Canon RF 200-800mm f6.3-f9.0…a few thoughts from a week in Winter

So March has arrived here in the UK and with it some life is starting to return , firstly with the blooming of the Snowdrops which covered my rather small front garden transforming it from the barren dark brown it had been since around November.

More wildlife is visible as well, notably here the Short Eared Owls can often be seen gliding over the moorland in search of their next meal.

So this gave me a thought to try out a lens, the Canon RF 200-800mm f6.3-f9.0, which many on Social Media have been praising , particularly for its reach and ability to bring smaller subjects to be much larger in the frame. So I checked on Lenses for Hire website in the UK and saw that it was in stock and available to hire and with that placed an order for one weeks hire. This is now the third time I have used Lenses for Hire and I have to say I have been thoroughly impressed each time.

So the lens arrived on the Thursday afternoon and excitedly I unpacked it , what a monster this lens is much longer when at its shortest length than any other lens I have used , and this is where the first issue that I had with the lens arose - my current camera backpack wasn’t able to accommodate it when mounted onto the Canon R7. Not a major issue but would be a further expenses needed if I was to purchase this lens.

Anyway due to other commitments I was unable to use the lens before the Sunday , so I headed out to Peak Wildlife Park to test it photographing the animals they have there, starting of course with the Red Squirrels - here, as the light was OK the lens performed really well capturing the flighty little creatures easily and with great detail whilst allowing me to stay further back from them so as not to disturb their normal behaviour. In some instances I did find that 200mm was just too far a reach and felt I would prefer to be somewhere around 150mm , but that isn’t the lens issue it is more to do with photographing animals in a controlled environment. I did notice sometimes the lens didn’t focus as accurately as I would have hoped but again some of that was down to lower contrast in the image I was trying to capture. I tried the lens on most of the animal subjects at the park and overall was pleased - however on this occasion the light was fairly bright giving good contrast.

Next I attempted to photograph short eared owls , here I was less successful , mostly my error of incorrect settings on the camera initially but later the failings were again down to the less than ideal light gathering of this lens. I tried twice more to use the lens to capture the owls but never got a good sharp image to be happy with.

Then the weather turned with dark dense winter fog and rain , so no point to trying to use this lens under those conditions - hence I waited until Saturday , my final day with the lens and again I tried to use it across the entire day. First attempting to photograph Kingfishers , here the sky was badly overcast and very little light was reaching the pond where I knew the Kingfishers would be, so whilst I could zoom right in and the camera would focus on the bird the shutter speed and ISO available where not ideal - typically 1/320 second at ISO12800 - the images just lacking enough for any denoise software to recover.

Moving on I had the idea of photographing the Red Deer on the moors , but again the light was the big issue with the ISO having to be pushed way beyond what would produce a clean image perhaps on a camera such as the R3 or R6 Mark II this would have been different.

So then onwards to an area I knew there would be some small birds to photograph , and here the light did return and once more I found that the lens performed reasonable well , even allowing some good out of focus background with shallow depth of field.

Overall thoughts then , well both Phil Thatch and Christopher Frost on You Tube have hit the nail squarely on the head - paired with the R7 this lens is just not quite there…sad really as I was contemplating it as an option. For now I’ll stick with my trust EF100-400mm L MKII which although its reach is a little short gives me more consistent results.

Anyway next week its back to the NEC to the Photo and Video show , this time not taking my wallet…