adjusted so the push/pull action becomes harder or easier - useful to avoid the lens creeping if you're pointing it straight up or down for example. Some folks seem to think this kind of push pull design sucks dust into the lens and camera body - I've had no problems so far so can't say either way for sure. Others have claimed it can get too loose and on tilting the camera down the lens has smacked against the stops. Again, even on its loosest setting my lens eases itself down to the stop. With a bit of practice you'll get used to it and either love it or loathe it. Hand held use is interesting... ;)

AF is good in good light as ever, very quick and accurate. There's a mode switch on the lens to limit the AF mechanism to distances of 6.5m or more to speed up the focusing. Handy if you're not going to be getting close. In close focus mode the lens can get down to 1.8m.

Image quality is good. For the money I don't think you'll get much better. Things get noticeably sharper when you stop down and examine the images at 100% crop but wide open it's perfectly usable and I don't think this will be an issue unless you're thinking of enlargements. If you want the best this lens can produce stop it down a bit and use a tripod if you can. Obviously this will limit its use somewhat to days where you have a lot of light or when actually freezing action is not of prime concern. I hooked this up to my 1.4 extender one time and I think the max aperture at 400mm was F8! Since I only wanted to take a few shots of the moon to see how much detail I could resolve this wasn't an issue but I couldn't recommend this combo for general use. The shots weren't too bad though!

My 70-200 F4 L IS definitely beats this lens in edge sharpness (not a huge gulf but noticeable) but again, for most situations it will go unnoticed unless you're enlarging things a fair bit (A4+). Sharpness in the middle of the frame is comparable to my eyes. Bokeh is lovely and smooth. Colour rendition and contrast are also very good.

Here's how I summed up this lens when I went for it: It has the versatility of a 100-400mm range so covers a lot of ground, it has IS and the `L' designation so is of stellar build quality. Living with it I wish it had a fixed max aperture of f4 through its range, as it is it's equipped with f4.5 (max f5.6 at some point just after 250mm through 400mm) and had better IS.

All zooms are born inherently compromised but this one makes a good case for itself. With a bit of thought you will get a lot out of this lens.

It comes with a decent bag with a strap and hood and takes 77mm filters.

Recommended.