Big
Bird Lens Shootout!
400mm f/5.6 VERSUS 300mm f/2.8 + 1.4x TC
Figure 1: Canon 400mm f/5.6 on
left, versus the Canon 300mm f/2.8 plus 1.4x teleconverter (420mm
f/4.0 effective) on the right. (Photo taken with Nikon D50 and
Quantaray 50mm f/2.8 macro lens).
INTRODUCTION
I am often asked which is the best telephoto lens for photographing
birds in flight. My answer is usually "it depends." By this I simply
mean that a practical comparison has to take into account which camera
manufacturer one is limiting oneself to, how much money one is willing
to spend, and how much weight one is prepared to lug around. I will
address the latter two points in some detail below.
For this Lens Shootout, I have confined my attention to Canon lenses,
since I've recently switched from Nikon to Canon for hand-held work (I
still use my trusty Nikon D50 attached to the Orion 6-inch telescope
for distance shots and for subjects at rest).
I've also limited my
attention to lens combinations of approximately 400mm, since I've found
in practice that this tends to be the most useful focal length for the
largest number of (hand-held) birding situations that one encounters in
practice.
In particular, I am increasingly finding that a ~400mm focal-length
lens tends to achieve the most ideal tradeoff between magnification and optical leverage for hand-held
applications. For medium-to-large-sized birds in flight, 400mm is
rarely too strong (i.e. such
that the bird cannot fit within the frame), provides a magnification
that generally does not yield unmanageable optical leveraging (i.e., the
degree to which hand tremors give rise to to image shake), and yet
provides enough detail for sufficiently close birds that the resulting
image is generally satisfying.
In the realm of Canon telephoto lenses, only a few combinations satisfy
these requirements. They are: (1) the 400mm f/5.6L EF USM lens, (2) the
300mm f/2.8L EF IS USM lens with 1.4x teleconverter (for an effective
420mm focal length at f/4.0), and (3) the 400mm f/4.0 DO USM lens. Of
these, I
have experience with the first two; the third is unfortunately a rather
expensive piece of equipment (about $5300US new) which has received
mixed reviews (some of
them quite poor, while others quite good). Thus, the present comparison
will be limited to the first two lenses.
The smaller of these two lenses, the 400mm f/5.6 pictured above on the
left, is popularly known as the "Toy Lens," after the renowned bird
photographer Arthur Morris, who has extolled its virtues for 35mm film
photography. Arthur Morris refers to this lens as a toy lens because of
its relatively small size in comparison to the much larger lenses which
typically serve as the workhorses of serious bird photography (e.g.,
see my recent article on the Big
Freakin Lens). To quote Art, "Despite
the introduction of the two handholdable IS lenses, the 400mm f/5.6L
lens remains the world's premier lens for photographing birds in
flight. Period." I recently took these two lenses on a brief tour of
several mid-Atlantic U.S. birding hotspots, including Chincoteague NWR
(Virginia), Cape Hatteras NWR (North Carolina), and Bombay Hook NWR
(Delaware).
The most obvious difference between these lenses is their size. The
400mm is truly a "toy lens." It is both small and lightweight. For
those with serious weight constraints (i.e., the elderly, those with
chronic back problems, or anyone suffering from any degree of
laziness), the
400mm f/5.6 is likely the only viable choice. This lens weighs just 3
lbs and features ultra-low dispersion glass, internal focusing (IF),
an ultra-silent motor (USM), and full-time manual focusing override, as
well as a
very fast auto-focus when coupled with the Canon EOS 30D camera (and
probably faster for the EOS 1D Mark II). The
300mm, on the other hand, is a beast. It weighs about 6 lbs, features
Image Stabilization (IS), internal focusing, ultra-silent motor, and
full-time manual focusing override. Auto-focusing on the 400mm f/5.6
does appear
to be slightly faster.
RESULTS
Below is a comparison of images taken only about an hour apart, at the
same location (Jordan Lake, NC) and from roughly the same angle.
Aperture-priority mode and evaluative metering were used throughout,
with apertures set wide open. The
image on the left is of an osprey and was taken with the 300mm f/2.8
lens with an attached Canon EF 2.0x Extender II, for an effective focal
length of 420mm at f/4.0. The image on the right is of a gull, and was
taken with the "toy lens" -- the 400mm f/5.6. Unfortunately, an osprey
at the same distance was not available during the period when I had the
toy lens attached to the Canon 30D, but the gull shown in the figure
filled roughly the same proportion of the frame and should serve as a
reasonably comparable subject to the osprey, due to similar image sizes
and distances.
Figure 2 (click to zoom): left:
osprey photographed with Canon's 300mm f/2.8 lens plus 1.4x
teleconverter
and
Canon 30D digital SLR camera. right: gull photographed with
Canon's 400mm f/5.6 lens mounted on the 30D.
An ideal comparison would of course have involved simultaneous capture
of images from the same subject by two operators of identical cameras.
Unfortunately, my evil twin was not available with his evil twin Canon
30D camera
for this comparison, so we shall have to make do with roughly similar
subjects at roughly similar distances and times. It should be noted
that the gull pictured above was likely of smaller
body size than the osprey; the criterion of "similar size" will thus be
taken to apply to the resulting image size rather than that of the
actual subjects.
From the above pair of images I have difficulty discerning the sharper
of the two, though the left image may be slightly brighter than the
right, based on the background color. A second pair of stills from the
same subjects follows:
Figure 3 (click to zoom): left: osprey photographed with
Canon's 300mm f/2.8 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter and
Canon 30D digital SLR camera. right: gull photographed with
Canon's 400mm f/5.6 lens mounted on the 30D.
From these images it is again difficult to tell which may be the
sharper of the two. The reader should keep in mind that the left image
was taken with a far heavier and significantly more unweildy piece of
equipment than the right. The 300mm f/2.8 lens is a large piece of
equipment, which many bird enthusiasts will find too big for practical
use. For a physically robust male in the prime of life, this 6 lb
device can certainly be mastered with very modest effort, and may
indeed earn the love and adoration of the energetic holder with
repeated use. For those less physically endowed, however, the 300mm
f/2.8 may
prove a beast beyond taming.
A comparative study of bird wings can be found below:
Figure
4 (click to
zoom):
left: osprey wing photographed with Canon's 300mm f/2.8 lens plus 1.4x
teleconverter and
Canon 30D digital SLR camera. right: gull wing photographed with
Canon's 400mm f/5.6 lens mounted on the 30D.
I am inclined to find the image of the gull wing to be sharper than
that of the osprey. It should of course be noted that gull wings may
indeed be "sharper" in some sense than osprey wings, in that their
intrinsic design may conceivably be harsher at the edges in terms of
both feather structure and overall wing morphology; they are certainly
lighter in color and to my eye seem somewhat less "fluffy" and more
streamlined than those of ospreys.
Figure 5 (click to zoom): left: osprey photographed with
Canon's 300mm f/2.8 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter and
Canon 30D digital SLR camera. right: gull photographed with Canon's
400mm f/5.6 lens mounted on the 30D.
The image above again provides a difficult study in terms of
comparative image sharpness. The image of the gull is endowed with much
contrast, due largely to the lighting configuration. It should be noted
that the improper yellow hue of the image (considering that gulls are
generally white) may be due in larger part to the lower position of the
sun than to any chromatic infidelity of the lens. Depth-of-field is
also expected to differ between these lenses at their widest apertures
(Wikipedia has a nice
article describing how f-number and focal length determine the
depth of field). Again, the
experimental situation did not allow for comparison of equivalent
subjects at identical times, though the latter were reckoned to be no
more than approximately one hour apart.
Figure 6 (click to zoom): left: great blue heron
photographed with Canon's 300mm f/2.8 lens plus 1.4x teleconverter and
Canon 30D digital SLR camera. right: great blue heron photographed with
Canon's 400mm f/5.6 lens mounted on the 30D.
The final figure, that of a pair of Great Blue Herons, is shown above.
As can be seen from the figure, the image taken with the
smaller-aperture lens (the 500mm f/5.6), on right, is noticeably
darker. Both images were taken well before dusk, so that direct
sunlight was
available in both cases. It must be conceded that the right image does
appear to be sharper than the left, despite the darker rendering.
Nevertheless, the left image will be found by many viewers to be the
more pleasing of the two, due to the larger range of colors and
features which are readily visible in the image.
It should be noted that none of the images in this article were in any
way digitally processed after their transfer to the computer (see the
APPENDIX below for several post-processed images). Camera
settings were identical for all shots (I keep the EOS's sharpness
setting at 6 on a scale of 1 to 7). All images were full-frame, meaning
that no zooming (either in or out) was applied.
CONCLUSIONS
Objectively evaluating alternative pieces of equipment can be
especially difficult when the experimental conditions cannot (due to
practical constraints) be controlled so as to render the equipment the
only varying factor. Based on the images above, the previous comments
by noted photographers regarding the sharpness of the 400mm f/5.6, and
the fact that the latter lens has far fewer elements (7) than the 300mm
f/2.8 + 1.4x TC (22 elements total), I am inclined to believe quite
strongly that the 400mm
f/5.6
is very probably the sharper of the two when used in ideal conditions
(i.e.,
bright sunlight, stationary subjects, and tripod-mounted). For
hand-held
applications in suboptimal conditions, I suspect that
the larger lens will prove more useful as a general-purpose birding
tool. The larger aperture and image stabilization feature of the larger
lens should translate into fewer images that must be discarded due to
camera shake. For those who can afford to keep (and carry) both lenses,
a good strategy might be to use the smaller lens in bright sunlight and
the larger at all other times. Although all of the images captured
through the 300mm f/2.8 lens utilized a 1.4x teleconverter, I have also
obtained excellent results with the 2x TC (see the APPENDIX, below),
for an effective focal
length of 600mm at f/5.6. The 400mm f/5.6 will unfortunately not have a
functional autofocus for most camera bodies when utilizing either
teleconverter. Thus, overall considerations seem to favor the 300mm
f/2.8 lens for general birding.
APPENDIX A : LENS CHARACTERISTICS
|
400mm
f/5.6
|
300mm
f/2.8 + 1.4x TC
|
effective
focal length
|
400mm
|
420mm
|
weight
|
3 lbs
|
6 lbs
|
price
|
$1100
|
$4200
|
number
of lens elements
|
7
|
17+5=22
|
angle
of view
|
6° 10'
|
8° 15'*
|
magnification
|
8.3x
|
10.78x
|
close
focus
|
11.5 feet
|
8.2 feet
|
dimensions
|
10.1" x 3.5"
|
12.8" x 5.0"
|
autofocus
|
yes
|
yes
|
image
stabilization
|
no
|
yes
|
aperture
|
f/5.6
|
f/4
|
glass
|
Super-UD, UD
|
fluorite, UD
|
tripod
collar
|
detachable
|
detachable
|
hood
|
non-detachable
|
detachable
|
* Not accounting for the effects of the TC, if any.
APPENDIX B : ADDITIONAL PHOTOS
Additional images are shown below. Unlike the previous images, some of
those below have been zoomed and/or had a sharpening filter applied on
the computer. The left images are from the 300mm f/2.8 with either a
1.4x or 2x TC, and the right images are from the 400mm f/5.6.
