Canon RF 800 & 600mm F11 IS STM - Just A Gimmick Or Can You Take GREAT Images At F11 Wide Open!?

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] hi guys i hope you're having a great day i was actually quite excited to make this video about the new canon f11600 and f11 800 millimeter lenses when i heard about these lenses first i thought have they lost their mind there's no way these lenses could actually work in the field but at the same time i thought if these lenses actually somehow are able to deliver they could be a fantastic entry point for so many people into the world of big prime lenses when i actually got to hold these lenses in my hand for the first time it dawned on me why canon made these lenses because they are so light they literally weigh nothing and if you look at the price point as well they are so attractive for so many people because having an 800 millimeter or 600 millimeter prime lens it's usually something that's unobtainable for most hobbyist bird photographers what else is there to see about these lenses first of all they're non-l lenses so compared to the l series of canon where they use just the best materials and parts these lenses are more focused on the functionality and the cheap price point but that doesn't mean that they're bad quality overall when you hold them in your hand they feel quite nice the most interesting fact about these and that might be a little bit confusing to some is that they're actually i would call it a zoom prime lens that means that in order to have to use the lens you have to actually unlock it pull out the back and lock it again so this is the shooting size of the lens but in order to keep the lens quite small and nice for travels canon has actually introduced this feature where it stores away much smaller than in the shooting position let me just quickly show you how much bigger the 600 f4 prime lens is compared to these two little 600 and 800 f11 lenses if we put that right here the difference is just incredible isn't this this lens weighs over three kilos is really big really tall not much fun to lug around with this way it's essentially nothing so that's really impressive and this is something that canon also thought and really made this a lens that is designed for hand holding because this lens doesn't come with a tripod collar it only has this little kind of fake foot at the bottom where you can actually attach a lens plate to but then you cannot shoot vertically there's no lens collar like usually on the canon cameras where you can just turn the lens in the collar when it's attached on the tripod to go from horizontal to vertical this doesn't work with this lens so in my opinion this is really a lens that's only made for hand holding you can put it on a tripod if you want to do like a long exposure for instance but it's not something the lens was designed to do the other thing you will notice this lens doesn't come with any lens hood i think there's a lens hood available but i've never seen it in the field so i'm not quite sure how to get it but if i bought this lens i would probably get a lens would simply because you can then store the camera easier way otherwise you always have to have this little cap with you which is all right but i think overall i would prefer to have a little lens other thing about these lenses is that they have a fixed aperture of f11 what does that mean it actually means the only aperture you can shoot at is f11 you can't make it more wide open like f8 and you also can't stop it down any further like f13 the only aperture these lenses can shoot at is f11 or for instance if you put a two times extender on here they go to f22 but you cannot actually change the aperture off the lens the other thing these lenses have as well instead of the l lenses that usually have an ultrasonic usm model these lenses have a stm motor which means they're a little bit slower when it comes to focusing but at the same time it's a little bit smoother than a usm moto so this could be nice for video however at the same time i think only having f11 available will be quite a struggle when it comes to taking videos with these lenses the one big drawback with these lenses and that's due to the fact that they're wide open at f11 is that instead of the focus point reaching all over uv finder all around they're limited to fairly small square in the center of your frame that means in the field if your subject is kind of in the center everything works just like normal your eye autofocus works really nicely but then if you want to focus on something that's outside the square it becomes a little bit more tricky because you cannot use the eye autofocus anymore because it can't stay on your subject if it's outside the square so this would be one of those cases where you have to use for instance spot autofocus is your base or the focusing method like the way i've set up my r5 if you do it that way you would then just have to focus on the bird recompose take your image or keep the bird always in the center of the frame but that's not really something that we want to do at all times so when shooting horizontally this didn't really turn out to be much of a problem for me where i struggled was if i turned the camera vertically because then all the auto focusing points were kind of usually on the belly of the bird instead of the head i guess that's some of these things that just come with this price point and the f11 so it's not a deal breaker but i think it's definitely something to be aware of because there will be times where you have to do extensive focus and recompose rather than just letting the eye autofocus do its job the 800 millimeter lens has a minimum focusing distance of 6 meters and that can be a lot and this is actually something i would warn all people about that by this lens don't think the lens is broken or something is wrong with it there will be occasions you're walking around a bird lands right in front of you it's within the six meters and the camera and the lens won't focus so it's not broken you'll just have to step back further to actually be able to focus properly then and this is where the 600 millimeter lens which is the 4.5 meter minimum focusing distance worked a lot better what i could notice straight away when i was using these lenses is how stable the viewfinder is when you're using it on the r5 or the r6 so the ibis in the camera combined with the image stabilization in these lenses is simply amazing you can even take handheld video with an 800 millimeter lens that's perfectly stable [Music] over the last few weeks i've taken the 600 and 800 millimeter lens to many different locations took him to the bright beach and i've taken them to the dark rain forest to photograph east and yellow robins in not so great and pretty dark conditions i want to start with a few images from an island near melbourne where i photographed cape baron geese and the geese they are quite tame so i mainly took headshots because 600 and 800 millimeters most of the time we're just too long to get the four gears in the shot so let's start with a set of four raw images of the cape baron geese and they're taken with three different lenses the top two images are taken with the f11 800 millimeter lens the bottom left image is taken with the f11 600 millimeter lens and the image on the right hand side is taken with my f4 600 millimeter lens and all images are taken on the r5 we can see that all of them actually have really nice and smooth backgrounds and this is something that positively surprised me when using the 600 and 800 f11 lenses because it was not that difficult to get this nice and smooth backgrounds that are used from my images so here the first image is taken with the 800 millimeter f11 lens and if we zoom into that we see some nice sharpness on the eye the second image and this is probably the sharpest image i took with the 800 millimeter lens in those few weeks really nice sharpness on the eye from the eye autofocus and nice feather detail all around as well here's an image with the 600 millimeter lens if we zoom into that again nice feather detail and good sharpness and now if we compare that to the image that i was taking with my 600 f4 lens we can see that the sharpness overall is a little bit better on the lens and also that the fine detail like on the neck is resolved a little bit better but if we look at these side by side i must say that the difference is actually not too big considering that the lens on the right hand side cost over 10 thousand dollars and the lens on the left hand side cost under a thousand dollars so looking at these two we can see that the sharpness on the 600 millimeter f4 lens it's a little bit better with more fine detail showing but all in all i must say i would have been happy with either of these two images what i found interesting that even though i was shooting at f11 with the and 600 millimeter lens and f8 with my f4 600 millimeter lens that the depth of field seemed to be greater on my f4 600 millimeter lens stopped down to f8 then those f11 lenses wide open at f11 the only thing i notice in the field when using these lenses there's a lot more images that are not tack sharp so you'll have to just shoot away shoot away take a lot of images to get a few that are this nice and crisp where's with my more expensive f4 600 millimeter lens almost every single image is that sharp so when it comes to how many sharp images you get out of a burst the expensive lens definitely has an advantage all in all i was quite impressed how i could get nice and sharp images with the smooth background of the cab baringies next i went out to answer one of the key questions everyone was asking can you take shots at f11 in dark environments is it going to be possible at all i also took my mate dwight with me so we could actually shoot on the r5 ntr6 with different lenses at the same time giving you some really nice comparison shots so here are some results from the rainforest shoot the first image taken with the r5 and the f11 600 millimeter lens if we zoom into that we can actually see some pretty decent sharpness and some acceptable sharpness on the top bird as well overall i think a pretty nice picture with the acceptable background considering the rainforest conditions and that the fern leaves were quite close behind the bird the second shot taken with the 800 millimeter lens actually shows you one of the problems you can potentially encounter with the 800 millimeter lens that you actually too close to the birds now because as you can see here the framing is not really working anymore because the way i tried to squeeze both of the birds in the frame but then there's not enough space on the bird anymore so i thought that was quite interesting to show the difference between 600 and 800 millimeters we zoom into the 800 millimeter shot you see similar sharpness and detail to the 600 millimeter shot and then we have another scene here taken with the 600 millimeter f11 lens with some pretty decent sharpness on the r5 and here the same shot with the 800 millimeter lens on the r6 with similar performance and then i wanted to show you one more example again between the f11 600 millimeter and f4 600 millimeter lens both on the r5 and let's just mainly focus on the background here because here now you see the difference between the 600 millimeter f4 lens at f 6.3 and the 600 millimeter lens at f11 and there you can see that the f4 600 millimeter lens basically renders all the fern leaves into one nice green color whereas the f11 lens shows a lot more structure or detail in your background and the closer the background is to the f11 lenses the harder it is for them to dissolve it fully not a problem but obviously if you have these lenses and you like smooth backgrounds it's quite important that you consider where you stand and position yourself in a way where the background is far enough away from you but even in this scenario where the background was quite close i think those firmly still look quite nice with the structure it gives the shots in the background and then we went one step further and just tried to do some handheld shots with the r6 and the 800 millimeters in the rainforest and this is one of the results right here when we zoom into that we see some really nice detail so even in a deep dark rainforest you can still take handheld shots with the 800 f 11 millimeter lens but you definitely have to bump up your highs out to pretty uncomfortable levels of all the locations i took the 800 and 600 f11 lenses they definitely performed their worst in the rainforest it wasn't easy to get sharp shots and there were a lot of out of focus or blurry shots that i couldn't really use and if we zoom into this shot for instance it's acceptable sharpness but if i flick over to my 600 millimeter lens now you see that there's quite a dramatic difference in the sharpness and the details you can obtain with the much more expensive lenses and more challenging conditions so all in all the lenses performed pretty well in the rainforest but there was a distinct difference to the more expensive prime lenses and this is where the prime lenses the f4 lenses really shined in the forest they still delivered almost every shot sharp with nice detail where it was difficult to get nice and sharp shots on the 600 and 800 millimeter lens at the same time it was still possible to get them what i want to show you now as well is how this image looks like edited so as you can see if you have the right skills when it comes to post production editing your bird images you can make the images from the f11 lenses quite similar to images taken with much more expensive gear and this is where my master class comes in because i think it can really help you to obtain the vital skills that you need to make all your images look absolutely amazing so head down to the description click the link and check out my masterclass i know it will really help you to learn step by step how to edit your images and how to make them look absolutely amazing just like those two robins after the rainforest we set out to photograph my very favorite birds gengan cockatoos at certain times of the year they come to the parklands in melbourne to feed on the hawthorne bushes i took right with me to that shoot as well so we can use different lenses on different cameras shooting the same subject so there's a lot of different images for you to look at the first image and that really impressed me this beautiful female gengan cockatoo eating hawthorne berries taken on the r6 with the 800 millimeter lens and you just just see all the stunning feather detail the beautiful red color the red marbling and then this really really nice sharpness on the eye we can even see the one little red feather she has in her face and i thought this would be another great image where i can show you what you can do if you know all the skills that i teach you in my master class so here's the before and there's the after shot just enhancing an image that's already good and making it a perfect looking image so if you want to obtain that skill make sure to check out my down there in masterclass description the next image i want to show you is of two young male gengan cockatoos what impressed me the most is how nice and smooth this background still is even though it was fairly close to the birds and when we zoom in we can also see some really really nice sharpness and details on these shots considering how kind of crazy these settings were so a really really nice image i'm very happy with and next we went out to try and photograph some smaller songbirds and here we have a golden head it's a stickler and when we zoom into that we see it delivered some pretty good sharpness overall with some nice details and beautiful colors and here we have another golden headed cysticala taken with the f11 800 millimeter lens on the r6 this time and if we zoom into that again we see quite nice sharpness and detail on the perch and i didn't only want to show you birds that were really up close to us so here's a golden head it's a stickler pretty far away taken with the 800 millimeter lens but still giving us a pretty nice overall sharpness and quite a nice image to look at with all the grass and the nice water in the background one of the areas where the 800 millimeter lens especially shined was shore birds for me i took it to the beach several times and we got some really really nice images with the lens in good light at the beach even with using the two times extender so the first image here is of a male hooded plumber on the beach in some nice light we zoom in we can see it actually delivered some nice sharpness on the bird i know these flags are pretty annoying but that's just something you would have to edit out during the editing process and here you can see that it was a little bit more of a challenge for the 800 millimeter lens to actually give us a nice and smooth background but all in all not too bad the second image do i took this one in the morning on the r6 and here you can see again when we zoom in some really nice detail and i actually like how the 800 millimeter lens gave us these kind of little out-of-focus highlights that made it look like there's a lot of nice lights around the young bird and then here is an image taken on the r5 with 800 millimeter lens in pretty harsh light but zooming into that we can see that it delivered some very very good image quality and this was actually something that i noticed normally when you would pack up because the light is getting too harsh this is when these lenses actually started to perform the best because you could have low iso and very high shutter speed and not be hindered as much by the f11 as you may have been in the rainforest because it was much harder there to find a fast enough shutter speed so what i did next was actually to put on the two times extender on the 800 millimeter lens just to see how it would go i had no expectations i thought it would be pretty bad because it's 1600 millimeters f 22 wide open so i have to use pretty high as all to get a good shutter speed but let's just zoom into this shot and see that it's actually not that bad you could actually use 1600 millimeters f 22 at times when you just want to get a distant bird much closer i must say that there were a lot of out of focus images when using the two times extender and the focus was a bit slower but at the same time you would still get a good chunk of nice and sharp images and that's something that really impressed me there's a few more images taken with the two times extender at 1600 millimeters this pair of shell ducts was actually at least 30 to 50 meters away from us if not more but at 1600 millimeters kind of in the early afternoon with not so good light this lens actually delivered a decent looking photo we couldn't go any lower that was the main problem if we had been able to go lower the background would have been much nicer i was kind of shooting down from a higher angle so at f 22 the background behind these birds it's not very dissolved but i was just impressed with this shot at 1600 millimeters f 22 in not great light delivering a pretty good image and that's well often say this lens would be dreamlands for a lot of birders that just like to walk around and just take some nice shots of fairly distant birds if you had a 1600 millimeter combo that you can use to get shots like this i know many people would be very stoked with them here's another shot of a welcome swallow again 1600 millimeters f22 and if we zoom in again on the r6 here it delivered pretty nice looking results at f22 you just have to consider as well though if you think about getting these extenders that this two times extender for instance cost basically just as much as this lens so there will be a lot of extra cost if you're considering using the extenders another area you guys always really keen to know about is bird and flight photography can you actually take good birds and fly shots at f11 and 800 millimeters or 600 millimeters and i must say it's a challenge but it's possible at the same time all in all i didn't think these lenses were the best birds and flight lenses because they needed a little bit of time to find a bird and then struggle at times to stay on the bird so i would have serious where i essentially had no sharp photo and then i had surprising series where every single photo was sharp but it was a little bit hit and miss and i definitely always had to have a bird that i could see come in from the distance focus on it and then stay on it where was very difficult was if the bird just quickly appeared in front of you and you tried to focus on it that's when the cameras missed a lot of focus but at the same time it's actually not that easy to do good flight photography at 800 millimeters because you're kind of looking through a tiny little box like this trying to find a bird in the sky so here's just a few images a full series of shots and if we zoom into this this was one of the series where the camera didn't really hit the focus as well as it could have all of these could have been nice but are not the sharpest i mean my shutter speed wasn't very high but two thousand five hundredths of a second it's not too bad either but then if we go to this shot we can actually see that there's also one really nice and sharp shot in the series and with a bit of cropping this would actually become a really nice image and here's another series of images now where the focus stayed on the bird much better you can see it jumps on and off a little bit but overall gives us a good usable amount of different flight shots in this series so even at f11 these lenses are capable of tracking birds in flight but as i said the conditions have to be pretty much perfect with high enough shutter speeds and birds that you can see coming in from a long distance and it definitely helps if they don't fly too fast at the end i want to show you a series of flight shots where i expected nothing and where the r5 and the 800 millimeter lens actually really surprised me there's this yellow face spoonbill that was standing on this submerged log in the water and then it started to take off and i was just kind of tracking it just for fun through some reads as you can see and if we zoom into these we can see that essentially all these shots were pretty sharp and definitely usable so with these lenses throughout my weeks in the field i felt like it was always a little bit hit and miss when it came to the autofocus at times it would do amazingly well with all shots being sharp and then at other times you were thinking oh yes i nailed this fly shot i had the bird in the viewfinder the whole time but then most of the images were soft when you compare these lenses to the much more expensive lenses i think that's where one of the key differences comes from is that the autofocus performance is good but not comparable to like let's say an f4 600 millimeter lens where essentially almost every shot you take is razor sharp what do you think of all the images what do you think of the sharpness and the quality let me know in the comments and also let me know your experiences with these lenses in the field if you've already used them [Music] so can you take great bird images at f11 absolutely is it more challenging than with other faster lenses or more expensive prime lenses absolutely but considering these lenses cost like a 20th potentially of a new rf f4 prime lens i think the performance overall has been really impressive and i really enjoyed using these lenses in the field and if we look at these images i think the performance overall has been good where these lenses really shine is in the field with great bright conditions where you can use low iso and fast shutter speed as expected it was a bit of a struggle to use the lenses in the rainforest but at the same time it was definitely possible to use and i got some really really nice images even under those challenging conditions however that's where the difference between an expensive lens and the 6800 f11 lenses really came out on sunny conditions and with these geese for instance the images look pretty similar but in the rainforest my f4 600 millimeter lens clearly outperformed these two other lenses but that was completely expected so you can take images with these lenses in dark conditions but it's definitely more challenging [Music] so who do i see using these lenses and am i going to get one of these myself i had a really good time with these lenses in the field and a lot of fun simply because they are so lightweight and offer us a really nice and long focal length and that long prime lens look at quite a cheap price so i think most people that want that look but don't want to fork out 10 or 20 thousand dollars for lens and also think that these big prime lenses are just impractical because they are a bit too heavy and expensive for them and they don't want the ultimate image quality and they're happy with a really good image quality i think then these lenses are definitely for you i can also see these lenses work really really well for people who physically struggle hand holding heavier gear and for them they can actually get a super super light setup with like the 600 millimeter lens and an r5 or r6 without battery grip that literally weighs nothing and you still have that really nice long focal length and that prime lens look i can also see birders or bird which is really enjoying these lenses to document birds that are a little bit further away especially if you also couple these lenses with the extenders because you can get to 1600 millimeters with the 800 millimeter lens so that's almost like binocular like so for those kind of use cases i also think these lenses could work really really well and make people really happy personally i would have been super stoked to have had one of these lenses when i started out in bird photography i started out with a 100 to 400 version one lens and it was just basically always too short for the birds that i wanted to photograph when i was just walking around if i have had that 800 millimeter lens it would have been a dream for me i would have had so much more shots with the birds just substantially larger in my frame and i know it would have made me very happy so i definitely think this is also a great set of lenses for beginners if they picked a 600 order 800 to just learn bird photography learn the camera walk around learn how to approach birds and still have nice enough focal length to get the birds actually quite decently sized in the frame so am i gonna get one of these lenses myself i'm actually still torn i really enjoyed the lenses i had fun with them but i'd say i wouldn't really trust them in a once of a lifetime opportunity with a super rare bird i would still gravitate towards my expensive 600 millimeter prime lens but at the same time i'm considering getting the 800 millimeter lens as a shorebird lens for me because it was so nice to take this lens on the beach if you've been photographing shorebirds you know you always have to go down low into the mud so if i have to take my 600 millimeter big prime lens i have to take a tripod my tri gets muddy the legs break it's not fun to have a big lens to photograph shorebirds usually when you photograph shorebirds you're using nice sunlight so this is where i think this 800 millimeter lens has a place for me and i'm really considering buying it basically exclusively as a shorebird lens because it was so much easier to get around on the beach and to just get close enough to the birds without having to carry that really really big and expensive lens so i haven't fully made up my mind yet but this would be one of the use cases where i could really see this lens working well for me do you have a 600 or 800 millimeter lens what is your main use case are you happy with the lenses let me know in the comments at the end you might ask yourself would i go for the 600 millimeter or the 800 millimeter lens personally i think the 600 millimeter lens is really amazing simply because it's so small and lightweight and has a really good price point and delivers good auto focus performance and good enough image quality to make people really happy at the same time 600 millimeters is a little bit more of an average focal length i'd say you can actually use some other zoom lenses that have a similar focal length or use another shorter prime lens with an extender so getting to 600 millimeters at this sort of price point in size is still unique but the lens overall felt a little bit less unique to me is the 800. what i found really special about the 800 millimeter lens and intrigued me is that really small package in that it's just simply so lightweight if you've used a 5.6 800 before you'll know it's just a massive massive heavy lens so to me personally if i had to pick between the two i would go for the 800 simply because it's a much more unique lens at the same time that uniqueness also means that this lens has a few more limitations mainly the minimum focusing distance of 6 meters or 20 feet and 800 millimeters is actually a lot of focal length so you will encounter moments where you're too close to the birds if you have like a big crane or swan in front of you or some timer birds like ducks at the duck pond you might have the challenge that you're always too close with 800 millimeters so if you're going for the 800 millimeter lens you will likely have to have another shorter zoom lens or maybe the 600 millimeter lens to cover some of those focal length below the 800 millimeters so what's great about the 800 millimeters is that it's so long but at the same time that's also one of the main limitations that it can be too long in certain scenarios are you already owning one of these two lenses how have you been going with them are you considering buying one please let me know in the comments i'd really like to hear your thoughts about these lenses and what your experience are so far with them i really enjoyed using them i hope you enjoyed watching this video please leave me a comment subscribe to my channel and also please give me a thumbs up and i will see you in one of my next videos very soon bye you

Channel: Jan Wegener

Views: 57,423

Keywords: bird photography, vogelfotografie, jan wegener, birding, birds, wildlife photography, nature photography, canon 5D Mark IV, 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, 600 vs 800, RF 800 F11, RF prime lens

Id: 0opsVl9C35g

Length: 34min 21sec (2061 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021