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I am debating between the 100-400 mm F4.5-5.6 L Lens and the 300 MM F4L Lens. Any advice?

wayner99
Apprentice

I would like to purchase one of the two lenses listed above. Looking for advice? I will take mostly wildlife and some sports pictures. I want it to be super sharp! Thanks so much.

1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

300 mm + a crop body is a tight field of view. Personally I'd go the 100-400 route. I have owned the 300 f4 & now own the 300 f2.8 but find my 100-400 much more useful.

"A skill is developed through constant practice with a passion to improve, not bought."

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28 REPLIES 28

Skirball
Authority

It depends on whether or not you think you need 400mm?

 

I'm biased, I just don't like the 100-400.  There's a love/hate relationship with that lens, and many love it.  I'm just not one of them.  The 300mm is a bit sharper, a bit smaller/ligher, and it'd be a stop faster at that focal length.  But if you need 400mm then it won't do anything for you... without a extender anyway.

 

I would be curious to see a comparison of IQ of the 300mm + 1.4 extender versus the 100-400 at 400mm.  Not quite equal comparison, but it'd be interesting.

 

Personally, with the exception of the 70-200 which I find quite good for portraiture in the 70-100 range, whenever I use a zoom telephoto I'm at the far end 95% of the time.  So if I'm going to get a lens that goes to 400mm, I'd just get a prime and save some weight, maybe money, and probably have a sharper image to boot.  Of course, that argument falls flat when you're at a paid gig and your 400mm prime cuts off the subjects legs.

Thanks very much. I also failed to mention I will be using a new Canon 70D as the body. Does this have any impact?


@wayner99 wrote:

Thanks very much. I also failed to mention I will be using a new Canon 70D as the body. Does this have any impact?


Not really.  The 70D is a crop sensor and therefore only uses the central part of the lens.  At wide angles this can have an effect, because the distortion is usually at the corners and a crop sensor cuts that part out.  But at long focal lengths it's usually not an issue.

 

I consider 300mm to be pretty long on a crop sensor...  but I consider 400mm to be even longer.  So that argument is moot.  Again, it depends on what your needs are.  I would highly recommend renting a 100-400L if you have an opportunity and seeing if you like it.   I rent all lenses before buying, I figure the $30 is worth it to me, but I just happen to have a terrific rental place right next to me.  If you've never used a tele prime before I'd recommend renting that too.  Some people find it confining.

TCampbell
Elite
Elite

Have you compared sample images?

 

They're both top glass and I think you'll find it difficult to declare that one is noticeably better than the other.  I think the 100-400mm is certainly a bit more versatile with the focal lengths (even though it loses a stop).

 

You can use a site like Pixel-Peeper... which doesn't really host their own images.  What they really do is index the images on Flickr -- scanning for images where the photographer leaves the image EXIF data intact so they are able to determine specifically which camera, lens model, and exposure settings were used to capture the shot.  The Pixel-Peeper community then "votes" on the images so the better examples taken by a given lens will float to the top of the list.

 

You can also search Flickr to see if there's a lens group for the lens.  I find that most lenses have a Flickr group -- but I find Pixel-Peeper to be a bit better because they scan everything ... not just the images contributed to a lens group.  I don't necessarily even "join" the lens groups for all the lenses I own... much less bother to post specific images to the groups.

 

300mm f/4:  http://www.pixel-peeper.com/lenses/?lens=39

100-400mm f/4.5-5.6:  http://www.pixel-peeper.com/lenses/?lens=589

 

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da


@TCampbell wrote:

They're both top glass

 

I meant to mention this in my first post.  It's easy to sit online, nitpick the nuances of two competing products, and get lost in the details.  Both of these are great lenses.

300 mm + a crop body is a tight field of view. Personally I'd go the 100-400 route. I have owned the 300 f4 & now own the 300 f2.8 but find my 100-400 much more useful.

"A skill is developed through constant practice with a passion to improve, not bought."

ScottyP
Authority
If you are comparing lens IQ it is hard to beat The Digital Picture and the side by side comparison test chart shots in its TOOLS section. http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=113&Camera=736&FLI=0&API...

You select two lenses, a camera, an aperture and (for zooms) a focal length. Pretty neat.

You can even see the lenses plus a teleconverter if the lens supports one. Just select a higher focal length than the max for the lens and it shows images shot with a TC.

Good luck!
Scott

Canon 5d mk 4, Canon 6D, EF 70-200mm L f/2.8 IS mk2; EF 16-35 f/2.8 L mk. III; Sigma 35mm f/1.4 "Art" EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro; EF 85mm f/1.8; EF 1.4x extender mk. 3; EF 24-105 f/4 L; EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS; 3x Phottix Mitros+ speedlites

Why do so many people say "FER-tographer"? Do they take "fertographs"?

cale_kat
Mentor

For a 70D this is easy, go for the 100-400. You won't be getting f/4 mounting a 300mm f/4 on a crop sensor body, read here http://forums.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS/Canon-6D-vs-Canon-70D-vs-Canon-7D/td-p/105947/page/4

 

Because the 300mm f/4 will perform as a f/6.4 on the crop sensor sized 70D, you might as well go with the longer 100-400 (f/7.2 - 9). If you're going to spend big money on a f/6.4 to get a single "reach", you already know the "sweet spot" in your photography and are in no need of convincing.


@cale_kat wrote:

For a 70D this is easy, go for the 100-400. You won't be getting f/4 mounting a 300mm f/4 on a crop sensor body, read here http://forums.usa.canon.com/t5/EOS/Canon-6D-vs-Canon-70D-vs-Canon-7D/td-p/105947/page/4

 

Because the 300mm f/4 will perform as a f/6.4 on the crop sensor sized 70D, you might as well go with the longer 100-400 (f/7.2 - 9). If you're going to spend big money on a f/6.4 to get a single "reach", you already know the "sweet spot" in your photography and are in no need of convincing.


Crop-sensors don't work like this.  

 

The 300mm f/4 lens is always a 300mm f/4 lens.  The 100-400 is always an f/4.5-5.6 lens.  You don't lose f-stops by mounting the lens to a crop-frame body.

 

What you are doing, is cropping and enlarging.  You are capturing a tighter angle of view because the chip is smaller and thus enlarge it more to get the same size output image.  This does not change any of the physics of the lens.

 

The lens projects an image circle into the camera body.  Some of the image lands on the area occupied by the sensor.... some spills off the sides and isn't captured in the image.    

 

You could take a full-frame body, take the same photo using the same focal length, f-stop,  and subject distance... but then crop the resulting image so that you're just using the center area and THEN "enlarging" that image so that it's the same print size as the original uncropped image.  It would be as though you've "zoomed in" (when really you just cropped and enlarged).

 

This is why people refer to a 300mm lens on an APS-C camera as though it works like a 480mm lens.  It isn't really a 480mm lens... but it's been cropped and enlarged to get a result similar to what you'd get if you had taken the shot with a 480mm lens using a full-frame camera.

 

You only lose f-stops when you use a teleconverted.  Each f-stop is based on a power of the square root of 2 (which is a value very close to 1.4).  That's actually *why* the common teleconverters are 1.4x and 2x (1 x √2, and 2 x √2).  When you increase the diameter of a circle by the √2, the area of that circle exactly doubles.  This is why, when you reduce the size of useable aperture by a factor of the √2 (one full stop), you exactly "halve" the area through which the light can pass and thus exactly "halve" the amount of light delivered into the camera (per unit area)..  When you use a 1.4x teleconverter, you lose one full stop of aperture.  The aperture didn't physically get smaller... the lens got longer.   The ratio of dividing the same diameter opening into a longer focal length means that the ratio was altered... by exactly one stop.  

 

When you use a teleconverter, you lose a stop (or two... depending on which teleconverter is used).  When you don't use a teleconverter, but merely move the lens to a camera body which has a smaller sensor, nothing actually changes except the angle of view captured on the chip.

 

 

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da
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