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All photos Canon EOS R7 with RF 100-500mm L Hand held |
The Canon RF
100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS USM is one of the best and most versatile telephoto
zoom lenses in the Canon RF mount catalogue.
But on a full frame body it is a bit short for birds.
In previous posts I discussed cropping and adding the Rf 1.4
Extender as options for increasing the effective reach of the lens.
In summary, we can get good results and good autofocus
performance by mounting the 100-500 on a high pixel count body such as the R5
or R5.2. This combination provides excellent autofocus and will tolerate
substantial cropping without too much loss of image quality.
On a low pixel count body such as the R6 or R6.2 we can
mount the 1.4 Extender to advantage. Autofocus is not quite as snappy as the
bare lens but is still very good. Image quality is also very good but we do
lose one stop of aperture.
Unfortunately the process of mounting the 1.4 Extender onto
the 100-500 is less than ideal as the lens must be zoomed out to 300mm so the
extender will clear the rear element of the lens. This restricts the focal
length range to 420-700mm.
There is a third option which is to mount the lens on an R7
body which gives us a full frame equivalent focal length of 160-800mm. This
gets us into birding focal length range with the bonus of 32 Mpx on the sensor,
so cropping is practicable.
I have been using the R7 option for a year and am finding it
very suitable for most use cases with some caveats about birds in flight.
Here is a little chart of comparable costs, using new prices
from the same Australian vendor on the day of publication.
R5.2 | R6.2 + 1.4
Extender | R7 |
$5636 | $3527 | $2000 |
We can see that the R7 option is by far the least expensive.
It also gives us a versatile kit which can deliver very nice
results in most cases.
For birds perched or subjects moving at moderate speed
relative to the camera the R7 has no difficulty holding focus while tracking
the subject. I use a fast shutter speed, electronic first curtain shutter
and Drive Mode [H] which gives us 7
frames per second with no shutter shock or distortion from rolling shutter.
Drive mode [H+] gives us 15 fps with EFCS but a lower keeper
rate.
The R7 has no trouble with aeroplanes, speedboats and most
types of sport. But it is less reliable than full frame bodies with birds in
flight which is just about the most difficult challenge we can put to an
autofocus system. The R7 can do BIF but the keeper rate is lower than I get
with the R5.
Overall I have found the R7 works so well with the RF
100-500 L zoom that I sold my full frame bodies and never miss them.
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This is a crop of the photo above. |
