Canon 100-400 II lens

[Wendy Kates]

I just got the new Canon 100-400II lens, and am using it with my 7D Mark II camera. Prior to this purchase, I had been using the 300 f/4 lens. I was hoping that I could handhold this lens, as I do with the 300 f/4, but I'm not getting a lot of keepers (of bird photos) without a tripod. I'm considering returning it, but I know everyone adores this lens, and I do love the excellent AF...it locks focus on birds immediately...so I'd like to master handholding it if I can. I also love the zoom. I assume that the reason I can handhold the 300 f/4 so much more easily...other than the fact that it is lighter...is because it lets in twice as much light than the 100-400 II does at the max aperture (at 400mm it is f/5.6)...allowing for a faster shutter speed when I am in aperture priority. I'm particularly worried about using it effectively when I am on birding walks in the forest, where light is low to begin with. Any suggestions or comments about your own experiences would be welcome.

[Michael Hansen]

I just got the new Canon 100-400II lens, and am using it with my 7D Mark II camera. Prior to this purchase, I had been using the 300 f/4 lens. I was hoping that I could handhold this lens, as I do with the 300 f/4, but I'm not getting a lot of keepers (of bird photos) without a tripod. I'm considering returning it, but I know everyone adores this lens, and I do love the excellent AF...it locks focus on birds immediately...so I'd like to master handholding it if I can. I also love the zoom. I assume that the reason I can handhold the 300 f/4 so much more easily...other than the fact that it is lighter...is because it lets in twice as much light than the 100-400 II does at the max aperture (at 400mm it is f/5.6)...allowing for a faster shutter speed when I am in aperture priority. I'm particularly worried about using it effectively when I am on birding walks in the forest, where light is low to begin with. Any suggestions or comments about your own experiences would be welcome.

Hi Wendy,

First, a disclaimer: I haven't been at this *seriously* all that long, purchasing a 7D2 and the Canon 100-400 II back in May or June. I have made about 30,000 images in that time, and most of them were with the 100-400 II and in a forest setting, photographing songbirds and warblers. So, I'll just comment on that part. I can pretty much sum it up with this: I'm ready to move. I'm ready to go to the land of big birds and open skies.

I tried for what seemed like forever to make a 5.6 aperture work in a forest setting. I don't know how heavy the canopy is in your forests, but here I might as well be shooting at night. I pray that the next bend in the trail will take me to a place that is absent of forest canopy, with glorious rays of sun flowing down. But alas, it does not. I went to flash photography for the forests, because it seemed I had 3 choices: 1.) high ISO/high (enough) shutter speed, with the resultant noise following along to make an unhappy threesome 2.) Lower ISO/ultra-low shutter speed or 3.) flash.

There really is no middle ground, for those wondering, because I like to photograph warblers and such at around 1/500, so yeah I can drop that down along with the ISO into the "middle ground" range, but that might get me one less photo out of 20 with motion blur. Unless I use flash, as mentioned above.

I didn't want the noise, and the ultra-low shutter speed inevitably got me with either the camera shake or, more commonly, motion blur. Like I said, I'm photographing small songbirds and warblers and they're just go, go, go. Flash has the added benefit of better detail when I get it right, which is only about 20% of the time -- with the other 80% being any combination of over or undercompensated. Also, I don't have a flash battery pack, and if I have to go 100% flash on a given photo, then I'm sitting there until it recharges. As a whole, none of it is any fun.

I went out today though and even though we haven't had all that many leaves fall, it made a noticeable difference in the light, and the 5.6 was fine. Flip-side of that is, of course, that just about everything flew South for the winter. I just can't win. Hopefully someone else comes along with some tips for BOTH of us. :)


Sorry I didn't have any good news!
Mike

[Diane Miller]

How you hold the lens is a big factor in minimizing camera shake. I cut a piece of dense foam and rubber-band it around the lens foot (which is made bigger by a RRS tripod adapter plate) and the end of that rests on my left wrist, with the palm of my hand below the lens. You often see people with their thumb below the lens -- that doesn't feel as stable to me. My grip also puts your forearm tighter against your side, which helps.

You can see the lens foot pad here:
http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ead.php/129838

[Wendy Kates]

Mike...your story is discouraging (although you wrote it in such an entertaining way, I had to smile!). Diane...thank you for the modification you suggested...as a result, I definitely had more keepers when I tried it on my backyard birds...we'll see what happens in the field. As Mike suggests, the lens may work best in the land of big skies...e.g. Florida!

[Karl Egressy]

I used that combo you have for seven month and then I sold the 7D Mark II to buy the 1D Mark IV that I had before for about five years, but it is an other story.
My experience has been that the 7DII/100-400II is super sharp when the light allows you to keep the shutter speed at 1/500 s or shorter with an f stop of 7.1
ISO cannot really be any higher than 640 as the image will get noisy.
So there are limitations as with everything else but when you meet those criteria the image quality is really good.
By the way I always was shooting HH.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks, Karl. How high an ISO can you use with the 1D Mark IV without worrying about too much image noise?

[Karl Egressy]

Thanks, Karl. How high an ISO can you use with the 1D Mark IV without worrying about too much image noise?

Hi Wendy,
At ISO 1000 you virtually need no cleaning or if you do only the background and very little.
At ISO 1250 you need a little cleaning of the subject as well but it is easily manageable.
At ISO 1600 you are pushing it.
This is for me. Others might have different values for their work.
I also shoot with 5D Mark III and go up to ISO 1600 and getting the same as at ISO 1250 with 1D Mark IV.
Here is an example: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127685...7/22049657366/

[Diane Miller]

Noise also varies a lot with exposure corrections. Bringing up an underexposed image or parts of one will reveal noise. If you can overexpose without blowing out highlights, when you bring the exposure back down in the raw converter you will have less noise than if you had exposed where you desired it to wind up.

I also use the 5D3 and find it has about a stop lower noise than the 7D2. It sounds like the 1D4 is somewhere in between.

[Loi Nguyen]

"I just got the new Canon 100-400II lens, and am using it with my 7D Mark II camera. Prior to this purchase, I had been using the 300 f/4 lens. I was hoping that I could handhold this lens, as I do with the 300 f/4, but I'm not getting a lot of keepers (of bird photos) without a tripod."

It's hard to figure out what the issues are without seeing some of your photos and the EXIF data. There are many experts on this Forum and I'm sure they can help if you post a couple of pictures. The 100-400 II is very sharp when you hold it well and nail the focus. But it is not as fast a lens as the 300F4 and it is heavier. So if you have shot with anything bigger than the 309F4, practice will make things better.

Loi

[Diane Miller]

Another thought: When hand holding, it often helps to shoot a fast burst. One of them may come at the instant the shake has paused as it reverses direction.

[Marina Scarr]

I love my new 100-400 II but it is a bit on the heavy side especially when I am handholding down on my belly in the sand. I am finding it a bit discouraging but I am very pleased with the quality of the images. I am going to give a guess that the issues you are having with your images are probably photographer related rather than equipment related since reports on the sharpness of this lens are very good. Technique is very important when handholding, and I would suggest that you maybe put up a post in the General Photography forum and get some opinions/ideas on how to help you. You can also post some of your images so we can see the EXIF data.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks, all, for your helpful suggestions.

[Grady Weed]

Wendy, Diane and Marina give good advice, listen to it. You also might want to check out Daniel Cadieux's images. He almost shoots exclusively the 100-400 and he is really good. It is normal to expect to get 10 or under perfect keepers out of a 100. When you throw out blurs, duplicates under or over exposed. I shot my Canon 5D and the version 1 100-400 for years. I used it in a canoe or kayak to image Loons and Kingfishers, all kinds of fast moving birds here in Maine. Patience, practice and wait for the moment, right light etc...As you know the 5D and 100-400 are slow by design. I would shoot 3 burst, re-focus, then shoot 3 or 4 burst.

To be honest; almost always it is the operator rather than the equipment. I am a PC Network Technician, self employed. Most clients are narrow knowledge limited. That means they know just enough to get into trouble, then look to the equipment to blame it rather than thinking it over and asking what they might be missing. Ask any customer service rep, people are just to impatient these days. We want it right now. A good photographer practices, then practices some more! Hand holding that combo should be a piece of cake for you walking around. Keep trying, don't give up.

By the way; I sold my 100-400 only because I did not like the push pull design, gathered dust. I still use my 5D for landscapes and will put my 300 2.8 on it for loons at times because I like it for the dynamic range. I still will only get 3 or frames per second with that combo. For speed I use my MK2n and the 300 2.8, a great combo, all hand held. I use my Gitzo Tripod for landscapes, sunrises or sunsets, shutter release.

[David Stephens]

I hand hold my 7D2 with a 500/f4 and TCs. Big deal you say, because I've got a line-backer build, lifted weights a lot as a kid and I've shot hundreds of thousands of shots with that combination over the last several years. I can tell you that I know a couple of normal women (not muscle builders) that hand hold the 500mm, so I'm very optimistic that you can hand hold the relatively light 100-400mm. When advising both men and women, I've found that the key is getting the ISO and shutter speed up. My default ISO is 800 at f/8. In bright sun, that might come down to ISO 400 and in overcast that'll go up to ISO 1600 and I start opening the aperture and dropping the shutter speed. I top out my shutter speed at 1/3200-sec. and prefer to shoot in the 1/1000-sec to 1/3200-sec. range, particularly for birds-in-flight.

In the shot below, it's after sunset and I've taken ISO up to 3200 and shutter speed down to 1/800-sec. at f/4.0:

White Mule Deer Fawn - Explored by David Stephens, on Flickr

I'm shooting the 7D MkII, which has good low-noise performance up to ISO 800, so long as you don't underexpose. It starts to deteriorate at ISO 1600, which is where I start applying NR in post.

After you've hand held thousands of shots at these higher ISO and shutter speeds, you'll be able to get shutter speeds down below the focal length of the lens, thanks to Canons excellent IS, but it'll take you a while to get there. I'd encourage you to keep working with your excellent new lens, but going to higher ISO and SS.

[Wendy Kates]

Thanks again, all. I will take all of your suggestions on my next photo shoot, and post a couple of the resulting images here. Assuming I have the ISO high enough to ensure a fast enough shutter speed, I'll be interested in your assessment of whether the photos are too noisy...usually I don't shoot higher than an ISO of 640 with the 7D2. But I'll try with ISO's of 800 and 1000, and we'll see what I get.

[Diane Miller]

It's all a juggling act and the sweet spot can be too shallow, but if you don't underexpose, 800 can be good and 1600 manageable as an alternative to motion blur. LR has some good NR features and Nik's Dfine can be amazing.

[David Stephens]

Thanks again, all. I will take all of your suggestions on my next photo shoot, and post a couple of the resulting images here. Assuming I have the ISO high enough to ensure a fast enough shutter speed, I'll be interested in your assessment of whether the photos are too noisy...usually I don't shoot higher than an ISO of 640 with the 7D2. But I'll try with ISO's of 800 and 1000, and we'll see what I get.

Don't get too carried away with examining noise at 100% and 200%. A little luminescence noise (non-colored) simply looks like grain and is not too disturbing to most eyes. Trying to get rid of luminescence can crush your details. When adjusting noise, look at a detailed portion of the image (like feathers) and not the noise in deep shadows. Adjust the noise so that feather or fur detail is maintained. I actually roll off my software's default NR setting, because it's too aggressive and hurts detail. You might add a little micro-contrast (called Clarity in Lightroom, I think) to restore some detail.

Chrominance (colored noise) is more disturbing, but can usually be eliminated without loss of detail.

A little noise is a lesser harm to image quality than motion blur, at least in my opinion.

[Patrick Shyvers]

First, a disclaimer: I haven't been at this *seriously* all that long

I tried for what seemed like forever to make a 5.6 aperture work in a forest setting. I don't know how heavy the canopy is in your forests, but here I might as well be shooting at night.

I'm also still getting the hang of this, but I can echo Mike. I paid a visit to the rain forest recently, and especially at 560mm f/8 (1.4x TC), I spent a lot of the time shooting very low shutter speeds at ISO 6400 or thereabouts. (I know my results aren't tack sharp, and I know ISO 6400 is noisy) I worked out it was LV6-7, which one chart tags as the level of a "Bright street at night"!

After I did the math, I found one reassuring thought there is, hey, even a 600mm f/4 would have only been two stops better. The problem is bigger than two stops; I need at least six to shoot ISO 1600 & 1/1000s. Gear would help, but it isn't The Problem.

That was the worst light I've shot in to be sure. But it seems to be a constant struggle for light- looking through my library, I have few photos with a fast shutter and a nice low ISO. So, I have started working on how to get more light. Better handholding might let me shoot sharp at 1/500s, maybe even 1/250s one day - +1-2 stop. Keeping on the illuminated side of the subject might get me +1-2 stops more. I got a light meter to help quantify the light- our eyes are really good at lying to us. Really, just learning to be a better photographer.

(Unfortunately for me, I love my itty bitty forest birds, which means I am destined to be both light & reach-starved)