Canon RF 100-500 MEGAZOOM | MUST-HAVE Lens or Waste of Money?

[Music] [Music] um [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] hi guys and welcome to my channel i hope you're having a great day and if you're new to my videos please make sure to hit that subscribe button and give this video a like i would really appreciate your support over the years i've always been looking for lens that can complement my f4 600 millimeter lens in the field or if i want to go for a walk for instance to have a lighter alternative that's not as big and heavy i've tried many different lenses over the years but they all fell short in some sort of area and then in the end i ended up selling them because most of the time i prefer to drag my 600 millimeter lens with me over carrying the lighter alternative simply because i felt like with the 600 millimeter lens i was just getting so much better images that it wasn't really worth it for me to carry a shorter lighter lens with me when canon finally come out with this new rf 100 to 500 millimeter lens i was actually quite intrigued and really wanted to give it a go because the extra 100 millimeters to 500 millimeters could actually be really interesting and really helpful in the field if this lens can deliver the image quality the weight the autofocus and overall performance that i would really like to see when you hold the 100 to 500 for the first time you will notice that it's not a light lens but it's definitely light enough to be handheld and will also be small enough and compact enough to sit in my backpack next to the 600 millimeter lens so it ticks those boxes then when we look at the lens we have the rf control ring at the rear and you can assign certain functions to that for instance your eyes old chain so instead of changing that on the camera you can just change that on this little ring here then we have a manual focusing ring we have a ring where you can tighten and smoothing how easily this zoom turns and then we have the big zoom ring that lets you extend the lens to the full 500 millimeter so it's not an internal zoom this front element actually zooms out if you're going to 500 millimeter for instance one thing i found a little bit hard to do at least at the start is that you have to usually turn one two three times to fully zoom in and out in the field for instance if i was doing birds and flight and i would quickly want to zoom in or out i can see that that's something you would definitely have to get used to a little bit because you can't just zoom in one go without kind of taking your hand off the foot that is actually helping you to hold and stabilize the lens this lens also comes with a lens hood that easily attaches to the lens what's also great about this lens is that it has a 77 millimeter front element just like the 70 to 200 2.8 millimeter lens so all the filters that you might have already will work on this lens as well like a polarizer or neutral density filter for filming what i've noticed so far with this lens is that the autofocus is really nice and fast on my r5 and the r6 camera it's sticky and quite reliable and the autofocus especially the animal eye autofocus works over the whole range of your viewfinder which is absolutely fantastic so you can easily have the bird in any corner off your frame and you can still use the animal eye autofocus to focus on the bird's eye so both cameras the r5 and r6 were able to quickly and easily focus on the subjects and reliably track them with this lens so that has quite impressed me and the focus seems really nice and snappy and has also worked quite well in the video mode in talking about video i was really impressed how the ibis on the r5 and r6 worked in combination with the image stabilization in this lens it's very easy to actually do handheld video without much sort of shake or anything so that has been really good and one of the main reasons why i think this lens could be a real contender for me maybe the most amazing thing about this lens is that the minimum focusing distance is only 0.9 meters or about 3 feet that means you can essentially use this as a macro lens if you're using long lenses like a 5.6 800 or even the new f11 800 lens for instance you'll notice that those minimum focusing distance are often six meters so sometimes you have the problem that you're just too close to your subjects and you cannot focus at all with this lens on the other hand you will essentially always be able to focus and actually get some nice detail shots of some quite small birds or insects or flowers so this to me makes this lens insanely versatile you not only have the ability to shoot at 500 millimeters but also to shoot really up close to subjects to get some fantastic details so as a lens a travel lens for instance this will be very very handy for me one thing you have to be aware of that if you're planning to use this lens with extenders that you cannot fully retract the lens back into this position you actually have to zoom out grab your extender and then put it in and now the lens will not retract further than 300 millimeters so with an extender attached the lens will be in this position and only if you take the extender off you will be able to actually zoom back in fully again this is not really a problem but it's definitely something you want to be aware of when you're using extenders and don't be surprised your lens didn't break or anything like that this is simply the physics of this lens because the elements are so far back then you actually have to zoom them out zoom them away because the extender has this bit sticking out and that actually needs to fit inside the lens when i think about zoom lenses i usually just think about them as being able to be used without extenders extenders can be an optional piece to zoom lens but it wouldn't be my main choice and i think the image quality overall will just be better without extenders fast forward a few weeks it's not a spam outside anymore and they are now two 100 to 500 millimeter lenses on my desk why is that you might ask well this lens i will have to return in a few days but i decided i do not want to live without this lens anymore because i had such a good time testing it out in the field getting fantastic images with awesome image quality and i could really hand-held video and get some really nice footage so that flexibility i wouldn't want to miss anymore so i got myself a 100 to 500 as well because i know it will help me to create much better content in the future so now i want to jump right in and share some of the images with you that i've taken over the last few weeks to show you why i think this lens is so amazing let's do that so here's the first image taken on the r5 and you can see how even at f8 the background is quite nice and smooth for bird that's sitting right in the middle of the bush and even these leaves out here in the foreground are quite nicely dissolved and overall i liked how it just gives me the feeling of the bird just sitting right in the middle of the bush and now would really surprised me when i started to zoom in into the images of the 100 to 500 millimeter lens they were just so sharp look at all these details on the bird look at the details on the feathers the image quality is really really amazing so that surprised me and really excited me about this lens because it's so small compact and delivers an image quality that was very close to my big 600 millimeter prime lens now i was confident that i could use this lens exclusively in this spot for the next few weeks to see what kind of images i could get here's the next image another male gengan cockatoo feeding on a berry leaning forward as you can see there's a few unfortunate grass stems in the background and across the bird but they're really easy to edit out and if you're not sure how to edit that out make sure to check out my master class down there in the description i run you exactly through how you can edit out all those grass stamps in no time so if we zoom in to this bird again i mean look at that image quality it was quite close to the bird but the detail in the feathers is just simply amazing to me and it's a real joy using this lens and actually zooming into the images because they're just so sharp and nice quality here's another scene where we found a female gengan cockatoo right in front of us on a low branch but zoomed out a bit you can see that the whole scene was a little bit messy but when i zoomed in all the way to 500 millimeters you can see that i was able to capture this really really nice portrait of the female feeding with the out of focus tree in the background rendered just a really really nice color and nicely dissolved if we zoom into that we can see this crazy sharpness again at the 100 to 500 millimeter lens delivers and you might remember very similar image from my video about the 11 800 and 11 600 rf lenses and back then it was taken with the r6 and 800 millimeter lens and the quality was okay this is taken with the r5 and 400 to 500 and i think the quality is amazing here's another image of a male gengain cockatoo that i like because he finally climbed up to the top of the tree set on a nice exposed branch and i could position myself in a good spot with 100 to 500 millimeter lens at 500 millimeters and get this image of the male feeding on on a berry with fantastic sharpness and detail again and also quite a nice and overall quite decent looking background that really gives you the feel that the birds there amongst bushes without being like too prominent in your picture and now i want to show you one of the shots i've been the most excited about probably one of my favorite images that i've taken in a long time so it's two male gengain cockatoos and they were just in amongst the bushes and suddenly i saw them climbing up a dead branch and then up on top of that branch so here's the image what it looked like after the raw conversion from dpp as you can see the bird on the left hand side is still a little bit dark and then here we have the final image and just lighten the bird on the left a little bit brought out all the details in the birds in the red and made overall image really shine if you want to know how to edit your images exactly like that please make sure to check out my master class down there in the description where i run you through all my editing process step by step so you also can learn how to make your images look absolutely amazing and take them to that elusive next level here's an image of a young male gang gang cocker 2 on the r6 this time and i just threw this one in to show you that also on the r6 the 100 to 500 delivers a really really nice image quality next i took the lens to photograph my friends the k barangi's because they allow me to take similar looking images with a lot of different gears so here i really enjoyed the flexibility of the 100 to 500 again because it allowed me to take full body shots including the scenery with the 100 to 500 like this goose that just walking on the edge of the cliff and it has a purple head from feeding on a lot of purple berries really really nice image quality here's another image where you can see how powerful the zoom is on this lens this is the shot at 100 millimeters and then here's the same goose same moment just zoomed in to 500 millimeters and if we click into that again we see that beautiful detail all around and what really stood out to me is the flexibility combined with the image quality and the reach of 500 millimeters i've never seen this in another lens previously and here's also comparison shot of the r5 and 100 to 500 and the r5 and my 600 millimeter prime lens i was a lot further away with the 600 millimeter from the goo so might not be a totally fair comparison but i think it will still give us a good idea of the image quality overall and how well the 100 to 500 really stacks up against even a 600 millimeter prominence i still think the details on the prime are slightly better but overall both lenses deliver really really good quality and really nice fine feather detail it wouldn't be a proper lens test or camera test if it also didn't include one of the yellow robins that just love posing on this perch so here's a shot of the 100 to 500 in the rainforest at high iso and low shutter speeds and if we zoom into that you can see that the camera and lens delivered good detail even in these dark conditions and here's also shot with the 500 millimeter prime lens and if we look at these side by side we can see that the 100 to 500 delivers good image quality but that a prime lens in the rainforest still delivered a little bit more reliable and better image quality and that's the thing i found where the prime lenses we used really really shine compared to any of the other lenses that we tested the 11 600 and 800 100 to 400 and 100 to 500 5.6 400 f-4500 and the f4 600 millimeter lens delivered by far the best and most consistent quality in the rainforest the 100 to 500 shot is by no means bad but in bad light in bad conditions where it was dark that's where those prime lenses really shined and consistently delivered the best image quality of all after that we also went for a little drive in the rainforest to look for flame robins we actually pretty quickly found a whole group of flame robbers here's the young bird with an adult male right next to it the male doesn't have a tail which was a bit unfortunate but it's still a shot that i quite liked and if we zoom into this we can see again really really nice sharpness on both birds and this was actually me hand holding the 100 to 500 in the rain first and then lastly i want to show you a quite impressive image i saw 12 800 400 of a second handheld and if we zoom into that i think considering the conditions it's still some really really nice sharpness with not too bad noise at iso 12 800 500 millimeters and you also might ask yourself well 100 to 500 is nice 500 is nice but can i actually use extenders on this lens i wasn't sure myself when i filmed the beginning of this video but now after using the lens for many many weeks in the field i must say this lens actually works pretty pretty well with the extenders as well it works really well with the 1.4 extender and i have an example here for you where it was pretty dark not great light iso 6400 wide open at f10 but if we zoom into that i think we can see some pretty decent sharpness still and this is basically the worst condition you could possibly shoot in with a 1.4 extend and i still got this really nice sharpness and detail so that impressed me and in good light this lens really delivers quite well with the extenders especially if you can stop down to like f11 or f13 with the 1.4 extender then you get some really nice sharpness and detailed still would i want to use this lens with extenders all the time no and i think having the 500 millimeters actually enables you to not having to use extenders all the time the extenders work well but there's just a lot of limitations when it comes to the use of the extenders first of all you can't use the full width and height of your viewfinder anymore when it comes to the autofocusing your area you can use for autofocusing and the animal eye autofocus becomes a little bit smaller but it's still much bigger than on the 11 600 and 800 for instance so it's really not an issue in the field but there's just some more limitations you will have more out of focus images the autofocus is a little bit slower and overall it's not as fun to use as the lens without extenders so yes it works very well with the 1.4 extender and it even works very well with the two times extender but i wouldn't want to use it all the time my preference with the zoom lens would always be to use it without extenders talking about the two times extender i didn't really know what to expect but i was pleasantly surprised that even at f14 wide open this lens delivered some nice images so here's the first one of a kite baron goose 1 000 millimeters if we zoom into that we can see sharpness and details have suffered a little bit compared to no extender but overall this would quite be an acceptable folder still and at the beach 500 millimeters just not enough there's just tiny skittish shorebirds and 500 millimeters just give them to you too small in the frame so what i ended up doing was using this two times extender basically exclusively on the beach so i had a f14 1000 millimeter lens and when i could i stopped down a little bit more and to my surprise even with the two times extender in good light though this lens setup still delivered acceptable image quality of this suit the oyster catcher for instance and if we zoom into this i think that's quite good image quality considering the bird was fairly far away at a thousand millimeters and even the background doesn't look too bad here's another shot off the hooded plava where i could go nice and low with this lens and i got this shot of the male just walking past made a thousand millimeters and if we zoom into that the image quality still looks pretty good it's not as good as with the bare lens but that's to be expected but i think it's definitely still usable and can be a viable option for you if you go to the beach with nice light trying to photograph some shorebirds like that so i really enjoyed having that flexibility of being able to shoot at a thousand millimeters being able to shoot at 100 millimeters and also being able to shoot super super close to fairly tame birds getting some new perspectives or even being able to zoom right into like flowers or whatever else that i wanted to photograph of course what would be a lens test without also trying some bird and flight i haven't used this lens extensively for birds and flight but from what i've tested so far it delivers very well so here's a cabaret grease that i just saw out of the corner of my eye so i quickly ripped up the lens and started shooting and the autofocus quickly picked up the goose and then just tracked it so i got a few shots there that i was quite happy with here's a series of images that really really impressed me and i didn't think i would get any shots but i saw this oyster kitchen just taking off in the distance i had to two times extender on f18 640th of a second ice or 3200 so i did not expect i would get any shots so i tracked the bird started the eye autofocus it jumped onto the bird it tracked the bird the first few shots weren't too great because of my low shutter speed but then i actually ended up with this image in this series of images and if we zoom into that that's pretty nice and sharp and an image i'm quite happy with and i would have never thought that you could take an image like this at a thousand millimeters f 18. and then here's just another series of images to show you how the lens just nicely stayed on this silver gold that was a little bit further away not being distracted by the ocean all the grasses in the foreground delivering nice sharpness on the eye so i would definitely be confident using this lens for birds in flight and even the 7.1 i didn't really think was any problem and it was still easy enough to get fast enough shutter speeds just sometimes you had to bump your iso a little bit higher because you couldn't open up the lens anymore but on the r5 or the r6 that's really not a problem to go to like 6400 iso for instance [Music] after seeing these images and looking at the videos throughout this video i'm sure you understand why i just thought i had to have one myself i've never had a lens that had this sort of flexibility and reach at the same time and also delivered such amazingly nice image quality and even with the extenders this lens delivered nice quality so i feel like this is just a perfect secondary lens for me to have to complement my 600 millimeter lens for handheld filming and for taking pictures like the gengan cockatoos talking about filming this is where this lens really shined as well and hasn't allowed me to do a lot more filming of birds when i'm just walking around typically i would always have to have a tripod but with this lens i'm actually able to do a lot of handheld video and it's super still with the combination of the is in this lens and the ibis in the r5 besides a good image quality and a nice image stabilization the autofocus also works really well on this lens it's super fast sticks to your subject and you just get sharp image after sharp image it still works well with the extenders as well but it's just a little bit more limited in addition to all that that small minimum focusing distance of just 0.9 meters and 100 millimeters or up to 1.2 meters at 500 millimeters has given me so much more flexibility in the field because there's simply never a time where this lens cannot focus you can actually focus on your own feet while holding the camera in your hand at 500 millimeters that's pretty crazy that's not something i think you can do with any other 500 millimeter lens so this flexibility really made this lens a must have lens for me on all trips for photos and videos and i know we'll get a lot of amazing content with this lens going forward do you have a hundred to five hundred have you used it are you waiting on one let me know your experiences in the comments what did you think of this video how did you like the image quality of that lens it's pretty good isn't it let me know in the comments if you want to know all about bird photography and learn how i take my images and how you can edit your images to look absolutely amazing please make sure to check out my ebooks master class and videos down there in the description and now that will really help you to become better bird photographers other than that please make sure to subscribe to the channel give me a thumbs up it really helps the algorithm to spread my video around and i will see you in one of my next videos bye

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 101,156

Keywords: bird photography, vogelfotografie, jan wegener, birding, birds, wildlife photography, Canon 600mm, which camera to buy, bird photography equipment, bird photography gear, birding gear, birds in flight, eos R5, Canon EOS R5, animal eye AF, animal eye autofocus, R5, R5 or R6, flight photography, EOS R6, Canon R6, R6 Settings, canon mirrorless, RF 800 IS STM, RF 600 IS STM, RF 600 F11, F11, RF lens, RF 800 F11, RF prime lens, Canon RF 100-500, 100-500, zoom lens, RF 100-500

Id: ixroB1hRY6U

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 25 2021