This qualifies as "interesting"... (400 zoom vs 400 prime) (1 Viewer)

Why all these complaints about substandard copies of the EF 100-400, if this lens is so good? I have almost never heard that about the EF 400 f/5.6. Naturally you can also see soft pics taken with the EF 400 f/5.6 - but this is possible to see with all lenses due to lack of user skills.
But complaints of bad copies aren´t often heard, when we are speaking of the EF 400 f/5.6 whereas there have been A LOT of reports about bad copies of the EF 100-400.
And the EF 100-400 do cost a lot of money - so getting a bad copy is scarring me - and if you are getting a bad copy then all the bother with recalibration or returning, and who can guarantee you, that things will be better. Buying an EF 100-400 lens means: It´s spending a lot of money with a high risk IMO.

But all you guys with a good copy of the EF 100-400 - be happy cos you have been lucky in "The Canon Glass Lottery" (when we are speaking of EF 100-400 lenses).

But at the same time I must admit, that when I am viewing Galleries in this forum - a lot of you do have excellent copies of the EF 100-400. Hard to tell any difference compared with the EF 400 f/5.6, if any in the field.

websurfer said:

Buying an EF 100-400 lens means: It´s spending a lot of money with a high risk IMO.

But all you guys with a good copy of the EF 100-400 - be happy cos you have been lucky in "The Canon Glass Lottery" (when we are speaking of EF 100-400 lenses).

Click to expand...

From what I've heard there were a few issues with this lens when it was first released at at the time getting a bad copy was a potential problem. However this seems to be much less of an issue now, I know plenty of people who use this lens and none of them had problems with bad copies. It's always the way that those with problems make the most noise while happy customers just get on with using their new lens. Given the huge number of copies of this lens that are made it's not surprising that a few are not quite up to standard.

I'd check with your local retailer, over here any retailer would have to accpet you returning a lens if it didn't perform as it should.

Keith, Only winding you up mate. That makes a change !
Pete, You raise an interesting point in that how does one go about returning a lens ? How do you prove that the lens is not working properly and that it is not just user error/incompetence ? I would imagine that any issue of front, or back, focussing should show itself fairly easily but.....other than that ?
God I am so bored ! Steady rain here and, as usual, sunshine forecast for tomorrow. Aaaarrrggh !!!

JohnZ said:

...
Pete, You raise an interesting point in that how does one go about returning a lens ? How do you prove that the lens is not working properly and that it is not just user error/incompetence ? I would imagine that any issue of front, or back, focussing should show itself fairly easily but.....other than that ?
God I am so bored ! Steady rain here and, as usual, sunshine forecast for tomorrow. Aaaarrrggh !!!

Click to expand...

Recently, I've had serious problems with two lenses.
1. Having read probably all the reviews etc., I bought an EF 70-200 f4L (not IS) new and quickly found that it showed signs of decentering(?) shown by poor sharpness on the RHS of the image at the 70mm setting. (This was on my 5D.) i.e. the poor results were obvious on screen at the 100% setting, whilst very much sharper on the LHS. Found suitable test target and placed myself dead square and took a series of comparison shots which confirmed the problem. Phoned Warehouse Express and they delivered a new lens and collected the original the next day. Repeated the tests using the same test target.
The 2nd. copy is very much better and I shall keep it, but it still shows slight disparity between the two sides of the image. (Doubt if I would have looked so closely if the 1st. copy had been OK.) Somewhat disappointing in view of the high marks in the Fred Miranda columns for this non-IS lens.

2. Old EF 300 f2.8L. Bought this s/h about a year ago from well known London dealer, and it checked out fine immediately after purchase. 6 months later after sorting out tripod problems etc., I started using it more seriously, and was disappointed in my results, but put it down to my in-experience with such a long and heavy lens. A few months later, I was convinced that either my 5D or the lens was faulty. It seemed to be front focusing on bird type subjects, or was it misalignment between the 5D's centre AF viewfinder spot and the actual AF sensor? So I scoured the ads for another affordable 300 f2.8L and couldn't find one, and instead settled for a s/h 30D. (My old 10D was well known for having an imprecise central AF spot so not much use as a diagnostic tool.) Using the lens on my 30D confirmed quickly that the lens was faulty, so I took it in to Fixation. Initially they thought they could fix it (at a reasonable price), but then said that a circuit board required was unavailable, and returned it to me "unfixed". I checked it out and to my surprise, it was OK again. But I now knew that the lens is too old for servicing.

Two very different lenses, and two very different methodologies:
1 - very obvious fault requiring a few test images to demonstrate.

2 - Very much into simple statistics and analysing hundreds of actual bird shots for front, correct and rear focus, before deciding what was the real problem and culprit!

postcardcv said:

From what I've heard there were a few issues with this lens when it was first released at at the time getting a bad copy was a potential problem. However this seems to be much less of an issue now, I know plenty of people who use this lens and none of them had problems with bad copies. It's always the way that those with problems make the most noise while happy customers just get on with using their new lens. Given the huge number of copies of this lens that are made it's not surprising that a few are not quite up to standard.

Click to expand...

Right you are Pete, but nevertheless there's little or no evidence at all that some prime users received and complained about a bad copy (and a huge number of copies has been sold as well - the poor 400 prime is rather older ).
I guess therefore we should assume that

• the early zoom production was under a bad/unefficient quality control and/or not so efficient build design with large room to improve > which supports somewhow the "unsupported" old rumours of "a prime is better than a zoom", probably now not correct but hard to die

I believe the zoom to be a great lens, with many advantages and should be chosen on the basis of the actual use it is intended to, but I'm getting a bit tired of so many people trying to rebalance the gap between the two: they were AND are two different high quality lenses. Fullstop.

If the zoom production quality nowadays is OK, much the better, I just do not see the need to hide under the carpet some "malfunctions" of the past.
If one lens has some better features over the other, I do not see the childish need to degrade them just for the sake of balance

One final word: it's unwise to mix bench tests/charts and real world usage, no lens will guarantee sharp pictures ... but it's so weird that:

• bench tests are usually the basis of most of our choices
• long lenses used by professionals are 98% primes
• very, very, very few of them ever complained about a bad/unsharp copy
• not all of these lenses have IS
• all of them work well with TCs
• most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness; on the other hand, sometimes IS may somehow decrease IQ on certain lenses (I personally tested my mid-long older 300 f/4 against the newer 300 f/4 IS and IT IS sharper wide open... again that was SURELY a bad copy, or I have a sharp copy, eh?)
• all of us dream of getting a Canon/Nikon 500/600 prime sooner or later, not a super zoom

Cheers,

Max

|})| |})| |})| |})| |})|

I know little of Lenses ... But i alway's work on the same Theory ...
Car's ... Mobile Phone's ... Hi-Fi's ... Lenses ... The more a Manufacturer
put's in there Merchandise ... The more can go wrong with it ... This i'm
guessing is the difference between a Prime and Zoom ... Zoom will alway's
have more problem's as there are more part's to go wrong and movement is
generally wear etc, Also i'm guessing more 100-400 IS's have been
produced so again more copies will produce the odd Crap One ...
Just a Theory lol,
Take care,
John,

I think Max is right, we tend to dismiss the older lenses, but some are incredibly sharp. Slow they may be, but is that down to us demanding faster response time, or are we not anticipating fast enough.

For an example if we look at this issue of Birds Illustrated, there’s an old sepia image of a group of wardens taken in the seventies (I’m guessing, as I don’t have the mag here). Now that was probably a scanned print, but look at the definition held within the printed version, it’s detail is sharper than most all of the other images in the magazine.

pe'rigin said:

I think Max is right, we tend to dismiss the older lenses, but some are incredibly sharp. Slow they may be, but is that down to us demanding faster response time, or are we not anticipating fast enough.

For an example if we look at this issue of Birds Illustrated, there’s an old sepia image of a group of wardens taken in the seventies (I’m guessing, as I don’t have the mag here). Now that was probably a scanned print, but look at the definition held within the printed version, it’s detail is sharper than most all of the other images in the magazine.

Click to expand...

But what does that tell us except that someone took some care over the repro'?

and you are one of the few who would notice

gmax said:

One final word: it's unwise to mix bench tests/charts and real world usage, no lens will guarantee sharp pictures ... but it's so weird that:

• bench tests are usually the basis of most of our choices
• long lenses used by professionals are 98% primes
• very, very, very few of them ever complained about a bad/unsharp copy
• not all of these lenses have IS
• all of them work well with TCs
• most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness; on the other hand, sometimes IS may somehow decrease IQ on certain lenses (I personally tested my mid-long older 300 f/4 against the newer 300 f/4 IS and IT IS sharper wide open... again that was SURELY a bad copy, or I have a sharp copy, eh?)
• all of us dream of getting a Canon/Nikon 500/600 prime sooner or later, not a super zoom

Click to expand...

:clap: :clap: :clap: :clap:

Mark,

You’re right, I have an unnatural obsession with image quality, but that’s what I do.

The point I was raising. Does it really matter what lens you have? Keith made a valid point that a sharp picture is a still a sharp image.

To illustrate his point I noted the images in the magazine, now, I looked at the rag last night and the image wasn’t taken in the seventies, but 1952. The camera used was probably a German rangefinder, I don’t know, but it still stands up with today’s efforts in reproduction quality.

To get to ink on paper stage, the image will have degraded by about 20% +, through the various stages, digital camera images don’t have this handicap, it is direct plate process. So you’d think that with all this modern technology, today’s images would leap from the page in terms of definition, but they don’t.

gmax said:

Right you are Pete, but nevertheless there's little or no evidence at all that some prime users received and complained about a bad copy (and a huge number of copies has been sold as well - the poor 400 prime is rather older ).
I guess therefore we should assume that

• the early zoom production was under a bad/unefficient quality control and/or not so efficient build design with large room to improve > which supports somewhow the "unsupported" old rumours of "a prime is better than a zoom", probably now not correct but hard to die

I believe the zoom to be a great lens, with many advantages and should be chosen on the basis of the actual use it is intended to, but I'm getting a bit tired of so many people trying to rebalance the gap between the two: they were AND are two different high quality lenses. Fullstop.

If the zoom production quality nowadays is OK, much the better, I just do not see the need to hide under the carpet some "malfunctions" of the past.
If one lens has some better features over the other, I do not see the childish need to degrade them just for the sake of balance

One final word: it's unwise to mix bench tests/charts and real world usage, no lens will guarantee sharp pictures ... but it's so weird that:

• bench tests are usually the basis of most of our choices
• long lenses used by professionals are 98% primes
• very, very, very few of them ever complained about a bad/unsharp copy
• not all of these lenses have IS
• all of them work well with TCs
• most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness; on the other hand, sometimes IS may somehow decrease IQ on certain lenses (I personally tested my mid-long older 300 f/4 against the newer 300 f/4 IS and IT IS sharper wide open... again that was SURELY a bad copy, or I have a sharp copy, eh?)
• all of us dream of getting a Canon/Nikon 500/600 prime sooner or later, not a super zoom

Cheers,

Max

|})| |})| |})| |})| |})|

Click to expand...

Nice Info Max ... Appreciate knowing all this, I'm new to the Dslr World to
be honest and i am eager to learn etc,
It's just a shame i have'nt seen any Evidence or Proof that Prime's are
better still ... I was hoping someOne could show me but eh,

"long lenses used by professionals are 98% primes" ... Could You point me
to where you got this Info please as i'd like to read more on this ...
I would base that on One Theory ... Professional's can generally afford a
prime i guess,
But i would like that link to 98% of Pro's please ... Sound's good info,
Also if you have any Link's etc to show any evidence on the "Prime" thing
being better etc i'd enjoy reading that,
Another question as i was a little confused on this ...
"most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness;"
If it's not Sharpness ... Why would there be more keeper's? ... Did'nt quite understand that ... What apart from Sharpness would
you keep it for ... Please remember i am new to this and i have no idea what other reason you'd have more Keeper's
apart from the Sharpness etc,
Thank's for listening and Take care,
John,

gmax said:

Right you are Pete, but nevertheless there's little or no evidence at all that some prime users received and complained about a bad copy (and a huge number of copies has been sold as well - the poor 400 prime is rather older )....

...If the zoom production quality nowadays is OK, much the better, I just do not see the need to hide under the carpet some "malfunctions" of the past.
If one lens has some better features over the other, I do not see the childish need to degrade them just for the sake of balance

Click to expand...

I'm certainly not trying to make disparaging comments about either of these lenses, they are both excellent. I was just trying to say that the issue of bad copies is not the big problem that it is made out to be on some websites, it certainly should not put someone of buying the zoom if it is the right lens for them.

My biggest issue with the zoom is that it has shown me how useful IS can be... and now I really want a 500 IS!

Ive seen excellent images taken with both the 100-400 and 400 prime. When I decided to purchase my 400 prime about two years ago, I was swayed away from the zoom due to reports of dust suction and bearing problems. These may be resolved issues now.

At the end of the day, the ability of the individual photographer comes into play with whatever lens is used. If 'your chosen lens' works for you, then celebrate and keep pushing your boundaries and limitations. If you suspect a fault, sell it on ebay! lol

Less reading and more shooting; thats what Im working on!

Keith, do me a favour, let me know your take on the Canon 500mm f/4 in comparison to the 600mm! 8-P Actually think ive decided on the 500mm; just need to search ebay!lol Anyone got one lying around doing nothing?

Ok, im off to the classified section

tracker said:

At the end of the day, the ability of the individual photographer comes into play with whatever lens is used. If 'your chosen lens' works for you, then celebrate and keep pushing your boundaries and limitations. If you suspect a fault, sell it on ebay! lol

Less reading and more shooting; thats what Im working on!

Click to expand...

:clap::clap::clap::clap:

Modular said:

Nice Info Max ... Appreciate knowing all this, I'm new to the Dslr World to
be honest and i am eager to learn etc,
It's just a shame i have'nt seen any Evidence or Proof that Prime's are
better still ... I was hoping someOne could show me but eh,

"long lenses used by professionals are 98% primes" ... Could You point me
to where you got this Info please as i'd like to read more on this ...
I would base that on One Theory ... Professional's can generally afford a
prime i guess,
But i would like that link to 98% of Pro's please ... Sound's good info,
Also if you have any Link's etc to show any evidence on the "Prime" thing
being better etc i'd enjoy reading that,
Another question as i was a little confused on this ...
"most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness;"
If it's not Sharpness ... Why would there be more keeper's? ... Did'nt quite understand that ... What apart from Sharpness would
you keep it for ... Please remember i am new to this and i have no idea what other reason you'd have more Keeper's
apart from the Sharpness etc,
Thank's for listening and Take care,
John,

Click to expand...

Thought I would quote someone, rather than use my own words - "Why are primes sharper? A number of reasons. Zooms lenses by necessity have more elements than primes. This makes them more difficult to design, increases the risk of various forms of optical aberration, and can reduce contrast and increase flare." - Michael Reichmann.

The rest of this article can be read at his website:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/sharp.shtml

I think he does a good job of putting this all into perspective.

gmax said:

most long primes today have IS, but what it is usually said is that it increases the % of keepers, NOT sharpness;

Click to expand...

I guess that you mean 'sharpness of the optics' rather than final image. That is, IS will help eliminate slight movement and vibration and reduce the number of shots with softness introduced by technique, rather than make the glass itself resolve the light any better.

Thank's Mark for the Link ... I'm definetly going to give it a read,
I am in the process of Buying my first "Good" lens ... Definetly an "L" but
i have no idea if it will be Prime or Zoom ... I'm thinking Zoom only due to
price to be honest, Thank's so much for the Info too,
Take care,
John,

Modular said:

Thank's Mark for the Link ... I'm definetly going to give it a read,
I am in the process of Buying my first "Good" lens ... Definetly an "L" but
i have no idea if it will be Prime or Zoom ... I'm thinking Zoom only due to
price to be honest, Thank's so much for the Info too,
Take care,
John,

Click to expand...

John, tough choice but don't let that ruin the experience - if you have never owned or used top-end glass, then either lens should make you very happy.

Modular said:

I am in the process of Buying my first "Good" lens ... Definetly an "L" but i have no idea if it will be Prime or Zoom ... I'm thinking Zoom only due to price to be honest

Click to expand...

but the 400 f5.6 prime is significantly cheaper than the 100-400 IS...

postcardcv said:

but the 400 f5.6 prime is significantly cheaper than the 100-400 IS...

Click to expand...

Hello Pete,

Is it? lol ... There you go ... I did'nt know that ... I was looking at
spending around £850 on the 100-400 ... Seen it a few place's going for
about that, Is the 400 Prime an "L" ?, I'll go check actually,
Thank's Pete ... I would have definetly not thought that,
Take care,
John,