Here is the Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM

Jethro

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Readers here might be interested in this thread, where a couple of Forum regulars are posting the results of their first experiences with the lens (ie over the last few days). Those 1st impressions seem very good, taking into account the size and price:

Canon RF 100-400mm f/5.6-8 IS USM: First Impressions
 
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Dragon

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The tests are done with lenses in sharp focus, so what you're seeing is softness.

I tried comparing it to the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens which gives an equivalent of 400mm f/9 and it looks a bit sharper then the APSC lens, see here

Guessing it's the full frame RF version of that popular APSC lens, with a bit more brightness f/8 vs f/9, otherwise pretty similar, you're not really getting much more optically, but way overpriced at double the price! :(
Hard to see that it is really any sharper than the the 55-250 when you take sampling density into account. Equivalent FF lenses will always be more expensive simply because they have bigger glass elements. One of the benefits I have found with nearly all the RF lenses is that focus is very fast and noticeably more accurately than the earlier lenses. That is important, because an OOF shot with a sharp lens is no better (and possibly worse) that an in focus shot with a slightly soft lens.
 
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dcm

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Have a look at the review from Birdshooter7 as well, his reviews always have great pictures to go with them, this one is no differerent.
A good read. A serious bird photographer that shoots both R5 and R6, with the EF 500 f/4, EF 1.4x, and R6 as his primary setup. He sounds pleased with the RF 800 and RF 100-400. Each has body/lens has their use.
 
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AlanF

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Performance of the Canon RF 100-400mm F5.6-8 IS USM Lens looks quite disappointing when compared to the older EF mount Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM C Lens.

Price is fairly similar, Sigma lens quality much higher, and does not use molded plastic aspherical lens element like the Canon lens.

The website www.the-digital-picture.com has added the Rf 100-400mm lens to its lens image comparison tool, and the Sigma is clearly sharper wide open at f/6.3 than the RF Canon lens wide open at f/8, see comparison here.

It would be great to see someone do side by side image comparisons of real world subject matter such as birds, to see how these differences play out in the field.
The tests are done with lenses in sharp focus, so what you're seeing is softness.

I tried comparing it to the Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS STM lens which gives an equivalent of 400mm f/9 and it looks a bit sharper then the APSC lens, see here

Guessing it's the full frame RF version of that popular APSC lens, with a bit more brightness f/8 vs f/9, otherwise pretty similar, you're not really getting much more optically, but way overpriced at double the price! :(
TDP is one of the very best sites on the web. But, its comparison charts are all over the place. Here is one of my favourite examples: it has the 100-400mm II sharper than the 400mm DO II on the 5DSR, which goes against every site that measures these quantitatively and Canon's own MTFs, and my direct experience with 3 copies of the zoom and 2 of the prime https://www.the-digital-picture.com...LensComp=962&CameraComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0
Put the same lenses on the 7DII, and the prime miraculously becomes sharper than the zoom https://www.the-digital-picture.com...meraComp=963&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0
So, its charts are internally inconsistent.
Just do not draw conclusions from these sites that look at one copy of the lens. The only site that is close to totally reliable is lensrentals which analyses several copies of lenses on an optical bench. My own findings are that the copy I have just got of RF 100-400mm is very close to the EF 100-400mm II, which is why I am keeping it and not returning under the sellers 30 day return policy.
(Opticallimits and lenstip are on the whole pretty reliable).
 
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Note that the 55-250 actually maxes out at about 220mm so it is way short of the stated 250.
That seems unlikely. Sure, manufacturers round the numbers in their favor, so maybe the optical formula is something like 244mm f/5.9 at the long end. But not 220mm. However, keep in mind that focal length is specified with the lens focused at infinity. If a lens exhibits focus breathing (most do), the focal length will be shorter with a subject closer than infinity, and the reduction in focal length is proportional to decreasing subject distance. Cheaper lens designs tend to have more focus breathing. But for example, the EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS is 100mm at infinity, but only ~67mm when focused at 1:1.
 
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Dragon

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That seems unlikely. Sure, manufacturers round the numbers in their favor, so maybe the optical formula is something like 244mm f/5.9 at the long end. But not 220mm. However, keep in mind that focal length is specified with the lens focused at infinity. If a lens exhibits focus breathing (most do), the focal length will be shorter with a subject closer than infinity, and the reduction in focal length is proportional to decreasing subject distance. Cheaper lens designs tend to have more focus breathing. But for example, the EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS is 100mm at infinity, but only ~67mm when focused at 1:1.
On retesting, you are correct. I just compared it on a 90D to the EF 100-400 on the R5 and the framing matches closely. Not sure what happened in the previous test I did, but it was clearly in error.
 
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TDP is one of the very best sites on the web. But, its comparison charts are all over the place. Here is one of my favourite examples: it has the 100-400mm II sharper than the 400mm DO II on the 5DSR, which goes against every site that measures these quantitatively and Canon's own MTFs, and my direct experience with 3 copies of the zoom and 2 of the prime https://www.the-digital-picture.com...LensComp=962&CameraComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0
Put the same lenses on the 7DII, and the prime miraculously becomes sharper than the zoom https://www.the-digital-picture.com...meraComp=963&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=0
So, its charts are internally inconsistent.
Just do not draw conclusions from these sites that look at one copy of the lens. The only site that is close to totally reliable is lensrentals which analyses several copies of lenses on an optical bench. My own findings are that the copy I have just got of RF 100-400mm is very close to the EF 100-400mm II, which is why I am keeping it and not returning under the sellers 30 day return policy.
(Opticallimits and lenstip are on the whole pretty reliable).
I looked a the charts on TDP as well, and I really would be surprised if the lens is as bad as it shows there. I trust your experience far more!

And this is a great example of why people need to try things for themselves. Earlier in the thread, based on these charts, it is suggested that the Sigma is a much better choice. And perhaps it is. But I've had 2 copies of the Sigma lens and they were both very soft at 400mm. Just to be sure that my impressions weere correct, I bought a used EF 70-300 II (non-L). That lens was considerably sharper at 300mm cropped to the same size as the Sigma at 400mm. But again, that's just one persons experience. There's a lot of variation with lenses.
 
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just got mine , and used it on a couple days of shooting and the weight and balance is great. Haven't got to edit any files yet but compared to my old ef 70300mm a great step up. and so much better not having to swap adaptors. Using on the RP which focus is pretty average was trying to track some birds and no good but I'm thinking was more the rp limitations then the lens the lens was great in the depth it gave me thru compression effect way better then the old EF variant so a great budget lens and the weight is fantastic in my travel kit . will be getting R6 soon so will have more on the focus side of things soon ill atatch a couple raw files for examples when i get home but so far very happy .
 
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just got mine , and used it on a couple days of shooting and the weight and balance is great. Haven't got to edit any files yet but compared to my old ef 70300mm a great step up. and so much better not having to swap adaptors. Using on the RP which focus is pretty average was trying to track some birds and no good but I'm thinking was more the rp limitations then the lens the lens was great in the depth it gave me thru compression effect way better then the old EF variant so a great budget lens and the weight is fantastic in my travel kit . will be getting R6 soon so will have more on the focus side of things soon ill atatch a couple raw files for examples when i get home but so far very happy .
Which version of the 70-300 do you have? Is it the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II?
 
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AlanF

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just got mine , and used it on a couple days of shooting and the weight and balance is great. Haven't got to edit any files yet but compared to my old ef 70300mm a great step up. and so much better not having to swap adaptors. Using on the RP which focus is pretty average was trying to track some birds and no good but I'm thinking was more the rp limitations then the lens the lens was great in the depth it gave me thru compression effect way better then the old EF variant so a great budget lens and the weight is fantastic in my travel kit . will be getting R6 soon so will have more on the focus side of things soon ill atatch a couple raw files for examples when i get home but so far very happy .
The AF is great on the R5. The reviews of the RF100-500mm agree that its AF on the R and RP is below par but great on the R5 and R6, so looks the same with the RF 100-440mm.
 
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Heres some sample raw shots i did last week on break doing a shoot , again camera RP with the RF 100-400mm lens . hope this helps happy to answer any questions if you like ! Sorry i had to reduce the quality and size right down to be able to upload them. hopefully might be some value their.
 

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LogicExtremist

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Heres some sample raw shots i did last week on break doing a shoot , again camera RP with the RF 100-400mm lens . hope this helps happy to answer any questions if you like ! Sorry i had to reduce the quality and size right down to be able to upload them. hopefully might be some value their.
Is there anywhere else you can upload them and link from there? At that size of 35-45 KB, these images are nowhere near instagram quality, they're compressed so much it's hard to tell anything from them unfortunately! :(

Would love to see how they really look!
 
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Is there anywhere else you can upload them and link from there? At that size of 35-45 KB, these images are nowhere near instagram quality, they're compressed so much it's hard to tell anything from them unfortunately! :(

Would love to see how they really look!
yeah i should be able to post them up on a we transfer link maybe that might work ?
try this https://wetransfer.com/downloads/307f72a37a90602409fc24b42bbbf36320211112144007/939c1420bd46511938755fe0c7c05ce320211112144042/2fc4a3
 
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LogicExtremist

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yeah i should be able to post them up on a we transfer link maybe that might work ?
try this https://wetransfer.com/downloads/30...bd46511938755fe0c7c05ce320211112144042/2fc4a3
Thanks for that, much appreciated! :)

I downloaded the images, and I noticed they're not RAW but JPEG images. Did you mean earliuer that these are the RAW images that you took and then processed to create the jpegs? Just so I know what I'm looking at, that's all.

I ran the jpegs of the lighthouse and seagull through DxO 5 and managed to get some more detail from the images. The end results looked pretty good, even zoomed in to 100%.

I'm curious, were these photos taken handheld?

Also, for some reason there wasn't any ISO information on the images, so it's hard to guess what the lighting was like. I had trouble recovering the shadows any further in the foreground beneath the lighthouse.
 
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Thanks for that, much appreciated! :)

I downloaded the images, and I noticed they're not RAW but JPEG images. Did you mean earliuer that these are the RAW images that you took and then processed to create the jpegs? Just so I know what I'm looking at, that's all.

I ran the jpegs of the lighthouse and seagull through DxO 5 and managed to get some more detail from the images. The end results looked pretty good, even zoomed in to 100%.

I'm curious, were these photos taken handheld?

Also, for some reason there wasn't any ISO information on the images, so it's hard to guess what the lighting was like. I had trouble recovering the shadows any further in the foreground beneath the lightho
 
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Hi mate , yeah sorry when i tried to post them the first time i changed to jpeg to get smaller files but obviously couldn't upload jpegs to large even at 110kb hence the link but i forgot to go and grab the raws again my bad. no editing done on these I'm still a month or two away form making the video for my channel . stay tuned. Seagull was handheld stab on the rp turned on i think the others are tripod tho like waves and lighthouse as i did focus stack for the foreground in lighthouse for when i edit it , lighthouse was close to sunset so maybe 400-800 I'm guessing and waves also would be the rock in ocean would be 100 iso and handheld for that .
hope this helps.
if you want the raw files i can send you another link tonight when i get home form work just let me know happy to help
 
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