Zooms vs. Primes (Rant)

As much as I like the convenience of a zoom, I find that the image quality (sharpness, bokeh, the intangibles) of a photo taken at 400mm with the 100-400mm II zoom (the new one) falls short of a photo taken with my 100mm prime at 1/4th the distance, or my 35mm prime taken at 1/12th the distance. I'd rather do the leg work to get a better shot! The saving grace for the 100-400mm II is that it's IQ at 100mm is just about as good as my 100mm prime, but then again why would I want to lug the extra weight if I'm going to wind up shooting at ~100mm? The landscape shots I've taken at 400mm, while OK, don't wow me (the "air noise" kills). Now I can see how having a 400mm lens can be great when one stumbles on a bird willing to stay still, but shots such as this are unlikely to happen to a guy like me, who doesn't have the patience to wait for that moment.

Am I going to keep my new 100-400mm? Hell yeah! That said, I'm only going to take it along when there is a reasonable chance of encountering birds.

If just for birds, a prime will do.
The 100-400 is a flexible nature photography lens.

P.S. For lions, you may want to avoid using the 35mm at 1/12th the distance

how are you comparing a 35mm shot with a 400mm shot? good luck getting any sort of wildlife with that 35mm

You're not using it for its intended, albeit niche, purpose. Can't really rant about it if you're not using it for its purpose to begin with...

And yes, good luck getting any wild bird shots with even a 100mm. Parrots maybe. Pet parrots. Lol.

I bought my 70-300L so I can use it for birds, and the occasional tight landscape shot. When you're backpacking, the less gear the better. Even 300 is not long enough for birds though.

I have zooms and primes. There isn't a hill-of-beans difference between them if you are shooting at f/8. My primes don't zoom. My zooms don't do f/1.anything. There is enough room for both. If I had to choose, I'd go with primes. Well, until someone comes out with an EF 12-200mm f/1.4 IS USM that costs $899 and weighs 40 ounces.

as DreDaze mentioned, I'd also like to know how you compared a 35mm and a 100-400mm lens?? I cant understand how it can be a rant, now if you was comparing say 100, 135 or 200mm primes to the 100-400 I would understand, even though all 3 primes will be sharper and have better bokeh at their relative focal lengths than the zoom, if it was just birds you want the long lens for get a sigma 50-500 or 150-600 lens, keep the 100-400 for the zoo visits or handheld walk about nature stuff.

I wouldn't recommend trying to shoot this with a 35mm prime.

Scott M wrote in post #17352456
I wouldn't recommend trying to shoot this with a 35mm prime.

But it would have a much more dramatic perspective !

akadmon wrote in post #17352193
I'd rather do the leg work to get a better shot

Except, sometimes --- many times --- you cannot.

IMHO, the "zoom-with-feet" cliche works for people who shoot in streets, or buildings, or family/wedding/tourist​/zoo/animal park type situations.

For in-the-wild nature photography, you are going to need to "zoom with your feet/wings/fins/telepo​rtation". Or "zoom-with-your-feet-at-a-glacial-pace-and-spend-several-hours-in-a-mosquito-filled-blind". And even with the latter, your 35 mm is rarely going to cut it. Or the 100.

The number of situations in which you can close in on your subject are uncommon even when the subjects are not going to take flight. And, yes, this absolutely includes landscapes as well when shooting on a real-world terrain. If we can get close, we get close, regardless of what lens we have. Most times, we cannot get close. Most times, you need the reach.

But, if you will excuse my digressive counter-rant railing against the tired-and-for-me-generally-false cliche of "zoom-with-your-feet" pseudo-myth of being able to make up for the flexibility of zooms with your feet, your original point is valid, at least, as far as conventional wisdom goes: your primes are generally going to trump the zooms.

Or you could shell out for a 200-400 f/4 and have the best of both worlds.

EDIT: reading your post again, it seems to me that you are equating "zoom" with super-telephoto. Am I wrong? The specific targets of your ire seem to be compromised image quality at large magnifications. This is a super-telephoto issue, not a zoom issue. The zoom vs. prime debate has to do with the image quality/price/weight/s​ize/AF-speed of the prime vs. the flexibility of the zoom. Your issues of compromised quality due to magnification will be the same whether using 200-400 f/4 or a 400 DO II.

In that case, the story remains the same: there is no substitute for reach. There are wildlife photographers who dedicate days on stalking their subjects with or without blinds. They have pushed the "zoom-with-your-feet" jaded cliche to its logical extreme. And yet they continue to use 500mm, 600mm lenses with extenders. Wonder why?

There is no point in comparing a 35mm or even 100mm to 400mm. I mean, there is, but you can't expect the same quality. This is not necessarily a prime vs zoom problem. I'm sure the new 100-400L II has roughly the same IQ as a 400mm 5.6L at 400mm, provided they're both good copies. And it's very likely that they will both fail when comparing them to the 100mm or 35mm shots taken at 1/4 or 1/12 distance.

When you shoot 400mm (and higher), you obviously shooting something at a distance. Unless you do it in a vacuum, you need to understand the factors that negatively impact IQ when shooting with a longer lens outdoors.

It's easy to see if you set up your lens on a tripod, use live view, focus on something at a greater distance (stop sign, telephone post, etc.), use 10x magnification, then watch the IQ vary in real time on the LCD. Heat currents, haze, etc. all impact the IQ. Quality will be going in and out constantly.
Now, if you do that with a 35mm lens, you won't see any of that. Even if you take a shot of the same subject (stop sign, telephone pole) at the same distance, everything will be nice and sharp even at 100%. Magnification from a 35mm lens is not going to make those heat currents visible.

Another easy way to see this phenomenon is to say pick a 600mm f/4L II prime and compare it with a zoom, say EFS 15-85mm used at 35mm. No doubt that the 600L is by far the superior lens. BUT if you do the same test as mentioned above, I'm sure that most days the sharpness of the 15-85 at 35mm will beat the 600L when you take a photo of a far away subject.

Basically it's the same phenomenon as when we compare how a nearby mountain looks vs a far away mountain. The far mountain looks hazy, and we just basically magnify that haze with our super tele lenses. That's actually why the Moon astronauts had an extremely hard time judging distances on the Moon. Humans are used to estimate distances based on how far away objects look on Earth due to haze. The Moon doesn't have that "aid".

Now, if you take a shot at 1/4 of the distance with the 100mm lens, or 1/12th of the distance with the 35mm lens, that helps these prime lenses even more vs the 100-400L IS II. Some respected lens review sites such at SLRgear.com and The Digital Picture actually do mention sometimes that while testing a long lens, they're shooting through more air which impacts the sharpness/contrast results negatively (it's very very minor though inside their studios but it's true.)

What you can do is test the 3 lenses inside using a powerful flash. Set up a test subject 15-25 feet away, use a tripod, flash then fire away. You'll see that the 100-400L will yield excellent sharpness and contrast under these conditions. Weather, heat, etc is not working against the lens in these conditions.

Thanks all for a lively discussion, especially the last two posters.

As I have not figured out how to post more than 2 photos in a single post, I may have to break this post up. Just pretend it's a single post.

First off, a few words about my style of shooting. Since my wife refuses to let me have a dog, I walk my cameras instead. I'm a pretty active guy for a 50 year old +, 250 lb + (I walk 10K every chance I get). I don't have the patience to sit in one spot, waiting for something to happen. Yeah, I sometimes drag my tripod along, but it mostly gets used for panoramas. Wildlife doesn't seem to want to pose, so unless you are behind a blind, or shooting a bird feeder with a Wifi remote, fogetaboutit! Anyways, I've had this lens (100-400 mm II) out a few times, and I've found myself frustrated.

Example 1. I see a small bird 20 feet away. Ninety percent of the time any kind of movement I make scares the bird away. If by some lucky chance the bird stays in place, I zoom in to 400mm, lift the camera up, look through the viewfinder, and - whaddayaknow, I'm looking at the wrong spot! So I zooom out to 100 mm to get my bearings, pan around, lock in on the bird, zoom in to 400mm and - WTF, the bird flits off, just as I'm about to press the shutter!!! I'm getting shots maybe 1 out of every 20 attempts. This is the best I've been able to get (pretty lousy, compared to stuff that gets posted in the Birds forum):

Will someone please tell me how to post more than two photos in a single post?

Here is another one I shot today. Decent, but definitely not Nat Geo material

Continuing on. Coming from a 200mm lens, I find that even 400mm is not good enough for bird photography. If your really want a Nat Geo shot, you need an 800mm lens comboed with a camera that will let you shoot at 1/1000s without excessive noise. So no, my 100-400mm II (perched on an EOS 70D) is NOT a bird lens!

akadmon wrote in post #17353400
I zoom out to 400mm, lift the camera up, look through the viewfinder, and - whaddayaknow, I'm looking at the wrong spot! So I zooom out to 100 mm to get my bearings, pan around, lock in on the bird, zoom in to 400mm and - WTF, the bird is flits off, just as I'm about to press the shutter!!!

Read more at: https://photography-on-the.net …/showthread.php​?t=1412909

Out of curiosity, have you tried starting at 100, then zooming in once you've acquired your subject?

Example 2. I find 200mm+ useless for landscapes. In most situations I have encountered, 100mm seems pretty much the sweet spot for panoramas (say anything requiring stitching together 5-10 portrait shots). If there is an option to get closer, I'd rather walk up and shoot at 100m, than rely on a shot taken at 400mm. If I can't get closer, then yeah, a 400mm shot will will do, but no, I won't be happy (a pixel peeper that I am)! Yes, I understand the reasons (can't argue with physics). So the question remains: why lug around a lens that weighs 4 times as much as my 100mm f.2.8 IS when I walk my camera? Oh wait, I think I know: I might get a Nat Geo worthy bird shot once every 5 years (maybe)