Agreed. I see no need to ‘upgrade’ to the RF 85/1.2 (either of them). The EF 85/1.4 is sharp, has great bokeh, and focuses fast. Personally, I don’t see the need for the RF’s extra half-stop of aperture, and I speak from the experience of having had it with the EF 85/1.2L II.
I think you'd have to make specific references before saying that quite a lot of the negative feedback is nonsensical. Please give examples.
... and whenever it comes to closeup in nature like dragonflies, butterfies the 100-400 outperformed the 100-500.
The EF 70-300 DO was the worst ever purchase in my EF- "career".
However Sony only had a handfull of native Sony lenses for about 5 or 6 years. Sony pushed adapters and 3rd party lenses. We havent forgot about the constant chest thumping over all the adapters and how it didnt matter that Sony had no real lenses. Until they went out and recruited Nikon's famed patent holder and lens designer to get their lens program together and design the G Master lenses. We havent forgot Sony mirrorless growing pains.
I wouldn't say Canon was nice, any more than I would say they are evil, mean, selfish, anti-competitive, etc. etc. etc. They are just a company in the business of staying in business and earning a return on investment. I'm sure they designed the R system to allow adapters because it made good business sense.
I agree with you and @jeffa4444 100% on all those points. I too find the RF 100-400mm outperforms the 100-500mm for close-up shots of dragonflies. My two copies (yes, one for my wife and one for me when I don't want to take the RF 100-500mm) are sharp wide open. Of course, for long distances the extra 100mm of the RF 100-500mm wins, and it is one of the sharpest tele photo zooms. But, the RF 100-400mm doesn't lag much behind its big EF 100-400 brother for long distances. There are several CR members on CR posting sharp images from it.
How right you are!
Here's a Common Darter in Flight taken with the RF 100-400mm on the much-maligned R7 with mechanical shutter to avoid rolling shutter. It's a 100% crop (1 px = 1 px of original). I had a whole series of them and posted a couple of similar in the Dragonfly thread. The R7 or R5 + RF 100-400mm is one of the best combos for this genre.
I don't think that Canon had a choice but to allow adapting EF lenses. It would have been a major miscalculation if only RF lenses worked on it.
100% agree!
I had to move a lot to get this hummingbird moth and swing the lens in every direction. The low weight of the RF 100-400 was a big plus.
www.canonrumors.com
When Canon made the transition from FD to EF in 1987, there was no ability to use FD lenses on EF bodies while still having focus to infinity. I imagine that the lessons learned in that transition are very much a part of Canon's corporate culture. In addition, Canon never introduced an FD body with a positive focusing indicator in the viewfinder without the ability to control the lens. I, for one, very much wanted an FD body with that type of indicator.
Right! This is often overlooked, but in this era it really was quite amazing how well they supported the adapting of the lenses. I'm sure they weighed the pros and cons and possible backlash if they didn't, but man when you look at how a lot of tech companies support older equipment, this is really quite remarkable. Especially when you hear that Nikon's adapter isn't as smooth.
