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The part about smoother bokeh in outdoor portraits: why not go with a 85mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 or the beautiful 135mm f/2? Can't get any smoother than with those lens

You know the pros and cons of both lenses... choice is yours. I have the and I love its sharpnes and lightweight

Sorry, I miss the lens  
400mm f5.6


100% crop

iso 320, AF, 1/600, f5.6

+x2 canon tc manual focus via liveview, f11, 1/400, iso 1600

I just decided to buy the 300mm f/4 L IS USM lens. A friend of mine has and last week I had the chance to try this wonderful piece. I have 5dmkII.
Here is the pro list:
- IS. This counts really much. At the test I took pictures at 1/200 and a few at 1/320. 75% of the images perfectly sharp, 20% slightly blurry (means very little motion) and 5% moved.
- f/4. I shoot several images at 8 and 5.6 but mostly at 4. If a lens is 4 then it's interesting at 4. Stopped down everything is better but it really counts from where we start. The f2.8 version of the 300mm is simply too expensive. The results at 4 are amazing. Especially when the light has contrast the DOF and the sharpness is amazing.
- The 1.4x extender is a must. With 1.4 this lens becomes a 420mm f5.6 lens, virtually the other lens you want to buy, BUT the IS remains in the game.
- 1.5m closest focusing distance and the magnification ratio makes possible the macro photography but expect huge crops when shooting small objects (butterflies, frogs). At least at FF is significant but even on APS-C, a cropping is needed to make the photo well composed. Simply because you can't go closer. Manual focusing is flawless.
- 77mm filter size
- weight makes possible holding the camera without holding the lens also
- CA visible only in strong front light but perfectly removable in ACR.
Con list
- slow focusing. Almost impossible to focus on moving subjects, only fast prefocus and manual correction helps. Also focusing from 1.5m to infinity its faster to turn manually the focus ring than wait for the USM. Backward the same. When the extender is used the situation is worse, focusing is deadly slow.
- cyan/green fringe around dark objects in front light. I saw this kind of fringe with sigma lenses only but it's level is much lower here.
- (for me is) too long for walkaround nature photography but too short for real wildlife photography. Even with the 1.4x extender I expect small crops from the center. Going closer is not always an option. Basically carried on a second, aps-c body it's perfect while the second body carries a wider tele (70-200) or a real mid-tele zoom like 24-105 or 28-135.

At home, the raw files convinced me. This lens is really sharp at 4 (stopped down of course is better), it has very good color reproduction and contrast.
I can send you some test pictures at full size, give me an e-mail.

For standard shooting like the Zoo or maybe a whale watching trip I use my 70-200 f/2.8L IS and if it isn't long enough I use the 2X II converter and shoot at 400mm f/5.6 with IS which works pretty good.

For NFL Games, I rent the 400 f/2.8L IS.  It would be very tricky to catch good action shots without the speed of the lens and the sharpness added by IS. 

For MLB games, the 400 is too long, the 70-200 isn't long enough and I don't like to lose the stops of light with the converter so I rent the 300 f/2.8L IS.

For my trip to Africa, I also rented the 400 f/2.8.

Those events are special enough that I didn't mind putting the money into the rental fees but they are infrequent enough that I can't justify the expense of the lenses.

If you have something special in mind you may want to consider that and purchase a more practical lens for everyday use with the the converter.  Some scoff at the 2X converter but from what I understand the problems were with the first version as I've been very happy with mine.

Whatever you decide, I hope you love it!

Good luck,

Mat

Xalanx,

I forgot the name of the site, but there is one that indexes Flickr images according to the Exif data, so you can search for a specific lens, and can even refine your search by image size, so you can narrow your search to high res images that will give you the "real" result.

Thanx, I saw that already. It's clear that I'd rather get the 400mm instead of 300mm + TC.

Deleted.  My mistake (saw the arrow now...)

True!

Can you take some portraits with your 400mm, please? It's so darn hard to find them on the internet. I just want to see if it's any good for outdoor portraits.

Great job Adelaide, thanx!

I dont see it for portraits...