Canon EF 100-400/4.5-5.6L IS USM Review

The EF 100-400/4.5-5.6L IS USM is clearly the winner when it comes to a combination of quality and convenience. The ability to zoom out to 400mm makes it much more useful for situations where action can be close or far away, for example in sports photography. In such situations taking the time to add a TC to a prime lens can mean you miss critical action. It is a stop slower than the 300/4L at 300mm, and that may be it's only major drawback when comparing the lenses. The prime lens allows the use of faster shutter speeds. Of course the 100-400IS a little more expensive and a little heavier, but that's only to be expected in a zoom. With a 1.4x TC it produces quite good image quality, though unless you play tricks by masking off pins, it won't AF on most EOS bodies. Even with a 2x TC the image is usable, though manually focusing at f11 isn't particularly easy and the lens really need to be stopped down a stop (to f16) for better image quality.

What about the 70-200/2.8L IS USM and 1.4x and 2x TCs? Well, I didn't do a direct comparison, but I did test that lens combination against the 300/4L a few months ago [see EF 70-200/2.8L IS USM review] and found that it wasn't as sharp as the 300/4L or 300/4L + 1.4x. So I'd conclude it wouldn't be as good at 280mm and 400mm as the 100-400IS lens is. It would probably be better (and quite a lot faster) at 100 and 200mm of course.


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