"Bigma" Mark 2 now in stock

I think there's a real chance for the bigma mark 2 to beat the Canon 100-400 overall. ; I keep repeating this, I know, but, the thing I learned when I read up on the 100-400 is that it has some copy variation issues. ; Tests of the what appeared to be the better copies make it look like it's potentially as good as the 400mm F5.6. ; I've seen sample pictures, the sharpness was compelling. ; Mind you there may not have been corner samples.

But I've also read stories of people that went through three or four copies of the lens until they got one they were happy with. ; The idea I got was that if you're willing to go through a lot of checking and swapping until you find one you're happy with it's potentially a very high quality, very flexible lens.

But without all that painstaking sorting through multiple copies I've seen comparisons where it scored no better than the bigma mark 1. ; Which was known, among other things, to need a certain amount of stopping down at full zoom extension to get the best sharpness. ; I don't just mean for sharp corners, I mean overall people were using it at F8-F11 to get optimal sharpness. ; When you're shooting at 500mm you really don't want to have to be stopping down that much, you want as much light as you can get.

Assuming that the mark 2 has consistent image quality and that review on adorama was accurate (with no 100% crops to compare all I have to go by is the author's subjective opinion, I don't put a lot of trust in that because I don't know this person's standards) the mark 2 could be a 100-400 killer. ; The best 100-400 copies might still be able to beat it, but I have no idea how rare those are and how likely any of us would be to find one.


The thing I'm thinking about regarding the 100-400 is that I ran into another wildlife shooter at a local waterbird site last year. ; The guy was shooting on a tripod and seemed surprised that I was comfortable using my 400mm F5.6 hand held, at least when he found out that it lacked stabilization. ; That surprised me, actually, it's not that difficult to shoot it hand held. ; I mean when I'm at my best I can hand hold significantly below the rule of thumb, but beyond that it's not that hard to get enough light to get shutter speeds of 1/400 or faster.

Then I got a glimpse of the LCD screen on his camera (same model as mine). ; He was shooting something like F11! ; Cripes, if I was stopping down that much I'd need a tripod too. ; We were already dealing with dropping light levels from the sun setting, but being able to shoot wide open gave me quite a bit of extra leeway that this guy apparently didn't have.

I have to conclude he felt he needed to stop down that much to get a sharp image. ; I never asked, but I can't imagine he was doing it for the depth of field.

 

Jeff, if you'd like to try out the TC20E III on your 70-200mm, let me know. We can meet up in the World and you can try out mine. I'm liking it on my 70-200 VRI. My main concern is how much it slows AF, but it's still very useable.

Erich