I'd not see the original until now Archibald. Honestly I've not shot that much with mine. I'll have to go back for a look see.
This is becoming very interesting.
Choder glad you like the phrasology, not every day I come up with a 'term'; would prefer another one as in this is not good it's happening with this lens.
Think Canon would posit a position on how/why if a raw was sent to them?
Har, good luck with that. Canon is not known for its forthrightness.
As mentioned before, this is not a new issue. The old 100-400 did the same thing. There is no need for surprise.
It's noteworthy, though, that the popular reviewers don't exactly highlight the problem. Surely they know about it, but they are salesmen, they don't want to discourage you from buying the product. They make money if you buy (through their sites). So it seems to me they don't mention questionable behavior or soft-pedal it.
Digital Picture (old model lens): "An 8-blade aperture helps with bokeh (foreground/background blur quality) though this is not a strong feature of this lens."
Photozone.de (old model): "Out-of-focus highlights show an outlining effect which can result in rather rough out-of-focus blur in high contrast scenes." Then, "the foreground blur ... is somewhat more nervous." Ha, they say nervous. It shows doubling.
Ken Rockwell (old model): "Bokeh, the quality of out-of-focus areas as opposed to the degree of defocus, is pretty good, especially at the 400mm end."
Ken Rockwell (new model): "Bokeh, the quality of out-of-focus areas as opposed to the degree of defocus, is great."
Digital Picture (new model): "... the 100-400 renders out of focus specular highlights as smoothly-filled, nicely-rounded circles (with the typical concentric rings found near the perimeter)."
dpreview: Can't find any reviews of the 100-400 lenses.
Sometimes I think we users believe the reviewers more than we believe our own eyes.
