Africa help for May trip.

I just purchased the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II for my 6D and a planned trip to Africa in May. This will most likely be my one and only trip there so I am thinking of getting a Canon extender, better safe than sorry. From what I have read the 2x might not be as good for me as the 1.4.

Any advice appreciated.

I took the 100-400 mk II to Namibia a year ago. Mostly for photos in Etosha. One thing about the national parks, the animals are somewhat used to people so I was actually surprised at how close we could get in the vehicle. I could have used a 1.4x extender but would not have needed the 2x. I was shooting a 7D, so crop sensor, FWIW. Many of the best animal times were very early and late afternoon, so at least some aperture is nice to have.

My suggestion: Very carefully look into the (low weight) carry-on luggage weight restrictions of any carriers you will be flying within Africa, and plan well how to deal with your photography gear under such restrictions!!!

A 2x Canon extender won't auto focus on most (any?) Canon camera with the 100-400 since it will be f11 at 800mm.

A 1.4x extender vIII works great for me and is very sharp with my 100-400 and works since at 560 it is f8.

bpalermini wrote in post #18986137
A 2x Canon extender won't auto focus on most (any?) Canon camera with the 100-400 since it will be f11 at 800mm.

A 1.4x extender vIII works great for me and is very sharp with my 100-400 and works since at 560 it is f8.

Bob beat me to it. I'm not sure what the status is of the 6D and f/8 AF? The 100-400 II + 1.4x combination may not be fully compatible with the 6D.

sask2 wrote in post #18986118
I just purchased the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II for my 6D and a planned trip to Africa in May. This will most likely be my one and only trip there so I am thinking of getting a Canon extender, better safe than sorry. From what I have read the 2x might not be as good for me as the 1.4.

Any advice appreciated.

You aren't going to get autofocus with that lens and an extender on the 6D. Full stop.


If you desire more focal length than 400mm, you either have to get a longer lens, or a different body.

Once in a lifetime trip, I'd seriously consider shooting two bodies,. put something like the 24-105 etc. on your 6D, have a wider lens available,. and put that 100-400mm on a 7D2! (which will in itself act a bit like a 1.6x extender with it's higher pixel density)

P.S. if you get a 7D2, you CAN use the Canon 1.4x extender! It will just be limited to the center AF points.

Thanks I will check that out!

These were all taken with teh 100-400mm II on a 7D2 with no teleconverter;

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p872594752​/eb4df7745

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p872594752​/eb4df7650

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p872594752​/eb4df766c

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p105293006​6/eb4df0130

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p105293006​6/eb4df0101

IMAGE LINK: https://jakehegnauer.z​enfolio.com/p105293006​6/eb4df00e6

So when I bought this lens I understood that the autofocus would only work so far but I just tried it at 400mm f32 and it focused. So is it just an inaccurate focus? I haven't uploaded the photo but in the viewfinder it looks in focus?
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Awesome captures

sask2 wrote in post #18986180
So when I bought this lens I understood that the autofocus would only work so far but I just tried it at 400mm f32 and it focused. So is it just an inaccurate focus? I haven't uploaded the photo but in the viewfinder it looks in focus?
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When an EF lens on a EOS camera is focusing, it is doing so at the aperture wide open setting, regardless of what you have set the f/# to.
It only "stops down" f/32 the moment the shutter is tripped,. 9when the viewfinder is blacked out, so you can't even see the effect on the light coming into the viewfinder)

the 6D might actually be capable of autofocus at f/8 in certain lighting conditions, but Canon has designed the 6D to stop trying to autofocus once the wide open aperture is smaller than f/5.6. It just won't even try. zero AF.

To test this, look thought your viewfinder with the aperture set to f/32. What you are looking thorugh is on fact the lens wide open. To see what it looks like @ f/32, continue looking through the viewfinder at the same subject, and then press the "depth of field preview button" found just below the lens mount;

https://www.manualslib​.com …anon-Eos-6d.html?page=147

Pay attention to the vehicles your provider will use on safari, and how many people per vehicle. For my one trip, I was not on a photo-oriented tour, but the provider had arranged for us to be in vehicles with two people per row. I wouldn’t want more people than this, and I understand on many photography-oriented trips, they only have one person per row. Because of a foul up on one excursion we were stuck in big vehicles with four or five people per row, and it was miserable!

Especially for a once in a lifetime trip, I would try to have backup, not just one camera body. I’d prefer to have a backup telephoto lens as well, though that may not be possible for you. I hope it doesn’t get me thrown out of the club, but I took along a Sony RX10 with an absurd focal length range, and it was so convenient I tended to use it in preference to my full frame gear! It didn’t work well in dim lighting, though and there’s no shallow DOF available.

Don’t forget photos of the people and their culture! (sorry to go off-topic! )

Since this was also a hunting trip, I took just one body (7D) and two lenses, the 100-400 and a 17-55 f2.8

I used the 100-400mm Mk2 + 7D Mk2 exclusively for a month on all our tours in the South African parks and reserves this past october. The converters stayed in the suitcase. No guided tours except for one where people's heads and arms kept getting in the way everytime an interestting animal was sighted. And this was not one of those converted Jeeps, Toyotas or Landrovers, but a large army-type Leyland truck driven by a park ranger. All the rest was self-drive tours in a rented Toyota Fortuner. Easy to maneuver around to get a good angle, although the side windows at the back were better than the smaller windows at the front with these rather large protruding mirrors.

For the big cats it seemed the long zoom was the weapon of choice. For giraffes, elephants rhinos, hippos and buffalos that often were very close to the car a 50mm would often have been ok. For the other animals, and even for many raptors perching on low trees as opposed to those I meet at home, I rather shot between 200 and 300mm than at 400mm. In parks like Addo or iMfolozi even the kudus, ostriches or secretary birds were sometimes so close to the roadside that the 100-400mm allowed mainly interesting detail photos but no full-size portait of the animals.

Well I doubt you are going to be going right now . I am in the same bind. I had a trip planned in July.