Back in the ant farm, where light goes from too dark to too harsh in minutes, where critters are elusive, and where getting good shots is difficult, the SL 100-400mm first flunked the target test—badly—and then just couldn’t capture raw images that left me with enough shadows/highlights latitude to make decent pictures.

On the bright side, colors in relatively flat lighting were exceptionally good. Out with the CL and the venerable 180 APO/2X combo, native contrast on the targets was far better than the 100-400mm SL. Despite being shorter by a bit, it outresolved the SL zoom by a clear margin.

And given that autofocus, much improved on the SL2, was adversely impacted by the lack of native contrast in the lens, it turned out to be only a little better than manual focus with the 180/2X. Suffice it to say the SL zoom is gone and I’m back to using the old and reliable.

With nothing to try in the L-mount alliance that I haven’t already tried, it may stay that way. It’s just not practical to travel with 65% of my gear weight getting 10% of the shots. Obviously, no lens is perfect. But sometimes a jack-of-all-trades and master of none is the best option.

CL/180mm f2.8 APO-Elmarit-R/APO-Extender-R 2X . . .