Big and Beautiful - Canon's EF 600/4 L

Copyright © 1996, Don Baccus

All images copyright © 1996, Don Baccus

Who would want this lens?

This is clearly not a lens for everyone. But, for the serious sports or wildlife photographer, this bulky telephoto delivers the goods when a subject is dangerous or difficult to approach, or when the photographer's ability to move is hampered by physical barriers or sidelines. I'm writing this review from the perspective of a serious wildlife photographer who concentrates on birds.

Physical construction

The lenses in this series take 48mm gelatin filters, which are placed in a filter holder which is inserted into a slot between the lens mount and the autofocus motor control module. Since they all take the same drop-in filters, only one of each need be purchased.

Though I've never dropped this lens, I have dropped my EF 300/2.8 twice, once about seven feet onto gravel, with no ill effects, and am confident that this lens would survive such treatment just as well. I have no plans to field-test this notion, though!

Focus Module

The autofocus range limiting feature allows the user to optionally limit the range to 6m-15m or 15m-infinity. The pre-focus capability allows the user to lock in the current focus position by moving a spring-loaded, sliding switch. If set, the lens will return to that spot whenever the metal, notched ring near the focus ring is slightly turned in either direction. This feature can be used to return quickly to a fixed location after following a subject elsewhere, for instance to snap focus onto a bird nest after using continuous autofocus to track a parent flying from it.

Being able to chose focus speeds seemed like silly overkill when I first learned of it, until I bought the lens and started using it. I find the slowest speed to be excellent for touching up focus after autofocus, for instance to get an animal's eye in perfect focus after using autofocus to focus on its body. The medium speed is about what you are used to with traditional gear, and I find the fast speed useful for tracking quick-moving action in situations where autofocus gets confused.

Since there is no physical connection between the focus ring and the USM motor, the designers were free to damp the manual focus action without regard to drag on the motor. The focus rings of the telephotos which incorporate this module have the best feel of any autofocus lens I've had the opportunity to use.

Optical Quality

When used with the 2x extender, autofocus is lost, and image degredation is somewhat apparent wide open, though certainly sharp enough for magazine submission. I recently had the opportunity to shoot some barely fledged Cooper's hawk young with this combination, which were perching quietly in a tree about 30 feet up and 100 feet away from where I had my tripod set up. Because they were still, I was able to shoot using mirror lockup and to stop down 2/3 of a stop to f10. The resulting slides are extremely sharp.

Though you can't really judge sharpness with highly compressed jpeg images, the images on this page hint at the performance of this lens, with and without teleconverters. All three images were shot with the lens wide open. The great-horned owl was shot with no teleconverter, on Velvia, using a tripod. The burrowing owl was shot in light rain on Lumiere 100x, from my car using a beanbag and homemade shoulder stock, using the 1.4x teleconverter and EF 25 extension tube. The great blue heron was shot on Velvia, again using beanbag and shoulder stock from my car, and the 2x teleconverter.

Auxillary Equipment

The lens comes with a bulky suitcase for transportation. While you can probably airdrop the thing to remote sites without a parachute, it is too big and bulky for normal use, so you'll want to buy a Domke long lens bag as well. In this bag, the lens, with body attached and a brick of film in the outside flap pocket and another fifty rolls stuffed inside, can be legally stored under an airline seat.