Am I expecting too much from the 100-400?

Eric those ducks look great to me. I assume the 400C meant a Canon at 400 while those with T were from the Tamron.

cicopo wrote in post #16621449
Eric those ducks look great to me. I assume the 400C meant a Canon at 400 while those with T were from the Tamron.

That is a correct assumption

Heya,

Trying to take something that small and crop it down to an image suitable for a monitor/LCD, yes, you're expecting too much from any lens. You have to consider pixel density. Even if the lens is super sharp (which it is), due to how small the bird is, it's occupying a very small amount of pixels. You're just not going to get detail from that. There's no density there. So there's not going to be rich detail. You're going to see a very soft, fuzzy "idea" of an image, when you blow it up. But you're cropping a view to several hundred times magnification in your example.

400mm is great, but for a song bird, you really have to be right up on it to fill the frame. 400mm from a big distance works for large birds. But for song birds, you simply have to be much closer, or have a longer reach.

Very best,

Snydremark wrote in post #16621406
Given the reviews done at Lens Rentals and what those of us that actually have one have seen, the lens has HARDLY proven itself "very soft".

http://www.flickr.com …s/snydremark/12​039369323/

It's not going to compete with, say, a multi-thousand dollar 600mm f/4 MkII, but I'd use *it* well before bothering to throw a TC on a 100-400. That's just silly.

Judging by that image, its very soft and it looks like you tried to fix it by over sharpening it in Camera raw. look at the background.

Edit: Also, there's a big halo around the ducks beak. lol

gabebalazs wrote in post #16621396
Was that meant to be a joke?

Not a joke.

DJHaze596 wrote in post #16622393
Judging by that image, its very soft and it looks like you tried to fix it by over sharpening it in Camera raw. look at the background.

Not a joke.

Ok.

Let's go with this. What are your sources for it being "very soft"?

oppppppssssss ...

Snydremark wrote in post #16622398
Ok.

Let's go with this. What are your sources for it being "very soft"?

It doesn't have to be a source, i look at pictures with the lens taken in real world environments hence your picture. I don't care what a reviewer says, I'm looking to get a 300mm f4 Prime, Go look at the reviews for that lens. some say it sucks and its soft, others say its super sharp. Sure you could say actually owning the lens would make my opinion differ but judging from the RAW files, its very soft. But hey, $1,000 for a 600mm lens is a steal. I'm in no way disliking the lens, I'm just saying its soft and my 55-250mm STM produces better results for $350. Yes i know its not 600mm lol Just saying...

For it to be "proven to be very soft", it does, actually have to have a source. Proof requires fact. <shrug>

The rest of that is certainly your opinion on both the posted shots and the lens in general, which is fine.

not sure if it helps but i was always told for wildlife to fill the frame for best results

Snydremark wrote in post #16622499
For it to be "proven to be very soft", it does, actually have to have a source. Proof requires fact. <shrug>

I can guarantee you will get a better depth of how a sharp a lens is by looking at pictures from other people on sites like Flickr vs some website reviewer. Every Reviewer has a different take on a product, like i said above, Some will say it sucks, Some will say its good. That's Opinionated not Fact. Digitalrev said the EOS M sucked, but there's a lot of people on here who love the EOS M. So If 98% of the pictures from that lens are soft, is that my Opinion or is that a fact? I think its a fact because a Fact is based on Research which i did plenty of. You might think its sharp, but if i give you a nice 135L, Your term of what is sharp will change. Anyway were getting kinda off topic, I guess will have to agree to disagree.

Now THAT (and me needing to take off my internet warrior hat) are something we can agree on.

DJHaze596 wrote in post #16622433
It doesn't have to be a source, i look at pictures with the lens taken in real world environments hence your picture. I don't care what a reviewer says, I'm looking to get a 300mm f4 Prime, Go look at the reviews for that lens. some say it sucks and its soft, others say its super sharp. Sure you could say actually owning the lens would make my opinion differ but judging from the RAW files, its very soft. But hey, $1,000 for a 600mm lens is a steal. I'm in no way disliking the lens, I'm just saying its soft and my 55-250mm STM produces better results for $350. Yes i know its not 600mm lol Just saying...

Ouch! I do like your photos in the 70D thread, and agree that the 55-250 IS is a great lens for what it is, but to say that it produces better results is quite a bold statement and false, unless you mean shooting a bird from 8 feet away. But we're talking about a long wildlife lens here so we need to look at this from that point of view.

You obviously have not seen any of the good shots from the Tamron and base your judgment on the bad shots. ANY lens can produce a bad shot, even a 600 f/4 II, but a bad, horribly soft lens CANNOT produce a nice shot period. So if you see bad samples from the Tamron that doesn't prove that it's a soft lens. However, when you see a good shot, it proves that it's a good lens.

Roger Cicala praises the lens at Lensrentals (he deals with hundreds, if not thousands of lenses.) Dustin Abbott raves about the lens. He's not an amateur either.

Now, here is the thing. ANY 600mm lens requires some special skills and keeping a few rules in mind to achieve a good photo. This lens is a unique lens being a 600mm at a very affordable price, pretty much unseen until now. This means there are quite a few people who are just getting into "wildlife" photography, purely based on the attractive price of the lens. This means that there are quite a few bad samples circulating out there right now.

The problem is that Tamron will have to fight an uphill battle in this sense, since it's unlikely that a super pro bird photographer will rush to the store, buy of these and takes it to a 2-week trip to the Galapagos Islands. Pros shoot with $10K lenses but it's their skills, coupled with the equipment, that produces stunning results. But this Tamron is the poor man's super tele zoom, with all the disadvantages of poor man's skills (no offense to anyone, just trying to prove a point.)

Shooting wildlife with a 600mm lens is a whole different world from shooting with your lens at 250mm. I know first hand, I had 2 copies of the 55-250 IS, and I honestly liked them both. But it just doesn't compare. At 600mm a lot more factors are working against you: atmosphere; that is haze, pollution, rising heat waves etc.; potential tube currents (warm air inside the lens, different from the ambient temp); controlling motion blur, shutter speed etc. These are all factors that an inexperienced wildlife photographer who just got into 600mm (especially on a crop) will have to deal with and learn about. I currently shoot with an excellent Sigma 120-300 2.8 OS and 2x TC quite often and face these problems every day (ok, there are good days and bad days.)

So when you look at samples from this lens, you need to keep in mind:
- who took the samples, is he/she skilled in handling a long lens?
- what were the conditions; subject distance, weather, light, etc.
- are we looking at SOOC jpeg or a processed RAW

With most of the samples, we don't know half of these, how can we make a judgement? With a medium telephoto lens, it's much easier to achieve a good photo, half these problems mentioned above virtually don't exist. In fact, they do but the magnification of say a 200mm lens is to small to bring them to the surface.

I've shot with a bunch of long telephoto lenses (Sigma 150-500 OS, Canon 100-400L with and without TC, Tamron 200-500, Sigma 70-200 2.8 OS with 2x TC, Sigma 120-300 2.8 OS with 1.4x and 2x TCs) and have put a lot of time and effort into bird photography. I think my pictures are the proof that I've put something down to the table. This is absolutely not to brag or anything, but just to give a little credibility to what I wrote above

Anyway, there are a few website that have taken pretty good samples with the Tamron. One of them is DC Fever, here's a shot, 600mm, wide open, subject distance at least 400-500 yards in a not-so-clean-air southeast Asia as I can tell (loads slowly):

http://www.dcfever.com​/lens/enlarge.php?id=1​0213

A very soft lens would not be able to resolve details in the broom, or treads in the tires. Contrast is hurt a bit due to atmosphere.

Here's another one, this one's shot from even farther. Same story; contrast hurt by haze, detail is impressive from this long distance at 600mm wide open.

http://www.dcfever.com​/lens/enlarge.php?id=1​0231

As far as I can tell, these were SOOC jpegs (based on the processing, they look like my 6D jpegs.)

And there are other sites that are good; there is a review from Asia with an Asian model, with a bunch of portraits, basketball game shots etc. They all look pretty good to me.
Dustin Abbott had a bunch of test shots in his detailed review. His site is now down due to a flood of traffic unfortunately.

Also, our fellow POTN member bigcountry also posted shots from a zoo trip. I've gone through his shots a few (dozen) times, even saved the best ones from various lens combinations, and found that his Tamron 600mm shots were actually a bit sharper than his 100-400L + 1.4x TC shots.
So was the case with Snydremark's test samples. I saved his 400m Canon shot and 600mm Tamron shot, then size matched them in both possible ways and found that the Tamron did resolve more detail than the upsized Canon image. Of course, it'd better do, it's a 600mm lens, if it didn't what's the point of 600mm?
Roger's test also proved that the Tamron is equal to the Canon at 400mm. He did not test it at 600mm though, where he admits there is a drop in sharpness.

So I thought I'd just share my thoughts about the "proven very soft" Tamron lens. If I had a choice to go birding with a Canon 55-250 IS STM or the Tamron, I think I'd rather chose the Tamron.

By the way, mine is arriving tomorrow and I will put it to the test this week. I don't have much skin in the game though because I am really satisfied with my current Sigma setup. But I thought the Tamron could be a nice "lighter" setup I could take for walks instead of lugging the Sigma around.

It's more than that. Someone who shoots birds for a living can spend well over 40 hours a week shooting birds, while most armatures will spend less than a few hours a month.

there were some shots from the new tamron that were soft...but i think it's been show that that was more the user than the lens...

as for the op's question...yes...but aside from all the advice already given, i'd suggest starting off with different birds, Kingfishers don't let you get close enough for 400mm on a FF to work

vengence wrote in post #16622733
It's more than that. Someone who shoots birds for a living can spend well over 40 hours a week shooting birds, while most armatures will spend less than a few hours a month.

Exactly, thanks for the added info.