7d with 70-200 f4L

[davidfarquhar]

<p>Hi,<br>

I currently have a 400D with a 70-300IS and a few other lenses. I'm planning to upgrade to a 7D next year, and am also thinking about moving from the 70-300IS over to the similarly priced 70-200 f4L. I'm wondering if I will miss the extra reach of my current lens, or the IS. </p>

<p>My current thinking is I won't because<br>

a) If I shoot the 70-200 on a 7D I could crop it to give the same field of view as I would have had with the 300 on the 400D, and because of the better quality lens / body the resulting picture will be as good as what I would have had in the past, and<br>

b) The 70-300 is 1/2 - 1 stops slower than the 70-200, probably around 2 stops slower to get reasonable image quality, and the 7D is at least 1 stop faster than the 400D (i.e. I can double the ISO and get similar or better image quality), thats 3 stops in total which is the advantage that the IS would have given me</p>

<p>Combine that with the ability to take sharp sports images at f4 (with better shutter speeds), then it makes sense to change lenses as well<br>

Does that logic sound OK? Thanks</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Just pick up a 1.4 TC too, and you'll have almost the same reach at the same aperture. The image quality will stand up.</p>

[dmanthree]

<p>Logic is good; go for the 70-200 L and you won't regret it. The reach advantage of the 300 isn't as great as you'd think. Go for image quality!</p>

[massimo_foti]

<p>I have a 7D and a 70-300IS myself. When it came to sports what I dislike is the slow AF on the 70-300. I plan to get a 70-200 f/4 sooner or later, but I think the IS is very valuable on such long zooms, so I'll save the extra money for it.</p>

[davidfarquhar]

<p>Thanks. I'd thought of the 1.4 TC as well, but that might be a couple of years away. Still I think it will be a fun couple of years :)</p>

[ilya_e]

<p>Or you can wait a few months and get the new 70-300mm f/4-5.6 L lens.</p>

[massimo_foti]

<p>70-300mm vs 70-200 + extender is going to be a very popular topic within just a few months :-)</p>

[paddler4]

<p>I one of the 70-200's and a 1.4x teleconverter, and they make a good combination. However, I would be really reluctant to give up IS at that length, if you intend to hand-hold the camera. By the conventional rule of thumb, a 200 mm lens on a 1.6 crop requires a minimum shutter speed of 1/320.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>a) If I shoot the 70-200 on a 7D I could crop it to give the same field of view as I would have had with the 300 on the 400D, and because of the better quality lens / body the resulting picture will be as good as what I would have had in the past,</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This confuses me. The crop factor and FOV are identical for the two cameras. With the 7D, you can crop more and have the same number of pixels, but you would still have a smaller FOV.</p>

[ilya_e]

<blockquote>

<p>70-300mm vs 70-200 + extender is going to be a very popular topic within just a few months :-)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Oh yeah, I can't wait to hear about 2x Mark III tc. That would pair up perfectly with my 70-200 f/4 IS. I've been using 1.4 Mark II but sometimes it wasn't enough and having 400mm reach would be just perfect. With that new 70-300L glass and 2x III you can have 600mm reach on FF and 960mm on a crop. Crazy</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>If I had the EF 70-300 IS already, which is by no means a 'bad' lens in terms of IQ, I'd certainly keep hold of it for now and see what develops. I'd miss the extra reach myself.<br>

If you were going for the f/2.8, the teleconverter would make more sense, and it's not cheap either.</p>

<p>As noted, the 7D is an APS-C camera like your 400D. although it has more 'pixies'. Are you planning to buy a <strong>5</strong>D?</p>

 

[davidfarquhar]

<p>Thanks for your responses. To explain what I meant by the first point consider this example (my use of some terminlogy might have been wrong)<br>

- Photo A - taken with 400D and 70-300 @ 300mm. This will generate a 10mp image, size 3888 x 2592<br>

- Photo B - taken with 7D and 70-200 @ 200mm. This will generate an 18mp image, size 5184 x 3456, but this image will show more of the subject because of the smaller zoom. If I crop this image to 2/3 size it will be 3456 x 2304 (8mp approx). This will now have the same view of the subject as Photo A</p>

<p>My question - is Photo B likely to be better than (or at least as good as) Photo A because its taken with a better lens (f4L rather than the slightly weaker 70-300), and the 7D pixies are 3 years newer and better behaved than those in the 400D?</p>

<p>I know I'll gain in many areas if I move up to 7D (see below for some), and also gain in the 70-200 range by using an f4L lens (IQ / shutter speed). So my query is will I still be better off (or no worse off) at focal lengths over 200. </p>

<p>One of my main reasons for considering the change is the 70-300 is soft up to f8 (have tested mine to show this), and I'm thinking about shooting more sports / action, especially over winter where the light is often poor in the UK. So the ability to shoot at f4 and gain shutter speed would be most welcome. As always in photography its about compromises and working out which is best. I doubt I can afford a 70-300 L lens, or the IS version of the 70-200 f4. Hence looking at the 70-200 f4L</p>

<p>7d is being considered over the 400D for improvement in high ISO, AF speeds & burst speed. And that rear dial, oh how I miss the rear dial I had many years ago on my EOS 5. Whilst 5D would give me the first point, I also want some of the features of the 7D that it doesn't have, and my budget is more suited to the 7D</p>

[mike_hitchen]

<p>I have the 30D and 70-300 IS and am in the same sort of dilemma, but mine is more about the AF performance. A couple of years ago I was ready to go for the 70-200f4L IS because of faster AF, but the high praise of the AF on the 7D makes me wonder which would be faster AF: 7D+70-300 IS, or 30D + 70-200 f4L IS. I am tempted more by the first option.</p>

[massimo_foti]

<p>Mike, I used the 70-300 IS on 450D, then moved to 7D. No matter the camera body, AF is still slow on that lens. 7D's AF is great, but it will not speed up the 70-300 IS. Hope it will help.</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>David, I strongly suspect the IQ of a cropped image from a 70-200/4 at 200mm would not be as sharp as an uncropped image from a 70-300 at 300mm. An uncropped image from a 70-200 with TC would probably have equivalent quality -- maybe just a bit sharper. However, Dan M makes a good point. You'd be shooting at f/5.6 max without IS at 280mm on a crop body -- in dim UK light, even. Some of this difficulty goes away if you can mount the camera on a tripod. Also some of the problem goes away if you shoot at higher shutter speeds (which you would use anyway for sports), but that's going to force you into rather high ISO.</p>

<p>I don't know what the best solution is for you. You could get a fast telephoto prime, but that will cost you a kidney. Perhaps the cheapest fast lens is actually more light. Check out the strobist blog for methods of photographing sporting events under dim light. (You'd be surprised what small flashes and slaves can do for you.) Also google the "better beamer," which can beam your flash quite a bit more efficiently at the action. Check out this page on my website for ways you can modify the infinitely affordable and very powerful Vivitar 285hv for cheap light: <a href="http://www.graphic-fusion.com/vivitar285mods.htm">http://www.graphic-fusion.com/vivitar285mods.htm</a></p>

<p>In the end, you might need to ask yourself how important extreme telephoto photography is to you. I thought hard about it myself and decided that the photos of mine that require critical sharpness are almost entirely shot below 200mm anyway, so I opted for the 70-200/4L. (The 70-300IS L would have been very interesting when I was making this decision.) I also have an older 75-300IS that will give me that extra reach at lower quality if I want to "play" at that focal length. Sometimes I even slap on the 1.4X TC (mine being a Kenko) to shoot squirrels and birds. However, I don't really care if those photos come out well. Anyway, after a lot of soul searching, I decided there wasn't anything beyond 200mm that I really cared so much about photographing that I was willing to invest the $$$ to do it right. I therefore invested in the image quality up to 200mm and relegated everything beyond that mark to idle play.</p>

[obi-wan-yj]

<p>Massimo, that's exactly what I did NOT want to hear. I have a 400D + 70-300IS, and have spent far too much time cursing its inability to obtain focus in darker environments. I want to upgrade to a 7D for several reasons, and was hoping that the better AF on the 7D would improve the situation with my 70-300. In your experience, has the 7D improved the AF response with your other lenses?</p>

[massimo_foti]

<p>Ben, in my case I usually start cursing in different scenarios, the occasional airshow or pro hockey match. Mostly a matter of fast moving subjects than dark environments. I shoot one of these only once in a while, so I keep post-poning an upgrade for the telephoto range.<br />I can tell for sure 7D's AF hans't improved the AF response on 70-300. As my other lenses, I didn't notice any difference, but I had no troubles with the 450D either, so I never payed attention to it. Just in case I am talking about Tokina 11-16, Tokina 16-50 and Canon 24-105. Again,hope it will help.</p>

[obi-wan-yj]

<p>Massimo, that's exactly what I did NOT want to hear. I have a 400D + 70-300IS, and have spent far too much time cursing its inability to obtain focus in darker environments. I want to upgrade to a 7D for several reasons, and was hoping that the better AF on the 7D would improve the situation with my 70-300. In your experience, has the 7D improved the AF response with your other lenses?</p>

[don_bryant2]

<p>You may take this for what it's worth but I think variable aperture zooms are generally a waste of money, especially the f/4-f5.6 variety since they autofocus very poorly under dim lighting. If you need a 300 mm lens, either purchase or rent an f/2.8 or f/4. If money is a limiting factor look around for one of the older Tamron f/2.8 SP 300mm MF lens. Tack sharp wide open and not to expensive for a copy in very good condition, $500 - $800 these days, and if you can locate a matching 2x converter you have a very capable 600mm f/5.6.</p>

[dcstep]

<p>I own the 7D and the 5D MkII and neither has trouble focusing my 70-200mm f/4L IS, with and without the 1.4x TC-II. The image below was taken in the dark at ISO 6400 on the 5D MkII (if anything, the 7D has slightly faster AF, but its high-ISO performance isn't quite as good):</p>

<p><a title="Very handsome bull elk by dcstep, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/5052103585_02e4b29fae_z.jpg" alt="Very handsome bull elk" width="640" height="427" /></a></p>

[obi-wan-yj]

<p>I know it's been a while, but I wanted to post a followup to this thread now that I've got my new 7D.</p>

<p>Last weekend, I took a couple hundred shots at my son's 5th-grade YMCA basketball game. They play in dark, middle-school gyms, which have always been a challenge for my older equipment. This time, I shot it with my new Canon 7D and my old Canon 70-300IS. I set the lens wide open (f/4-5.6), aperture priority, and alternated between ISO 6400 and 12800. AF was set to AI-SERVO with all 19 focus points.</p>

<p>In short, I was amazed at how quickly and accurately the 7D was able to focus in that dark cave, even at 250mm f/5.6. Not once did it go crazy and try to hunt through the entire focus range like my 400D frequently did with that same lens.</p>

<p>As for the high ISO performance, I feel that 6400 would be very usable for moderate size prints (these aren't exactly wedding photos), and even 12800 would be very usable for newsprint if that was your destination. The difference in noise between the two was somewhat shocking to me, but I opted for motion-stopping shutter speeds more often than noise-free, motion-blurred subjects. 1/250s wasn't quite adequate for most action shots, but that's where ISO 6400 generally put me.</p>

<p>Oh, and the 8 frames per second came in handy on more than one occasion. :-)</p>

<p>My composition and timing for sports shooting still needs a lot of practice, but if you're curious about image quality, you can check out the day's shots at:<br>

http://photos.jedi.com/2010/20101128/</p>

 

[dcstep]

<p>Ben, run the RAW files through DxO Optics Pro 6.5 using their "High-ISO Noise Reduction" preset (it's availalbe for free trial at DxO.com). You'll be amazed at the noise reduction. Your shots are pretty full of it, but quite viewable, particularly by mom and grandparents, etc.</p>

<p>My elk shot above was processed with the prior version of Optics Pro. I've since taken a number of night shots in New Orleans and processed them in vs. 6.5 and was blown away by the results.<br>

Here's an example:</p>

<p><a title="Anyone for absinthe? by dcstep, on Flickr" href=" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4083/5190792043_85e2c6f940.jpg" alt="Anyone for absinthe?" width="333" height="500" /></a></p>

<p>To see the Original size file go here:<br>

<a href="

<p>Look at the beads on the lamppost and the black surrounding the lamppost.</p>