Hi Ned, Joseph, Tweets

I also replied privately to Megan but I wanted to add my two cents. I think the question you need to ask yourself if you are in the market for a big lens is what you want to do with your pictures and what do you want to shoot most often? The 400 f5.6 is a dedicated bird lens. As Ned said, the versatility of the 100-400 is very nice with the IS. The down side is image quality at 400mm, though between 100 and 300mm it's very sharp. I've heard that there are good copies out there for the 100-400, so I would suggest if you get that lens you test it extensively right away and if it's soft at 400 keep exchanging it until you get a sharp one. It might take several exchanges. I had one and never liked it, but I had one of the 'bad ones'. I sold it and got the 400 5.6 and it's as sharp as a tack, and have never heard of bad copies. With Canon's excellent noise handling on their newer DSLR's at high ISO, it means you should rarely have a problem shooting fast enough and can avoid the need for Image Stableization. All the birds in this gallery were taken with the 400 f5.6 with a 1.4x extender.

http://www.pbase.com/rodg/september

On a bird note, I saw an American Golden Plover at Bottle Beach last Mon 23rd. This was taken with a 500 f/4 and 1.4x TC, as are most of my other bird photos.

http://www.pbase.com/rodg/image/69072624

Rod