Christmas has come early (kind of) – I got a new Canon 100-400 EF f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens for Christmas and it was delivered today. I’m allowed to test it out to make sure it all works okay, then it will get wrapped up and will sit under the tree until Christmas day.
Below are some of my test photos showing my different lenses – I set up the tripod in the back yard and took a photo of an empty juice bottle over near the shed to show the differences in magnification. I’ve listed the photos in order of increased magnification, and included the 35mm equivalent lens lengths.
The Canon EOS 40D is a 10.1 megapixel camera which sees a 1.6x field of view crop for lenses, meaning a 50mm lens actually gives you an effective equivalent of putting an 80mm lens on a full frame (35mm) sensor camera (like the EOS 5D). Thus the 100mm – 400mm gives an equivalent range of 160mm – 640mm.
The A650 mentioned below is the Canon PowerShot A650 camera, a 12mp compact digital camera. I run it in 8mp mode since I don’t see the point in having a relatively cheap compact digital camera creating image files that are larger (in pixel count) than my expensive DSLR!
For that last image – on the original photo at full resolution I can quite clearly read the fine print on the bottle label!
I also took the camera + lens for a short walk around Munro park for some real-life tests. This is a heavy lens, so it is going to take a bit of getting used to. My arms were aching from lifting it up to take photos – but I’m sure with a bit more practice, I’ll develop the necessary arm muscles to make it much easier to use.
Here are a couple of photos I took with the new lens (none of them have been cropped):
The second to last photo is a Grey Fantail.