Over the years, I have read many negative reviews and comments about the Canon EF 100-400mm zoom lens, ranging from softness in the resolution capability to a useless “toy” lens. Many of those I have asked follow up questions to about their views reveal themselves to have never used the lens themselves (they have just “heard” bad things). Others seem to spend more time deriding the lens than going out and improving their photography skills.
A male northern cardinal stands under the shade of a bush. Although most commonly seen throughout the eastern US and Mexico, this species was introduced many years ago to the Hawaiian islands.
This lens was in fact my first “bird” lens, and I used it extensively until I could prove to myself that I was passionate about wildlife photography enough to justify spending more on a more specialized lens. I have found the lens to be sharp and reliable. While it doesn’t provide the extreme sharpness or reach of my 800mm, it is smaller, lighter, and I typically hand hold it, giving me ultimate mobility. It was for these reasons that I opted to take it on my recent trip to Hawaii, in lieu of my bigger lens.
A cattle egret is reflected in a pool of water as it searches for food amongst the grass. This one is in full breeding plumage, with long reddish-orange feathers on the top of the head, back and breast. Also, the skin behind the eye has turned a brilliant purple.
Rather than a traditional zoom, this lens utilizes a push/pull style of zoom, which will take some getting used to. Once you master this style of zoom, however, you’ll be making sharp photographs in no time. For bird photography, I usually just lock out the barrel in the “long” position, giving me the 400mm reach.
If you are just starting out in bird or wildlife photography and don’t want to make a huge investment, this is a great lens with which to get your feet wet. Starting out with a lens like this will force you to improve your non-camera skills, such as stalking and waiting. The limited reach will force you to get closer to your subjects, often requiring patience and creativity to get the desired shot.
The Scaly-breasted Munia or Spotted Munia is known in the pet trade as Nutmeg Mannikin or Spice Finch. Its name is based on the distinct scale-like feather markings on the breast and belly.
On this latest trip, I found that by watching the birds more to understand their patterns, I was able to predict their directionality, and situate myself in a position they would move toward. Then it was just a matter of staying low, being patient, and remaining as still as possible as they came to me. Other times, I would find a tree or bush with lots of activity, move toward it and wait. Even if I scared off the birds on my approach, by remaining still and quiet, many times they eventually returned, sometimes very close to me.
Take a look through these photos and my recent Hawaii posts to judge for yourself. The fact that it is still a regular part of my arsenal shows that I certainly don’t consider it a toy, but a valuable tool that has its place in my toolbox.
As the sun sets on another year, may the next one be fruitful and bring much happiness. As always, thanks for following me on my photographic journey. Here is a new image from my recent trip to Kauai, celebrating ten wonderful years with my beautiful wife. Have a great year, filled with memories and photographs.
I first heard about Adobe’s astonishing anti-shake feature In October 2011 when they demoed it at their user conference. The tool works on photos that were focused correctly but had a slow enough shutter speed to introduce camera shake (usually from hand-holding the camera), resulting in a blurry photo. To put it simply, the tool will analyze these photos, attempt to derive the directional path that the camera was moving along at the time the photo was taken, and correct that blur path. If it worked, this would be the holy grail of photo correction, finally disproving photography teacher’s mantra – “You can’t fix a blurry photo.”
At the time it was touted as a feature “in development,” which in software speak means it is something we’re tinkering with, but might actually never be released. Therefore, I was very surprised when it was announced as a headline feature of Photoshop CC. Now that this was out, I was excited to put it to the test with some real world examples from my catalog. Would this be a handy tool in the digital photographer’s toolbox, or just useless demo ware – a good idea with poor execution?
To start with, I needed to find a couple of test photos. I did a metadata search in Lightroom through my entire archive for photos taken with my Canon 800mm lens at a shutter speed of less than 1/200 of a second. Even when mounted on a tripod with the image stabilizer turned on, such a slow shutter speed usually introduces camera shake. This results in blur, even when the subject is correctly focused. Most photos taken at this speed with that lens are mistakes, usually due to a rapid change in light or background. And almost all of them become throwaways, never seeing the light of day on my web site.
I quickly found two candidate photos, one of a female ring-necked pheasant at 1/180 seconds which was almost sharp, and a much blurrier shot of a swimming common gallinule at 1/100 seconds.
I first worked on the pheasant and brought it into Photoshop. I duplicated the background to create a working layer and opened the anti-shake filter. The first thing the tool does is to pick a portion of the photo and analyze the edges to make a judgement about the motion of the camera at the time of capture. It automatically selected a portion of the face, probably because it has the sharpest edges in the photo. I slightly adjusted the detection square so that it just included the most important parts of the bird’s face. This is the area I wanted maximum sharpness. Other than that, I left all settings default. I had no experience with custom settings here, and in those cases, it is usually best to leave things alone to see how the tool performs.
There is a large preview in the tool, but I found it didn’t really help me determine if the shake was corrected or not. I hit OK to see the following results:
In this photo, the blur introduced by camera shake has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
As I said, the original was almost sharp but not quite. But I was blown away with how sharp the corrected photo was! This definitely turned a throwaway into a keeper. (Thanks Adobe!) Here is a closer crop comparison to help see the improvement in sharpness.
The top image is the shot out of camera, suffering from slight camera shake. The bottom photo has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
Very satisfied with the results of the ring-necked pheasant, it was time to really put the anti-shake tool to the test. I opened the common gallinule photo and followed the same steps above. This photo is much blurrier than the ring-necked pheasant, but I was fairly sure the subject was in focus, just blurry due to camera shake. This time I again chose a target rectangle around the bird’s head, as this was the area of critical focus (especially the eye). The results are below:
In this photo, the blur introduced by camera shake has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
In this case, the sharpness improved quite a bit, but the results were not as stellar as the first photo. The resulting photo almost looked a little too crunchy, with small halo artifacts here and there. That said, this photo now became usable at smaller sizes. It will find a new life in web use and for smaller prints. Here is a crop to do a detailed comparison.
The top image is the shot out of camera, suffering from slight camera shake. The bottom photo has been corrected using Photoshop’s new anti-shake tool.
So what do these two real world tests tell us about the tool? First and foremost, this is not a panacea for blurry photos. This is no reason to go sell your expensive tripod on eBay. However, it can rescue some photos that are right on the verge of sharpness, but suffer from some amount of camera shake. And for those photos, it really does a fantastic job.
I’ll definitely spend some time scouring some of my older photos that I rejected because of camera shake. I’m very impressed with how well Adobe was able to pull this off – it is definitely a worthwhile and very usable feature.
No, this is not a Gap or Old Navy ad – I’m talking about Hooded Mergansers in colorful fall color reflections! Hooded Mergansers are one of my all time favorite ducks (and those who know me know how much I love ducks!) I photographed this mating pair recently as they swam through a narrow channel bordered by deciduous trees, their leaves turning red and gold.
A female hooded merganser sleep on the surface of calm water reflecting the colors of fall
One difficulty photographing in this kind of light is making sure the main subject (the ducks) and the surroundings (water reflections) are well balanced in brightness. Especially difficult with Hooded Mergansers is the male’s bright white head feathers contrasting with its black face. Trying to capture details in the black feathers while holding detail in the white takes not only the perfect exposure, but also the right amount of front lighting. This is one species that doesn’t do well in backlighting.
A female hooded merganser sleep on the surface of calm water reflecting the colors of fall
As usual, I tried to photograph at a very small angle of declination to the water surface. However in this particular channel, the slope to the water is very steep, and impossible to place the lens only inches above the waterline, which is my preference. (And no, I didn’t want to climb into the water!) Therefore, I had to raise the rig high enough so that I could sit behind it and see through the viewfinder. It is times like these that I think about getting a right angle viewer for my camera. That would allow be to sit above my camera on a slope, instead of behind it, bringing the lens closer to the level of the water.
A male hooded merganser swim through calm water reflecting the colors of fall
