Wildlife Photography » Canon EF 400mm f/2.8

Canon EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM

Still sharp at big distance and plenty of arboreal interference, a big crop - Paul Goldstein Scroll down to see larger versions of each image

What a lightweight

Award winning wildlife photographer Paul Goldstein reviews the new Canon 400 2.8 IS Mark 2 Telephoto

For sale - 11 year old 500mm f4 Mk 1 IS - Quite careful owner, lens has real character, but room for some improvements .....

"Paul there's an industrial size vanity case in your office, you big girl" was the colleague's announcement that it had arrived. I immediately opened the Joan Collins-style valise and examined the 400 in its swaddling; and then something rather strange happened - Suddenly I was in space. The flexing of bi and triceps to lift the beast from its bedding was not required, I was going to handhold this puppy .... Ridiculous.

Fast forward to terminal 4 a few days later and half the airline and security staff are giving it the rubber glove treatment. With its sinister (no doubt the correct term is ergonomic) new lines, to them it was clearly intended to project rockets and other arbitrary ordnance a great distance. They were green, I was smug; there is something visceral about this stinger missile.

Early morning tricky light. The lion was hunting the lens not. Paul Goldstein

Looks are not everything
To our dumbed-down society today, looks are everything; not so with cameras and lenses, they have to perform. It now sat snugly in my padded lens carrier but was yearning for a partner - a proper one. It would have been improper attaching a basic model, like a provisional driver in a Ferrari, but married to the Canon 1Dmk4 (and no doubt the new DX - still not arrived by the way fellas?) - you have lifelong wedlock.

Extender
For a year I have not used an extender, feeling they lose too much quality. The 500 + 1D Mk.4 combo has been fine using cropping to save the job of extenders. However Canon were silly enough to throw in the new Mark 3 x 1.4 so my faith has been restored. I tried this conjunction on a lilac roller in Kenya, miles away, in the rain, hand held: Absurd result. Obviously a fluke. So then I tried it hand held again, slow shutter speed, murky light,  on a chasing cheetah: Spot on, just ridiculous, particularly as the cheetah was behind a bush, the lens picked up the animal somehow, vaguely Orwellian actually.

Cropped 300% but still sharp in the rain. Paul Goldstein.

The fancy new settings are dropped into the fuselage better so they cannot be flipped off. The stabiliser standby option is also very nifty. I am reliably informed that the Spectra coatings and nine blade circular iris makes a difference too whatever the hell that means but these are clever brush strokes. There was little wrong and is little wrong with the Mark1, but let's talk of weighty matters.

I used the Mark1 once: in the same manner that your best school teacher was the one that taught you lots but scared the bejeesus out of you - so was my relationship with the Mark 1. I knew it was good but by the time I had employed the forklift to raise it, I wasn't much good for anything. Results were superb but labour intensive. Canon have taken three and a half bags of Tate 'n Lyle's finest off the weight. Somehow almost two kilos have gone thanks to the magnesium alloy build and titanium components (impressed eh? They told me that). The bruiserweight has become a bantam. Completely stupid.

I spent a week being suspicious then a week just revelling in its ability. I then spent a week thinking up ruses and wheezes to keep it from Canon.

Flawless
Up close on 2.8 with portraits, it is off the scale. Hand held it measures up and more. With or without extender the performance is flawless. F8, F16 or F22 it is great but that is like getting Usain Bolt to compete in the father's race at school sportsday. There are always tiresome, no doubt camouflaged-up geeks and harbingers who are forever spouting 'ooh it's better at 7.1 etc' - that is bollocks. A meterosexual body-shave approach to this wholly heterosexual bit of glass should be illegal. Use it wide open as it was intended and calibrated for - watch the background vapourise, watch your subjects appear in terrifyingly sharp focus.

Too easy for this lens - Paul Goldstein.

They don't give it away
This is not a cheap lens. Is it worthwhile, churlish to say, as it will cost the price of a decent second hand saloon. Is it the best lens I have ever used? Yes. It is not something to be used gently, a robust approach is more rewarding. So I am sorry, Canon, about the battle scars it received; I imagine you won't be wanting it back!

As discussed it can work brilliantly with an extender but frankly is so good it barely needs it - as long as the image is sharp you can zoom, and zoom, and zoom ....

Rude to say 'I want'
I was always told it was rude to say 'I want', so Canon .... please may I have ..... failing that the new 200-400 that has a waiting list of about 10,000.

Birders, sports photographers, wildlife enthusiasts, beware of this, it will seduce you into its comprehensively advanced boudoir and then ravish you with its intoxicating performance, avoid at all costs - or live a bit and surrender to one hell of a bit of kit.

Paul Goldstein

Canon have informed me they still have not received the lens back. I told them I have used the same delivery company for years, I cannot understand this ......

Technical blurb - From Canon - The boring stuff

Hand held awful light slow pan 

Sharp on the head - where it should be

How did it know to focus on cheetah's head?

 Too easy for this lens

 The lion was hunting - The lens wasn't

 Still sharp at big distance, even with plenty of arboreal interference. A big crop.

The same photo with no cropping