What size lens is recommended for flying bird photography?

Question

My wife has a Canon 450D and a 70-300 lens for long distance shots.

I am considering a present or two and good advice from jrista suggests possible upgrade of camera to a Canon 7D and of lens to a Canon EF100-400 or Canon EF400 (I do like Canon). This will result in quite a large investment in my wife’s photographic future and I would like to get it right.

I would, therefore, welcome any further advice from jrista and any other users who may be able to assist me in my quest.

If I were only able to get one of the presents, which should I choose?

Answer 1

I'm not a bird photographer but whenever I travel with amateur birders, they almost always use the Sigma 50-500mm. As Jrista said, you lose in terms of quality but versatility-wise it is hard to beat.

The question is where the images go, if it's for small prints or web-use, you may not notice the difference. If it's for a gallery, you'll have to get something better and probably heavier.

When I take a group to Ecuador, we spend two shoots (sunset & sunrise) at a bird-lodge sanctuary. The species are quite small, particularly the hummingbirds everyone goes to see there. Those who max-out before 400mm (like me) didn't get many closeups, except near the bird-feeders where you can get really really close. At least, I'm not there for the birds ;) Those who don't want to shoot birds, get to have fun photographing Orchids instead.

Answer 2

The 100-400 is an awesome lens for bird photography. it's my go-to lens, and I do about 90% of my nature work with it. Works well carrying it around and is pretty fast and flexible. I work with a crop sensor, primarily a 7d, and I recommend a crop sensor for bird photography for the magnification it brings. the 7D is a killer body for this use.

When I'm working off of a tripod, I tend to use a 300/F4 and a 1.4x Teleconverter. It's a little sharper and a small bit more powerful than the 100-400 @400mm.

You will find that 400mm is not powerful enough at times; I do wish a lot for 400mm or 500mm lens, especially one I can slap a 1.4x tele on. The cost difference going from 300m to 400mm is prohibitive for me right now, so I make do. You can do quite well with the 100-400.

(just back from a trip shooting at a refuge; this was primarily shot with the 300/1.4x combo on the 7d: http://www.chuqui.com/2010/10/dawn-patrol/; here's a shot taken with the 100-400 from earlier this year: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chuqui/4980414951/ )

So I highly recommend the 100-400 as a good lens for this. The 300/F4 and 1.4x is another option to consider and probably a bit less expensive. You can buy BOTH for less than a 400mm or 50mm would cost, so they're good lenses for getting going here without committing to a mortgage. But trust me, if you catch the bug for bird photography, at some point, you'll be budgeting for ever bigger and more powerful lenses...

Answer 3

When photographing birds, the ultimate goal is to get that "frame filling" shot, where the bird (or birds) cover the bulk of the image. To capture such shots, you need a lot of reach, however even with reach, you still need to get pretty close. As a general rule, 400mm is the minimum necessary to get good bird shots without having to get so close that you scare your subject off.

Canon offers several lenses that fit the bill. One of the most popular bird and wildlife lenses is the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM lens. The nice thing about this lens is it comes with image stabilization, which helps offset its tighter aperture a bit, allowing better hand-held performance at lower shutter speeds. I use this lens myself, and it is a great lens overall. It truly shines when used with a camera body that offers good high-ISO performance (i.e. 5D, 7D, 550D). This lens goes for about $1500-$1600 street, $1800 list. It is probably the best bang for the buck as far as 400mm telephoto goes, and my top recommendation. I would avoid using this lens with a teleconverter, as it reduces the long-end aperture below the AF limit for many camera bodies, and greatly darkens the viewfinder. Your maximum aperture at 400mm shrinks as well to f/6.3 or so, which is much too slow to be effective as a birding lens.

Canon also offers the EF 400mm f/5.6 L USM Lens, which is one of their cheapest telephoto primes. It lists for around $1200, and can sometimes be found for around $1000. It is a great lens, but a tad slow. Optically, this lens is excellent, and provides better, sharper images than the 100-400mm. It is a favorite of a lot of Colorado bird photographers, and I have seen it paired with the 7D quite frequently lately. It is best paired with a high-ISO body. I wouldn't really recommend it for the Canon 450D, although it would probably be fine on a 550D, 7D, or 5D. An f/4 aperture would be more ideal, however for telephoto primes, the price quickly rises past $4000 for wider apertures than f/5.6.

As an alternative to the 100-400mm zoom, you could also get the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L II IS USM lens, and combine it with a teleconverter. Canon offers 1.4x and 2.0x teleconverters, which can extend the focal length of your lenses. The 70-200mm becomes a 140-400mm lens, but looses some aperture (it would drop to about f/4, maybe f/4.5 f/5.6 [note: this aperture makes this option not much better than the 100-400mm, and a lot more expensive]). Such a combination would make for a very ideal zoom lens setup, with a great telephoto range and a good, wide, constant aperture at f/4. This setup would cost more, some $2500 or so, but between the lens and the teleconverter(s), would cover a focal range from 70mm through 400mm, greatly expanding the usefulness of the setup beyond just bird photography.

There are some great third-party vendors who make good telephoto lenses with a Canon mount. One of the more popular is the Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 lens, often called the "Sigma Bigma" for its huge telephoto range and 500mm long end. Optically, it does not perform as well as, say, the Canon 100-400mm, and certainly not as good as a 400mm or 500mm prime lens. At the 500mm end, an aperture of f/6.3 is not ideal, so higher ISO performance would be best. For the price of $2400, it is a pretty good deal, and it can make a good bird lens, as well as a general purpose lens that covers pretty much all useful focal lengths outside of wide-angle. I would bump the camera's sharpness setting up, or add some sharpness in post processing if you use RAW.

Any 500mm or longer lens with an f/5.6 or wider aperture will offer better results for bird photography. Sadly, once you hit this range, prices rise dramatically, for both on- and off-brand lenses. Usually, such lenses can be found starting for around $4000, and moving on up to $10,000 or more.

Answer 4

A friend of mine bought his wife the 400mm as a birthday present since she's an avid bird photographer and she loves it. If it helps you to decide a little on what to get, here's her Flickr photostream to see some samples of what you can get out of it. She pretty much uses the 400mm and 7D combo exclusively now.

As a side note, while you mentioned an affinity for Canon lenses, you might want to consider the Sigma "Bigma" 50-500mm lens as an option. A really good comparison write-up of the Sigma and Canon options can be found on Juza's nature photography website. You can see some samples of his work there too, he's quite a good photographer in Italy.

Answer 5

Just want to throw out there that you will see very noticeable differences in focusing speed and sharpness between the Canon 400L f5.6 and the Canon 100-400L (or 75-300). The 400L f4.6 will focus much faster and is much sharper, I have a couple samples from back when I was looking at the pair

400mm f5.6

100-400mm

Answer 6

I have owned three lenses that go to 400mm:

• Canon EF 400mm f/5.6L USM
• Canon EF 100-400mm mk1 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
• Tamron 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3

In my opinion, I'd go for the Canon EF 400mm. The reasoning is as follows. It's reasonably priced when bought new and cheap when bought used. It's very sharp which is extremely useful for bird photography. For bird photography, you won't find constant 400mm too long even with a crop sensor camera. If you want the ability to photograph flying birds, you'll need anyway shutter speed 1/1000 or ideally 1/2000. At those shutter speeds, image stabilization will not help much to stabilize the photo, so the effect of image stabilizer would be to stabilize the viewfinder, allowing easier tracking of flying birds.

With a crop sensor camera (I currently have EOS 70D for bird photography), a 400mm lens in my opinion is not too shaky. So I don't miss the viewfinder stabilization effect.

The EF 100-400mm mk1 lens I used to have was in my opinion overrated. I bought a used lens for a price I thought was reasonable, used it once or twice and looking at the photos, yes, they were sharp without cropping but once you started to crop you could clearly see the limitations of the lens. I ended up selling it for more than I bought it. I don't know if it was a bad copy of the lens -- I explained to the camera shop which bought it that this mk1 lens is not remarkably sharp, they tested it, were happy and paid me. I certainly was not happy with this lens. So perhaps different people have different ideas of what is sharp enough. I don't consider the mk1 worthy of the "L" badge. Or perhaps I had a bad copy of the lens.

The EF 100-400mm mk2 is even heavier than the mk1 zoom. I find the 400mm f/5.6L barely acceptable in terms of weight, and mk2 zoom would be significantly heavier. I have not owned the 100-400mm mk2, but given its weight and price I would not buy it.

About the only benefit of 100-400mm on a crop sensor camera would be the ability to zoom out, look for flying birds and zoom in to the bird. Every photo you'll take will be at 400mm and the 100mm end would be used only to find flying birds. Aiming a 400mm on a crop sensor camera requires some skill and minor amounts of luck. With a full frame camera, aiming is not a problem and you can use 400mm continuously with no difficulties.

I haven't used the Tamron 100-400mm for bird photography yet, but I could test it someday. Few tests I have done indicate it should be sharper than at least my copy of the 100-400mm mk1 lens.

The EF 400mm f/5.6L USM is sharp and certainly worthy of the "L" badge.

Perhaps with a monopod to support the weight of 100-400mm mk2 and partially stabilize it (you need to be physically very strong to use it without a monopod!), you could find the image stabilizer helpful to stabilize it fully in low light, when photographing stationary birds. However, carrying a lens with monopod attached could be cumbersome and setting up the monopod misses a lot of spontaneous moments, so in practice this could be useful only in a bird tower where you wait for birds to arrive close. Besides, the Tamron 100-400 does nearly everything nearly as well as the Canon 100-400mm mk2. I would not pay the Canon mk2 price.

The other properties of the lens (minimum focus distance, maximum magnification) are not relevant for bird photography. You'll use all of the lenses most of the time with focus limiter anyway. All have ultrasonic motor or similar autofocus, good enough for flying bird use.