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I'm really torn as to my first world problems, do I get the XF 100-400mm lens or do I continue in the direction of my Nikon and get lenses for it. As I said, first world problems! I have the X-T1 and X-T2 and quite a few of the XF lenses already and because I love the Fuji system so much I really want to go 100% and leave Nikon behind. I also own the Nikon D500 and it is a wonderful camera too! I use my D500 for shooting hockey and other action sports and my Fuji for everything else, however, my longest lens is the 70-200 f2.8 and I will be embarking on a trip (expensive one to boot!) to the Great Bear Rainforest so I am in the process of finalizing my lenses to make the most of it. So with this in mind, I decided to rent the XF 100-400mm and take it to the Calgary Zoo to see how it worked. My disclaimer. I am by no means a professional. I make mistakes with my settings, don't know a boat load of lens review 'tests' and couldn't identify the difference between a pixel and a pokemon. These are just my impressions of a lens I had for the weekend and how I felt about it after. These are my humble, amateurish opinions. Settings- I usually shoot manual focus with Back Button focus set up in Manual and shutter trigger focus on AF-S and AF-C. I had ISO set to Auto, Aperture set as wide as I could and tried to keep shutter above the reciprocal of focal length as a guide. The performance was on Boost mode Build- It is a well built piece of kit but doesn't have the same solid, rich feel that the 50-140 has and it reminds me of my XF 55-200 lens in build quality. Plasticky but not cheap. I had it on my X-T2 with battery booster grip and it balanced well but I don't think you'd want to use it on anything else. You have to use the lock as you experience lens creep when you are walking around. Weight- The lens and camera with grip and batteries is heavy. Is it the same weight as the Nikon/Canon with extra batteries and the equivalent lens? Not a chance! As the Angry Photographer said, "Oddly enough you don't buy the Mirrorless system to be light, you're buying Fuji because it's o freaking fantastic!" Well Ok...he uses a few more colorful adjectives in there but you get the point. Asking about weight is a moot point. It's a big lens, it's going to weigh more. I felt it at the end of the day but it wasn't bad. Focus- We went inside the Penguin hut (why they weren't outside is beyond me, I mean the Antarctic is a bit colder than Calgary but maybe we were too warm?) so the low light situation allowed me to test how it would cope. This lens really struggled in low light. The lens was hunting and couldn't seem to lock on. ISO was up around 12,800 so I had little hope for the images to turn out. As a result I didn't get any keepers. We moved outside and again I never felt the lens quickly lock on. I kept thinking to myself that if these animals were actually moving I'd be really struggling. I was shooting handheld and had the OIS on and off at times and still had trouble attaining focus. The funny thing is that two of the sharpest image I had were when my granddaughter told me to take a picture of these birds so I swung the camera around and quickly snapped the pictures off. Maybe that was the trick, maybe I was holding on to the image too long. 1.4 TC- I used the XF 1.4 Teleconverter on it which turned it into an F/8 on the long end and I didn't notice any diminishment in image quality. Probably because my picture taking sucked, having the TC on there didn't change my level of suckitude for the better or worse. Trust the more talented when they say that IQ doesn't suffer. Handheld vs Tripod- I think if you were to have the lens on a tripod you would get crazy good results but my trip to the GBR will have me on a boat where a tripod is not a possibility so I wanted to test the handheld. 'They' say you get 3-4 extra stops with the OIS on but apparently 'Thay' are much better/steadier than me because I experienced less than that. Verdict- Well, every system has it's strengths and weakness and try as I might I don't think the XF100-400 and the Fuji system is quite there yet for the Wildlife or Action genre. For ME anyways! One thing I did love was that I didn't have to crop at all! I love this focal length! At $2,300 CDN I just can't justify purchasing this lens when I know that the Nikon 300 PF at $2,500 with the D500 is a rock star and the 80-400 with the same camera is more solid. I've attached some pics of the Zoo critters to give you an idea. There has been some post-processing done but not too much. A bump of the exposure meter here, a dab of clarity there. Since I can only load a few to the board, the rest are available for viewing here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/39537600@N04/albums/72157679634366666