The Great Canon Supertele Test - From 800 to 1600mm

The six contenders, without the hood. From left to right: Canon 200 f/1.8 L, Canon 300 f/2.8 L IS, Canon 400 f/4 DO IS, Canon 400 f/2.8 L IS, Canon 600 f/4 L IS, Canon 800 f/5.6 L IS.

It does not happen everyday to have six of the very best Canon superteles in hands: thanks to Sandro "Ceksalo", in a cold afternoon of October 2008 I have had the opportunity to compare side-by-side my 600 f/4 IS and 300 2.8 IS with new Canon 800 f/5.6 IS, with the shorter and brighter 400 f/2.8 IS, with the interesting 400 f/4 DO and with the legendary 200 f/1.8 L (that Canon has recently replaced with the 200 f/2 IS).

The results of the test are showed in these pages. All the images are 100% crops from RAW files converted with the neutral settings (no contrast, no saturation, no sharpening); the photos had been taken with the 21 megapixel Canon 1DsIII, mounted on tripod. I have used only Canon teleconverters (1.4x II and 2x II). I have used mirror lock up and 10 seconds self timer and I manually focussed using live view.

800 millitemeters

I have compared the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS USM + 1.4x (840mm f/5.6) with the new Canon 800mm f/5.6 L IS USM, with the 400 f/2.8 L IS USM + 2x (800mm f/5.6), with 400 f/4 DO IS USM + 2x (800mm f/8), with the 300 2.8 L IS USM + 1.4x + 2x (840mm f/8), and with the 200 f/1.8 L USM + 2x + 2x (800mm f/7.1).

	f/5.6	f/8	f/11	f/16
600 f/4 + 1.4x
800 f/5.6
400 f/2.8 + 2x
400 f/4 + 2x	Not available (the widest aperture with the teleconverter becomes f/8)			Test image not usable due to motion blur or focus error (I'm going to repeat the test at this aperture and to add the crop in future).
300 f/2.8 + 1.4x + 2x	Not available (the widest aperture with the teleconverter becomes f/8)
200 f/1.8 + 2x + 2x	Not available (the widest aperture with the teleconverter becomes f/8)

The 800 f/5.6 is clearly the best at all apertures. At f/5.6, it is a little better than 600 + 1.4x, and much better than 400 2.8 + 2x; at f/8 and smaller apertures there is not a big difference between the three lenses. The 300 2.8 + 1.4x + 2x is clearly worse than the first three lenses, but it is still usable (stopping down to f/11) and it looks better than the 400 DO + 2x (even though I am still not sure about this lens; when possible I'm going to test it again to be sure that there are not focus errors). The 200 1.8 may be marginally usable at the smallest apertures, but overall 2x + 2x is too much even for this legendary lens.

1200 millitemeters

I have compared the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS USM + 2x (1200mm f/8) with the Canon 800mm f/5.6 L IS USM + 1.4x (1120mm f/8) and with the 400 f/2.8 L IS USM + 1.4x + 2x (1120mm f/8).

	600 f/4 + 2x	800 f/5.6 + 1.4x	400 f/2.8 + 1.4x + 2x
f/8
f/11
f/16			Test image not usable due to motion blur or focus error (I'm going to repeat the test at this aperture and to add the crop in future).

The Canon 800 f/5.6 is clearly the best at every aperture; it is fully usable even wide open, and it gets even sharper at f/11. The 600 f/4 is softer wide open, while it comes close at f/11 and smaller apertures. The 400 2.8 with stacked teleconverters is the worst in this comparison; it is unusable at f/8, and even at smaller apertures it is not as sharp as the other two lenses.

1600 millitemeters

I have compared the Canon 600mm f/4 L IS USM + 1.4x + 2x (1680mm f/11) with the Canon 800mm f/5.6 L IS USM + 2x (1600mm f/11).

	600 f/4 + 1.4x + 2x	800 f/5.6 + 2x
f/11
f/16
f/22

The 800 + 2x is miles ahead the 600 + stacked TCs. Even wide open, it is still usable, while the 600 with stacked TC is very soft at every aperture.