300 f/4L IS w/1.4x or 400 f/5.6L

[Nocturnus]

If you had to choose one of those two setups, which would it be? I'm in a great debate over my long lens selection (bigma is included, but i'm just talking about primes here).

[PhotoSHO]

300f4 IS with matching Canon 1.4. That is an amazingly sharp combination.

[zeroendless]

what you be shooting? bird in flight, captive (zoo) or in the wild????

[Nocturnus]

Mainly birds (ducks/etc) but prob end up shooting other wildlife also, might try for some small birds. Going out out with my friends back home on their hunts and shoot pics for em. I'm actully going to rent the 300mm, 400mm and the 1.4x so I can test them all.

[zeroendless]

Small birds would be very hard even with 400mm unless you do some serious hide out.

[johnastovall]

A bird with the 400mm f/5.6L. It's a lens which makes you work but I love it.

[Nocturnus]

Yeah.. I know mainly i'm going to be sitting inthe blind with the camera on a monopod or a tripod shooting from there. Is the 400 5.6 a lens I could put a 1.4 on and still be good?

[zeroendless]

Mostly user stucks with 100-400L or prime. See...... you never had enough for reach and 400 have the pros of light weight and sharpness. If you going len support, i say get the prime. Keep you shutter 1000 and above, you have the sharpess pal with big gun.

see last post on prime + TC
http://www.texasphotoforum.com/forum...ad.php?t=19553

a few from prime shot

[Nocturnus]

Only drawback I can think of is, everyone I know starts their hunting when at dawn (or whatever the law says, really really eairly), so light isn't on my side there. Something like that i'd prob be shooting at 200 or 400 ISO wide open. Correct?

[johnastovall]

Originally Posted by Nocturnus

Only drawback I can think of is, everyone I know starts their hunting when at dawn (or whatever the law says, really really eairly), so light isn't on my side there. Something like that i'd prob be shooting at 200 or 400 ISO wide open. Correct?

At O-Dark Thirty more like 1600 or 3200.

[Nocturnus]

1600 or 3200, no thanks on my digital rebel! Now that going out on the hunt is out of the question, I need to decide what i wanna shot. Which will still mainly be wildlife, ducks, birds, deer, etc whatever I find. So 400mm 5.6 and a 1.4x would be the way to go maybe?

[Jim Victory]

I have owned or own all of the lenses in question and it really depends on how you are going to use it. The 400 f/5.6L is the sharpest of the bunch but unless you can keep your shutter speeds up you sere going to have to use a tripod. The 300 + 1.4x TC does give you IS at 420mm but it isn't as sharp as the 400 f/5.6L or even the 100-400 @ 400mm.

I would go with the 100-400 unless you are going to use a tripod then I would use the 400 f/5.6L

[zeroendless]

If you shoot mostly dawn hour, u probably do better with an IS len. The prime are widely use with handheld on bright day doesn't mean you can't use on dimmer enviroment with support but i would go for IS len in this case. I don't shoot feather beyond ISO 800 by the way, the prime is useless for me at late hour.

Rent them both, play with it and have fun

[Nocturnus]

I messed around with the 100-400 today and didn't like the push/pull zoom on it or how the lock ring was next to the focus.

No real dawn shooting for me as I don't wake up till after 10:30am. The only reason I mentioned shooting in the morning was to get pics of my friends on their hunt. So this would be more of a late late morning to eairly evening kinda lens.

Would this be a case where the Bigma might be a better choice?

[zeroendless]

yap, 100-400L PP is a bitcih, it sucks in dirt before you knew it... I got 2 particles in there, 1by 1 in time and i have not made the Safari trip yet......LOL but Canon took care of it.

Bigma is F4-F6.3, at tele end you don't get the AF with XT body. Assume you already knew that and can live with it. Your other choice can be "OSama" 80-400.. ok, j/k. But i stick with canon for better AF performance.