Lens & Camera Comparison

Met up with Alan at Tewinbury today to compare his Canon 7D & 400mm lens against my 550D & Sigma 500mm. The Green Sandpipers and Kingfisher put on a good show for us and provided plenty of shots for comparison. We even had a brief visit from a Grey Wagtail.

Here's a, probably not very scientific, summary of the results:

7D 400mm v 550D 500mm - No surprises here, the 7D 400mm significantly better, although we chose to compare at F6.3 and the first Green Sandpiper I took at F9 before going down to F6.3 wasn't actually that bad.

400mm v 500mm (on 550D) - 400mm definitely crisper.

7D 400mm v 550D 400mm - Actually not a significant difference - other facilities of the 7D no doubt justify the extra cost, but for pictures of a closeish bird sat still I'd say not a lot to choose between them.

In that my photos from Monday (yesterday), Wednesday (tomorrow) & Friday (three days from now! - This is a backblip) where I was taking only on F8 & above were okay, then that's a lesson to learn - don't use F6.3. So now all I need to do is convince Mrs L of the need to get a Canon EF 400mm f5.6L USM

Thanks to Alan for all his help and thanks also for today's photo, an example of the quality obtained from the 7D 400mm. Thanks also from RCB.