Addendum - new vs. old Canon 100-400mm
In my previous post on this lens, I used a 1.4x teleconverter on both lenses. I got a request to repeat the test without the teleconverters, so here are the results.
These are all shot at ISO 400, f/5.6 at 400mm, 1/1600s, autofocus with the center point, RAW. It is later in the day, and it looks like light clouds and shadows moving in the breeze are slightly changing the lighting between the shots, so caveat emptor. First the whole image with the old lens:
Next, the new lens:
Here are the locations of the crops I took:
First, the center crop. The old lens:
The new lens - again, sharper even in the center (although the moving shadows from the windy day make it a little harder to tell):
The left edge crop, the old lens:
The new lens - significantly sharper:
And now, the corner crop, the old lens:
And the new lens. It is no contest:
The chromatic aberration is not as bad with the old lens without the teleconverter - but the sharpness is still much worse than the new lens. And autofocus is slower, and the IS is not as capable, and...
Edit - one last thing. Reading the MTF charts, it seems as if the new lens with a teleconverter should be better than the old lens without a teleconverter. So, here is a direct comparison - I adjusted the white balance and brightness a bit to try to make the images match a bit better, but otherwise did not modify the images. I resized the image from the new lens with a 1.4x teleconverter by 1/1.4 and took a crop from the lower left corner of that:
Here is the old lens, at 400mm f/5.6:
And here is the new lens, at 560mm f/8.0 with the 1.4x teleconverter, scaled as mentioned by 1/1.4 or 71.43% to match the pixel scale (without using a sharpening downsample filter):
I'm sold.
These are all shot at ISO 400, f/5.6 at 400mm, 1/1600s, autofocus with the center point, RAW. It is later in the day, and it looks like light clouds and shadows moving in the breeze are slightly changing the lighting between the shots, so caveat emptor. First the whole image with the old lens:
Next, the new lens:
Here are the locations of the crops I took:
First, the center crop. The old lens:
The new lens - again, sharper even in the center (although the moving shadows from the windy day make it a little harder to tell):
The left edge crop, the old lens:
The new lens - significantly sharper:
And now, the corner crop, the old lens:
And the new lens. It is no contest:
The chromatic aberration is not as bad with the old lens without the teleconverter - but the sharpness is still much worse than the new lens. And autofocus is slower, and the IS is not as capable, and...
Edit - one last thing. Reading the MTF charts, it seems as if the new lens with a teleconverter should be better than the old lens without a teleconverter. So, here is a direct comparison - I adjusted the white balance and brightness a bit to try to make the images match a bit better, but otherwise did not modify the images. I resized the image from the new lens with a 1.4x teleconverter by 1/1.4 and took a crop from the lower left corner of that:
Here is the old lens, at 400mm f/5.6:
And here is the new lens, at 560mm f/8.0 with the 1.4x teleconverter, scaled as mentioned by 1/1.4 or 71.43% to match the pixel scale (without using a sharpening downsample filter):
I'm sold.
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