Canon 400 2.8 IS II Is It Worth the Money?? Let's Find Out!! Canon Lens Review

g'day and welcome to the channel in today's video i'm going to give you my thoughts on the canon 400 2.8 version 2. now i've used this lens quite a few times now i've put up a couple of videos of me out in the field if you're interested to watch those if you're new to the channel i am a bird photographer so this review will be heavily focused on birds but i'm going to be showing you a lot of photos i'm going to show you what i like what i didn't like i'm also going to compare this lens to other lenses from canon that are around that 400 millimeters also what else you could buy for this sort of money and i'm going to go out in the field and actually do some tests where i'm going to actually test this 402.8 against this 400 5.6 obviously this is a lot cheaper and a lot more affordable than this big lens so what's the difference between the two do you need to buy this lens or would you be okay just with the 5.6 that's what we're going to cover in today's video all right so what did i like about this lens well the most obvious thing is the image quality any of these canon super tallies are going to produce excellent images and the 400 2.8 is no different the images i was getting in processing in lightroom and photoshop were just as good as my 500 and were as exactly how i expected you could definitely shoot this wide open and get nice sharp images but like with any lens i find them the sharpest if you stop it down and i'll show you that later on in some examples but overall an extremely sharp high quality lens that's going to produce quality images pretty much every time all right let's take a look at this australian wood duck that i actually photographed in one of my earlier videos and we'll jump in lightroom and this is the uncropped raw file if we zoom in to 100 we can see that the image is nice and sharp throughout the entire bird we've got plenty of feather details and overall it's a technically a very good image we can remove that noise that you can see using topaz de noise which is just a plugin for lightroom or photoshop there's a link in the description with a discount code if you're interested in that and this is what the final image looks like i'm very happy with this image all right and here's the original raw image with no edits and we will overlay the final image on top so you can see the difference between the raw and the final image the other thing i liked was just the versatility with focal lengths you can get using extenders so on its own it's a 400 millimeter lens but then i can add a 1.4 converter and make it a 560 f4 or i can actually attach a two times converter and make it an 800 5.6 so depending on the species or the subject or the amount of light you have you can choose which adapter to use obviously with extenders you will lose a little bit of quality and af speed but i didn't really notice it to be honest these lenses just perform so well with extenders and that's probably one of their main features over cheaper lenses is just their ability to take the extenders so well so here's an image i took of a stride apart at 400 millimeters and an aperture of f8 if you look at this image how big of a crop do you think it is it looks sharp and pretty good to me the image we're looking at the screen you might be surprised but this is only 25 of the original image it's a 7.7 megapixel crop of the original 30 megapixel image it really highlights the quality of both the lens and the 5d mark iv so here's the unedited raw file and you can see i've actually done a setup i've attached this perch to one of my bucket perches over water and the birds landed on this perch allowing me to take the photo if you want to know more about bucket purchase and setups i've done a video on that which you're free to watch all right so it functioned really well at 400 millimeters as i mentioned with the two times we get an 800 5.6 so i took a few photos of a local redcat robin at 800 millimeters i just wanted to show you the image that i got as you can see i'm pretty happy with how this looks the red caps giving us a nice pose on the perch and it looks sharp enough and that background is out of focus so again i didn't find any real slowdown in af or quality with the two times attached possibly my most favorite shot i took with this lens was the specific black duck and its duckling i just really like this image and this was taken with a 40d and the 800 so it goes to show how important the lens is when taking photos all right and here's the shot of a eurasian coot that i took i actually got some real positive feedback on this which i was happy to get we've got a bit of habitat in this with the reeds so the challenge is trying to get habitat without becoming distracting and that can be really difficult it's something i'm working on in my own photography and i would like to include more habitat in my shots and of course i had a really good session with some pacific black ducklings they were swimming past me back and forward allowing for lots of photos and i took quite a few i actually ended up quite liking this this shot which had some side lighting so the head was sort of highlighted with the light that the background was a little bit darker and in shade and i sort of did actually increase the vignette on this to sort of give it that dark outer edge and push the viewer's focus towards the head of the bird and this came out really well and i was happy with this image it is worth noting at 800 millimeters you have a very narrow depth of field basically so where you focus on a bird our depth of field is how much in front and behind is in focus so if you have a really narrow depth of field if you focus on the head often the body will be out of focus but if you have a wide depth of field the entire bird will be in focus and you can see on the screen with this pacific black duckling the head's nice and sharp but the back falls off that's our depth of field falling away and it becomes out of focus now i've highlighted the in focus areas in green and the outer focus areas and red and that's the issue we face with the longer the focal length we get the narrower that depth of field so how do you overcome that well you can increase your aperture and it will increase your depth of field a little bit but you don't want to put that aperture up too high because then you don't get the shutter speeds and you run into other issues so another way to overcome that is to try and get side profile shots because with the bird on its side you don't have as much that could go out of focus and as you can see in the shot that's exactly what i've done to get the entire burden focus is i've just photographed the bird's side on but like with anything there's actually an advantage to having that narrow depth of field and that's that it throws your background out of focus a lot more so with this coot it was sort of swimming towards me and the background is nice but i really wanted to throw it out of focus so i used an aperture of i think it was f5 and that enabled me to get that background almost completely out of focus i did do a little bit of work in photoshop but overall i was pleased with how this image ended up looking i did get some feedback from my previous videos that i should be trying this lens at 2.8 and that's a fair feedback unfortunately i haven't had really low light to test that and i'm always reluctant to use such a low aperture because of that depth of field that i just mentioned i'd much prefer using sort of f8 or f9 to try and get more in focus and that's ultimately its sharpest aperture so i did actually use the lens at 2.8 and i photographed this butterfly that you can see in the clusterman and it looks nice and sharp and because i was a fairway away the depth of field actually wasn't that narrow stay tuned if you want to see some actual comparison tests between the different apertures and how it affects sharpness later in the video so i ended up taking quite a few photos and i've actually put them all up on my website into a gallery i'll leave the link in the description but if you want to see all the photos i've taken they'll be there so one other thing i really like about this lens is the actual minimum focus distance is 2.7 meters which is still a lot but it's actually a lot less than this so this 405.6 this has a minimum focus distance of three and a half meters so ultimately this one allows you to get closer to the subject which makes it bigger in your frame and considering we can actually put it two times on the 400 we can have an 800 millimeter lens that focuses at 2.7 meters which is actually quite a lot so for example i think the minimum focus distance on the 800 millimeter lens the big one is around 6 meters so we can get quite a lot of magnification using this in a two times which definitely has its benefits when you're doing say photographing smaller birds or you want to get a head shot or something like that you just have to be aware as i mentioned before your depth of field is going to be extremely narrow so you just have to be aware of that so the main feature of this lens is the 2.8 aperture so what do i mean by that well you can see how big this lens is compared to this so they're both 400 millimeter focal lengths but one is just so much bigger than the other and it all has to do with how much light comes down the lens so if we have a look at the front element of this lens you can see how big it is it's a 2.8 so it lets in a lot of light this one here 5.6 so this one actually lets in four times the amount of light as this one so that's why it's just so heavy so big and so expensive it's just it captures a lot of light all right so what does that actually give us what advantage do you have by capturing more light well one is the auto focus speed so when your camera focuses it's actually focusing at the max aperture so it's letting in all the light at 2.8 onto the sensor which helps with focus so in theory this one will focus quicker than this one and then the obvious one is just the light to expose the photo so say you want a higher shutter speed let's say for an example i'm using this lens and i've got a shutter speed of say 500th of a second and it might just not be enough to capture the action what i would have to do with this lens is actually bump up my iso by two stops to get that 2000 shutter speed and that might introduce a heap of noise and the image quality would suffer but with this lens all i need to do is increase my max aperture to 2.8 and i would have a shutter speed of 2000 so this lens ultimately lets you photograph and low light so that's rain forests you know overcast any conditions where you need a lot of light that's the main reason people are spending a lot of money for this lens is just the ability to acquire that extra light alright so what didn't i like about the lens well the main thing is just the weight it's actually really heavy the lens itself is around four kilos so the camera attached you're looking at around five kilos which is quite a lot and it might not sound like a lot but after a while if you're hand holding or even walking around it does become a bit of a chore and when you think about it four kilos compared to say my 500 so this here is my 500 f4 and this is the 400 2.8 this is actually a kilo lighter this is only three kilos so it's quite a big difference between the two lenses and this one's actually gives you more reach so 500 versus 400 so you do notice that even even that kilo i noticed the difference between the 400 and the 500 and to canon's credit they addressed that in the version 3 lens that is around three kilos the same as my 500 so they have overcome that so you really need to be aware if you do buy this lens that it is quite heavy and you probably definitely need to use it on a tripod or a monopod the majority of the time so the other issue i had with the lens is 400 millimeters is probably just a little bit too short for birding if you're just doing small birds and birds you want as much focal length as you can and 400 just isn't quite enough especially on a full frame body yep you can definitely use the 1.4 times and the two times you can have 800 millimeters but i suspect if i had this lens i'd be using it at 800 all the time so it sort of be losing the benefit of that fast aperture and i may as well just buy a 500 or a 600 and give me that extra reach and as i touched on the other issue is just the depth of field at 2.8 it's just so narrow that it completely throws that background out and a lot of the bird would be out of focus i seem to be getting quite a bit of feedback that people seem to prefer the backgrounds to have a little bit more habitat or a little bit more definition some people don't like the pure out-of-focus background so that's something to take into consideration all right so would i buy this lens purely for birding the answer is no no i wouldn't i think there's better options available for a pure burning lens and those would be the five or the six hundred they give you more reach reach is often what you need more than speed with newer cameras topaz de noise you can use high isos and get away with it of course this lens is perfect for someone who says in the uk and doesn't have the same sunlight we have here maybe you photograph deer or bison or buffalo or larger mammals and that's what this lens excels at it's mainly used for sports because of that low light capability motorsport etc if you don't purely photograph birds then this lens may be better for you but if you just photograph birds i think there are better options all right so i kind of talked about the 2.8 aperture being the main feature i think we need to go out into the field to explore this a bit more and just take some test shots and have a look at how sharp the images and how the converters change our field of view and the size of the bird and the frame so i've got the soft toy owl that i thought i'd use i haven't given it a name so feel free to let me know in the comments what i should be naming this owl because i'll probably use it in the future so i've placed the owl on this rock without anything distracting behind it so we should get nice and out of focus backgrounds i've set up my tripod about eight meters away which is about 26 feet and i'll be using my canon 5d mark iv and i'll use both a 1.4 and a two times converter i've also got my 400 5.6 which i'll use to compare the sharpness and quality of the photos all right so this is what i'm seeing through the viewfinder at its widest aperture of 2.8 as you can see we have a lovely out-of-focus background and we can see the entire bird some of the rock and plenty of the background now when i close down the aperture watch what happens to the background our depth of field increases and we can see more of the background when i place the two clips side by side the difference is very noticeable but we're never really going to photograph birds at an aperture of f 22. so a better comparison is between say the max aperture of 2.8 and f 8 which is often your sharpest aperture for bird photography as you can see at 400 millimeters the difference is noticeable and having the ability to throw your background out of focus is an advantage if your background's a little bit messy but you need to be aware that lenses are not their sharpest wide open at the max aperture whilst the photo is sharp at 2.8 it is noticeably sharper with more detail stopped down to f8 you can see this clearly in the comparison shot 2.8 is on the left and f f8 is on the right the detail on the body under the bill is very apparent so it really is a balance between sharpness and depth of field and bokeh all right let's have a look at some comparison shots of the 5.6 and the 2.8 and we're going to shoot it at an aperture of f8 which should be sharp on both lenses when looking at the full frame shot they do appear somewhat identical and it's very difficult to separate the two i was asked by a subscriber if the backgrounds would look the same when they use the same aperture and as you can see they do the depth of field is exactly the same because they both have the same field of view so when we zoom in to 100 i was actually very surprised with how similar the detail was around the eyes if you look closely you can notice the 2.8 has more fine detail and as we move around you can clearly see a difference in detail as we sort of move towards the edges of the frame but in saying that one lens is a lot more expensive than the other i'm very impressed with how the 5.6 perform the next thing we need to look at is how well the 2.8 works with extenders let's first have a look at the difference that 1.4 makes to our field of view and how big the owl is in the frame basically the owl is now 1.4 times bigger and as you can see our maximum aperture has also increased by stop from 2.8 to four meaning we can no longer capture as much light but the big advantage is the increased reach the other interesting thing that happens when adding a converter as our depth of field gets narrower and our background becomes more out of focus you can see that both images are at f8 the image on the right has a more out of focus background and this is because our focal length has increased and our field of view is narrower when i stop down we really notice the difference between the images in fact the difference is remarkable and goes to show just how important it is to stop down by at least a stop to get the sharpest image so this test does show that you can use a 1.4 converter with the 2.8 and when stopped down it has very little impact on image quality so i mentioned that the 2.8 can take it two times which makes it an 805.6 let's compare what millimeters looks like compared to 400 as you can see that extra reach makes a big difference in making the owl bigger in the frame again the increase in focal length has had a big impact on our depth of field and the out of how out of focus the background is in fact even though our aperture is now 5.6 compared to 2.8 our depth of field has effectively halved from 62 millimeters down to 29 which goes to show the focal length has a pretty big impact on how smooth and out of focus your background is let's take a close look at the detail with a two times attached again by stopping down we drastically increase the sharpness of the lens on the left it's wide open at 5.6 and on the right is f11 so the 400 2.8 with extenders gives us three different focal lengths which all produce excellent shots when stopped down this gives us a lot of flexibility depending on the situation all right well i was pleasantly surprised with how well the 405.6 compared to the 2.8 considering you can probably pick this up between six and eight hundred dollars second-hand whereas this one's probably closer to five or six grand so a big difference but this one performed very well considering but as we saw this one is clearly sharper with more detail as you would expect all right so let's compare the 400 2.8 to the other lenses that are available at 400 millimeters with canon as you can see on the screen there's lots of different options from the affordable 5.6 all the way up to the latest 400 2.8 big difference in cost all for the same focal length ultimately it's very difficult for me to suggest a lens to you because it all depends on what your needs are your budget you know what you can afford and all those factors come into it at the end of the day you just need to pick what's best for you if you want flexibility maybe a zoom lens like the 100 to 400 if you want the fastest lens with the best quality then the 2.8 would be a no-brainer so there's lots of different options there for you and you just need to pick which one best suits your needs now when we think about telephoto lenses or other lenses you can get for say that five six seven thousand dollars for me if i was spending the money i would definitely always get this lens with the converters you've got a thousand f8 focal length uh it's a kilo lighter and it's around the same sort of money so you know i can't see why you would pick this one over this one unless you needed the light at the end of the day if you can wait uh the 600 f4 is clearly the best but sometimes opportunities just come up so with this lens here i actually got this second hand off somebody who bought the 600 didn't need this anymore and i got it for a real bargain so you know if i didn't have that opportunity i'm not sure if i would have got this lens i may have waited for the 600 but i've got no regrets i i'm very happy with this lens and that may be the case for you a 400 2.8 might pop up at a good price and might be just too good an opportunity to turn down so instead of waiting forever for a good 500 you may be better just getting the 400 again it just depends on the situation all right well that brings us to the end of the review in conclusion what an amazing lens if you need a fast lens this one is extremely good takes the converters well as i mentioned for me for birding i just wouldn't buy this lens i would get the five or six hundred so oddly i had a lot of fun with this lens i'm very grateful that i got to try it out take some photos and share that with you i hope you enjoyed this review it took a little bit longer than i thought to put it together so i'd appreciate a thumbs up and maybe leave some comments below of your thoughts what lenses are you using what images did you like and i really really appreciate the support from all my members if you're not sure what a member is hit that join button and you'll find out more information there thanks to all the subscribers and of course thank you very much for watching take care and we'll see you in the next one see you later i have to say where i am is absolutely beautiful so i'm currently in the warby rangers and you can see all the everlasting daisies we've got some grass trees behind us it's just an amazing spot i can hear a parlot singing some bees nobody else around really is quite something all right so i guess i think it yeah i did get one so i do do so 5.6 prime i think that's minimum i think the amount so we can actually get quite a lot of magnet and different and for different for different scenarios we all photograph different things we all have different needs [Music] what else do we say

Channel: Duade Paton

Views: 23,700

Keywords: Bird photography Gear Review, bird photography tips, bird photography lenses canon, bird photography canon, canon 5d mark iv, cameras for bird photography, photographing birds, Australian birds, bird photographer, best canon lens for bird photography, best lens for wildlife photography, Telephoto Lens for bird photography, canon 400 2.8 IS II, 400mm lens for bird photography, wildlife photography in the field, field testing telephoto lenses, Lens Review

Id: Qi68QEn10NQ

Length: 20min 34sec (1234 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020