Canon RF 100-500mm Lens Review by a Bird and Wildlife Photographer

hey everybody ron buelafeld whistling wings photography back with you again today we're going to talk about the new canon rf 100 to 500 uh telephoto zoom lens and uh this might be a little bit longer video because there's quite a bit i think to talk about here and uh of course we're gonna start out with the most important thing right and some of you may turn this off right after this because you'll hear me say that it's a great lens it is it's a great lens and i'll cut to the chase i would buy it again and if you're looking for a lens in the 100 to 500 zoom range for the rf mount then i recommend you buy it because the main things that we're worried about here sharpness detail autofocus response uh image stabilization all those things are are really really great just to just to sum it up really quickly the lens had a little bit of an issue when i first got it uh there was a firmware update that canon just put out uh 1.1.1 so canon's put out two firmware updates for the r5 already and they've both made the camera better and the 1.1.1 1.1 point yeah 1.1 firmware update was specifically to get at an issue that a lot of people quote unquote were experiencing with the 100 to 500 on the r5 and that had to do with the is ibis uh in internal um body image stabilization system from what i could tell the issues i was having mostly in mode two is mode two uh had to do i think with how the lens and the ibis the is in the lens and the ibis and the body were communicating they were off a little bit or something because you get some really unstable things going on for me it seemed like mostly in in mode two now with this new firmware update uh this thing is rock solid it seems like maybe it's improved the autofocus even a little bit uh keeping on subjects that are against close dirty backgrounds uh close behind the subject that is seems to be better even but i'll tell you the autofocus has been great and some of those issues maybe with autofocus had to do probably if people were in certain auto is modes and things like that that that instability was causing you know the the autofocus to have trouble uh staying on a target or on a subject as well so uh with the new firmware update this this camera and lens combination now the 100 to 500 is just amazing it really is and so we can go through some pictures uh in the video here it's not the greatest way to look at you know detail and sharpness and stuff of images that you give the lens and so i'm going to go ahead and put a link in the description of this video down below where you can actually go to the images and take a look at them in a lot more critical fashion than just here on the video but i wanted to scroll through some images some of these are of of uh of birds some of them are of other things just basically playing around with the lens trying to see what it could do and so there's a lot of different things in here as far as images go i'll also have some video clips down below because shooting video handheld right and all of these images were taken handheld okay and the video that the few video clips that i'll include were taken handheld as well and so you can see that you know the video there's nothing fancy about this but you can hand hold 500 millimeter video and it looks pretty darn smooth and then of course in post you can do some stabilization beyond beyond in camera stabilization so really i'm i'm looking forward to to using you know this combination for video i'd only do short clips i'm not a video person i don't make you know productions or anything like that but i do like to take some video to back up some of my imagery and things so i'm really looking forward to to using this combination the 100 to 500 on the r5 for video as well now that the stabilization is is just amazing so let's go over in more detail my likes and then my dislikes because there are a couple things i don't particularly like about this lens first all of the above right that i just talked about are in the likes category uh the sharpness it's an l lens right it's a canon l lens it's a zoom and you know we always you know at least a lot of people i know that were you know professionals or or or big into to taking wildlife images and we always gravitated in the past towards prime lenses because that's where you got your your your sharpness right and then of course speed you know f4s and stuff like that uh were were important and so in order to get the best image quality we went to these these really expensive prime lenses the lenses canon and other manufacturers really are coming out with now the zoom lenses these 1 to 400 mark ii that canon has and the ef mount is just spectacular of course for 200 to 400 with the built-in teleconverter right that that thing is amazing as far as sharpness detail all that autofocus all that kind of stuff this lens is right up there with it right you can almost not see a difference anymore between you know the quality of the images you're getting from these zoom lenses and these these really expensive primes that we used to all shoot and still do shoot i i love my 600 f4 but it's big right it's bulky it's heavy i got the mark two i don't have the mark iii uh hopefully canon will come out with a 600 f4 do maybe for the rf mount coming up nice and light small relatively speaking but anyway uh the one to five hundred you know the sharpness the detail it's really really spectacular and uh no artifact you know chromatic aberration there's just really nothing there you know to to worry about autofocus response on this lens with the r5 is is quick right it's not super snappy like if you're used to shooting a 1d x2 or now 1dx3 you know with all that voltage going driving the servos the focusing server you know if you're out of focus and it is snaps in the most blink of an eye right this is a little slower than that in acquisition if you're way out of focus and coming into focus but once you've got the subject in focus and you're tracking with this lens i mean it's it's it's super fast and birds coming right at me right gaining on the camera quickly it keeps up you know canon i will admit i shot i've shot canon for a long long time and one thing that canon cameras and lenses the combos didn't do very well i don't think was subjects like birds gaining on the camera quickly just had a hard time keeping the bird in focus not anymore and this lens is right up there with it the is ibis combination now six plus stops of stabilization i yes i think that's that's actually absolutely the case now especially with the firmware update i've already talked about so i mean it's it's amazingly stable um so that's a like you know it's it's it's it's probably the most stable 500 millimeters i've ever shot when it's all the way out at 500 millimeters uh so you know i love it i love it i love all those things about it it's light right that's another another thing that i really like about the lens it's almost not there which is kind of a trend now right the build of these things the the casings that they're using the the internals on this stuff are getting smaller lighter everything's getting lighter it's it's really light right i like that the tripod uh foot will come off if you if you want uh that kind of flexibility it'll do that so i won't take it off now but anyway it comes off which is really really nice uh so lots to like about uh this lens i would i buy it again absolutely uh and so you know i've been having a lot of fun with it some things i don't like okay uh about the lens well the first thing is that it's a 7.1 at at 500 millimeters that's not really a dislike it's just you know sony came out with their two to six i shot sony a little bit there for a while and they came out with that two to six at six three at 600 millimeters and yes it's a little bit bigger a little bit heavier than this lens but boy that you know that little bit quicker at 600 right versus 7-1 at 500 here man it would have been nice if canon could have made it just a little bit faster at the 500 millimeter mark that way if you put a teleconverter on here you're staying you know more in the quick range rather than getting into that slow range of aperture but that being said the iso on this camera and the noise ratio right is really good that the dynamic rain range on this camera the image is really good best i've seen from from a canon sensor really it's just the the images are a joy to look at and a joy to work with in post-processing but anyway because of that you know you can shoot a little bit higher a little bit slower lenses so you're gonna shoot a little bit higher isos or whatever under the conditions and it's still working it's working well for me so it's a little bit of a bummer but but it's really not i guess into the dislike category it's just more something i i would have hoped or wished for um one thing i don't particularly like about this camera is the throw for zooming right you're zooming 400 millimeters one to five right uh it's a long way and so when you're shooting and you're trying and you're zooming in to gold the whole range is is tough right i'm all the way out and a bird's coming at me and i'm trying to stay with it zooming in i'm having a i'm having to reposition my hand which is again not something you can't get used to but i'm going to make a make the comparison again to the 200 to 600 that sony came out with you could basically do it with your thumb the way that the lens was set up it didn't extend like this when it was internal zooming so you could basically just go the entire 400 millimeter range two to six just with your thumb without having to reposition your hand for action type photography that can be really really important uh will i get used to this yes i'm already getting used to it but the throw just so you know is really really long okay it's long but again you know we'll get used to it and it's it's something that you can deal with the other thing about this zooming on this is it it's smooth it's very smooth and of course it has a tensioning ring that you can tighten it up make it really hard to move right or you can loosen it all the way down and make it to the smooth setting they call it tight and smooth and then it is smoother but you'll notice you can't it won't when it's on the smooth setting it won't extend by itself i kind of wish it would because it's a little stiff okay even at the smooth setting when you have to move it so far to zoom the entire range having it looser and even smoother than it is at on the smooth setting would be nice it probably will loosen up over time i hope it will now some of you will say well you know you've got that camouflage on the barrel that goes inside when you're zooming uh in and out does that did that make it tighter no it didn't it was exactly the same feel before i put this on and now after it's on there so that had no bearing on on this at all uh so that's a little bit of a dislike right is the is that smoothness um you know that that isn't really super slick when it's on the loose setting so you know it's again just a feel and if you're it's not something that's that's a fatal problem with the lens at all it's it's just a personal thing and a lot of these things i'm talking about and always talk about are personal things but for me uh that was the the you know one of the things that that kind of struck me but in the end that's really it as far as quote-unquote dislikes with this lens it really really is um a great lens and so you know moving you know down to talking about more specific things about uh how this camera performs and things you might want to consider when you're shooting this again i'm a bird bird photographer a wildlife photographer bird and flight bird action photography is really what what i'm what i'm after when i'm in the field most of the time so things like is settings right image stabilization settings on this camera on this camera and lens now you got to kind of say camera and lens right because they work they're working together and so the thing about this lens like a lot of the newer lenses that canon has is that it has three stabilization modes one two and three hard to see on the video i know i'll put an insert in hopefully a picture and so you'll be able to see it uh you know more closely and when this lens is connected to the r5 this is how you control ibis as well it's all it's all integrated right there's no menu item that you could like turn ibis off and just use the is of the lens right that would be kind of neat i think um especially when there were some of these issues that i was seeing with mode 2 and now that's basically been taken care of with the firmware i was thinking well let me can i turn ibis off and just use the internal uh is of the lens in one two and three like we used to before canon put ibis in in these new mirrorless cameras well you can't do that if you put a lens on that doesn't have is built into it a menu item pops up right and you can do some things with with ibis then you can turn it on and off and stuff like that i think i if i remember correctly that's that's kind of what you have available to you is on and off the weird thing that canon did is that they they take the item away it doesn't even appear in the menus when you have a an is lens attached to to the camera so you kind of forget even where that where that menu item is because you don't see it all the time when you're going through the menus which i think is kind of an odd thing they could have just graded out but anyway back to stabilizer modes one two and three uh what i've learned is pay attention to them okay we're talking about a lot of is a lot of image stabilization potency here okay six stops plus right so if you're on mode one and you're trying to pan with moving subjects a flying bird for example it's going to be difficult because that camera in mode one the camera and the lens working together now are trying to stabilize that movement in all axes right in all axes it's going to mess up your images a lot of times you're going to see some funky blurs in there you might not even be able to stay on a bird panning and you're wondering what that's going on if all of a sudden it looks like you've lost your ability to pan with birds like magically just lost that ability right look at your is setting your image stabilization setting up it's on one okay we all do it right i mean you get in you get in you're you're shooting a static stuff you know a perched bird or whatever and also here comes the flying bird you don't switch it from one you had it in one for the static stuff that's what mode one is for right static subjects more or less perched birds things like that where you want image stabilization in all axes right and especially if it's early in the morning late evening it's really dark we'll get into that there's an image that i took that i'll show you at a very slow shutter speed on mode one and you'll be amazed anyway mode one is for static pay attention mode two for panning right panning in one direction or the other but not big time movements from one plane to another right horizontal plane to vertical plane this thing's sensing which way you're moving and it's stabilizing in the opposite plane right and then all of a sudden you go up it's not going to adjust really quickly okay so i've seen some things with owls they're flying like this and then they swoop up to land they do that a lot and when you do that all of a sudden you'll see this weird blur in some of those images before it realizes or can change the plane that it's that it's compensating for so two would be great for like air shows and things like that where things are basically horizontal or vertical uh panning and not a lot of jerking around or changing planes quickly and how you're panning mode three of course as has been the case for for a while now with these lenses with three modes is that you've got something that really doesn't affect or take affect the image stabilization until you start taking pictures right still the shutter until the shutter starts going off so i really like mode three i stay in mode three a lot because i'm going from static birds perch to flying from flying to landing and very you know instantaneous kind of things and you don't have time to change the mode setting on the lens well this lens is so strong like i said with how it can stabilize things that you want to make sure you're in the right setting or you will get some images that are going to look funky they're going to get blurred and weird in weird ways and it's not because you're not tracking right or that the shutter speed is too slow or anything like that it's just the image stabilization system now the in body and the lens you know is is trying to stabilize things in a direction uh that that uh you know it thinks it needs to and if you're on the wrong settings then you know you're going to get some weird weird blurs because elements of the lens are moving the sensor is now moving maybe in the wrong direction to the movement of the subject or of your movements so i would say pay attention to these settings and make sure you're in the right right one otherwise you might get some weird stuff going on as far as uh closeness you know another setting of course is that the close the the distance with which you can get focus on something right you've got the full and then you've got an infinite infinity setting so you've got two settings um this lens can focus really really close i'm not at even at 500 millimeters i'm not sure exactly what it is i don't remember but it's really close and so i really kept it on full i've never i've never had to you know um had a want to really switch it to the infinity setting i can get the really close to really far away uh no problem the the distance that the lens travels when it's trying to focus if you miss focus is fast enough it's not so much to where it's going to cycle so slowly that when it has to go the full range that it's a problem i just kept it on full and that way you've got your full range from distant to as close as possible so when you get that bird again gaining on you or you got a fox trotting right at you or something like that they can get really really close so i you know i just keep it on full i keep the um you know the focusing distance on full uh autofocus versus manual right standard stuff i'm almost always on auto focus i don't do a whole lot of manual focusing for my birds birds and flight stuff like that so and it does have the built-in uh action ring up near the the mount which i love i love this thing i have it set for for choosing my autofocus methods the thing i like about the rings on these lenses and even the adapter i have the adapter that has the ring for the ef mount lenses that i have is that it's so close up to the body right well you can you'd think that well that can be hard to to get to right well yeah i don't know if i would put something on there that i need to get to fast like shutter or something like that shutter speed or aperture but i like it because it's out of the way you and it doesn't get bumped by accident and i won't turn it by accident so you actually have to physically want to do it for it to really get done and so i put autofocus method on here rather than hitting the autofocus uh button and then scrolling with the multifunction button that's that's the default for the r5 right i've switched it to this ring and i love it because i can just go and when you're looking through the viewfinder or if you're looking at the lcd screen and you're and you're moving this uh clicking through the the methods they show up you can see the boxes you know for for focusing changing so you know what you're on without even looking at the readout uh the actual description of what focus method you're using so anyway i love i love the the the action ring i think that's a great great addition uh so i don't really know what else i can can say about the 100 to 500 other than i think it's nice that they went instead of a one to four to one to five would i have liked a two to six better rather than a one to five yeah for me i would have that 600 millimeter mark is really nice for birds birds and flight wildlife in general for me for what i do and so i would have loved if camera would have come out with a lens that directly competed with sony's 200 to 600 because i absolutely loved that lens right but they didn't they came out with the one to five and i love it it's a great lens it stays it stands right next to all the great lenses that canon's been coming out with for a while now so take a look at the images go to the link down below take a look at the images take a look at the video clips again they're not meant to be anything special they're just meant to give you a chance to to judge for yourself what the lens can do and find the one i have one in there of a carving of a bird rather than an actual bird and the reason i did that i i went outside when you're trying to at least for me when i'm trying to gauge how is works image stabilization works how well it works and now with ibis and the camera i wanted i was trying to eliminate bird movement right i could have tried to do it with a real bird but then getting the bird to sit still because that's not judging is you know i wanted to shoot very very slow shutter speeds and just eliminate the bird movement and really hone in on camera movement to see how well it did and you can find the carved bird picture in there that was taken at 1 15 of a second 1 15 of a second iso 100 right and uh at f71 i believe and it's sharp and it wasn't the only image that i got sharp at those types of settings right you can do it you can hand hold at 500 millimeters right that that image was taken at very very slow shutter speeds if you have some decent technique and so you know this this carved bird picture um i i used full mechanical shutter first curtain electronic shutter and then full electronic now the first curtain uh electronic trying to keep the shutter shock down that's one reason why you would pick that um shutter mode and in all three i was able to get really sharp images of this bird this carved bird static bird hand held at 500 millimeters so uh it really gives you a range to work with here uh that you know up until this time you really just couldn't you couldn't do it you know unless you were the most steady person on the planet hand holding these high focal lengths so anyway um i'm i'm loving it and that rolls over like i said to the video there's some video clips of some duck swimming that you can see it's pretty darn smooth for handheld right so if you can't work with that i think i can work with it pretty pretty well you know and so i'm really i'm really thrilled and so i'll be keeping this lens on this camera a lot um i'm hoping to get another r5 because i like it so much uh especially now with the firmware updates and i'll probably keep the one to 500 on one of the r5s and on my other r5 i'll put my 600 f4 probably with a teleconverter uh you'll notice i didn't talk about a 1.4 on the on the 100 to 500 i'll do another video on using teleconverters on this lens both the 1.4 and the two times uh just too much i don't like to have these videos be too long so too much to to cover in this video but that video is coming and it changes things obviously and so we'll go into what i found uh for my style of photography uh at another time so until next time get out there take some pictures be safe and we'll see you soon

Channel: Whistling Wings Photography

Views: 31,366

Rating: 4.8265734 out of 5

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Id: zrcvm3CNWW0

Length: 26min 33sec (1593 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020