Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 IS USM Lens

I gathered some motivation to write a review since I used a  long time ago when I was in the "film" world of cameras. This is one top gun from Canon stable that a lot of pro photographers adore over the years. However my experience was a little disapponting. The main reason I purchased the lens is to take photos of sandhill cranes in Platt river of eastern nebraska. I think it is an outstanding lens but just too heavy for handholding when extended at its full zoom range. You will really need to have a rather strong set of arms for any usable photography for longer than 1 hour even after considering the advantage of image stabilizer. You will definitely need a good tripod/monopod to take advantage of this lens. When used with ElanII, the lens used to draw huge amount of power from camera battery and boy those batteries were expensive. Over the months of my use of this lens I find that push pull zoom is disgusting if you handhold this lens and the subject is in the sky. I know there was a zoom ring tightening ring but that also moves the focus ring. I think that is another example of weired design of this lens. Eventually I sold my lens and settled down with EF 70-300mm new lens (half the cost of 100-400mm L lens but picture quality wise very good) from Canon.
Apart from all these, I should say it's a nice piece of glass under a solid metal built. And oh yeah...this one draws attention from men/women very fast.
Final word: - If you have lot's of money, get this one with a good tripod/ballhead.
If you really want quality at 400mm range under budget, get the EF400mm f5.6 prime or EF200mm f2.8 L with 2x tc.
Or, if you are a real cheap person like me who also wants quality slides, get an used EF100-300 f5.6 L, very hard to find, but you will be happy with the optical quality.