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I wonder if you're overestimating the speed. The eBay description says it's a zoom lens, 650-1300, with a maximum aperture of f8 to f16. Add the 2X extender to that and you'd have, what? f32?
Wow, I checked the specs on B&H and it appears you're right. That's ridiculous. Of course certain folks in this thread would have no trouble at all manual focusing it on birds in flight, or so they say.
"You're better off buying the 95000mm lens trust me. it's slightly more expensive but its worth it in the long run, plus you'll never know when you might have to photograph a bird in the neighboring country, not to mention that the 95000mm lens has the new IS system that compensates for the earth's curvature, which is a very convenient feature for those who like to photograph subjects several continents away."
"You're better off buying the 95000mm lens trust me. it's slightly more expensive but its worth it in the long run, plus you'll never know when you might have to photograph a bird in the neighboring country, not to mention that the 95000mm lens has the new IS system that compensates for the earth's curvature, which is a very convenient feature for those who like to photograph subjects several continents away."
How do you mount it on a tripod ball head or pan head
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kdog
It depends on what kind of wildlife photography you do. Most serious wildlife photography is done from the car or outside the vehicle, maybe within a few hundred yards radius at most. Generally you're driving around parks looking for wildlife and using your car as a blind. For hawks, if you get out the car, it'll fly away. But inside the car, if you're careful, you can snap away all day. So weight in those cases doesn't matter, as long as you can lift the thing at all.
If you are planning some long hikes to look for wildlife, then something like the Canon 100-400 zoom is great, or maybe one of the Sigma telephoto zooms. But very few people will hike around all day with a super-tele. An exception might be if you know of a remote lake where there are known to be lots of eagles or bears for example. If you know of a place like that, let me know and I'll join you. Otherwise, you'd probably rather be on a quad or a snowmobile. Here's me with a rented snowmobile in Yellowstone one winter with probably 40 lbs of gear on the back including a 500mm F4 IS L in its case.
I do some of each, but the best stuff, and most important (to me), is when I'm hiking with a guide for multi night trips in asian, central american, or south american rainforests (so speed in the filtered light it important to me) and we run across primates, a snake up in a crook, or birds at distance.
I don't know any FD big zoom lenses that have the quality optics of a fixed focal length lens, and I do want something I can carry on a plane (not check) and hike a week or two or so with it on my back. I don't do snowmobiles or quads (though the snowmobile notion sounds interesting) I'd rather be on my two feet and able to flip rocks/logs/etc as I'm going (love finding herps).
Wow, I checked the specs on B&H and it appears you're right. That's ridiculous. Of course certain folks in this thread would have no trouble at all manual focusing it on birds in flight, or so they say.
Well, I would say that BIF is certainly possible with manual focus (I posted links to the website of a guy who does it exclusively with old manual focus only lenses). Whether the Opteka is good for it, is another issue. In case of Sony cameras, the tool to use would be Focus Peaking, which makes it very easy to track movement with manual focus. It does depend on contrast levels, and more contrasty the lighting conditions, and more contrasty the lens, the more accurate it can be. You'd also need the focusing ring to be MF friendly.
The real challenge would be keeping shutter speed high enough to make sense (about 1/800-1/1000s at the minimum, for slow flyers, 1/2000s or faster for small/fast birds), and f/8 may be cutting close, much less 2-stops slower at the max zoom.
Well, I would say that BIF is certainly possible with manual focus (I posted links to the website of a guy who does it exclusively with old manual focus only lenses). Whether the Opteka is good for it, is another issue. In case of Sony cameras, the tool to use would be Focus Peaking, which makes it very easy to track movement with manual focus. It does depend on contrast levels, and more contrasty the lighting conditions, and more contrasty the lens, the more accurate it can be. You'd also need the focusing ring to be MF friendly.
The real challenge would be keeping shutter speed high enough to make sense (about 1/800-1/1000s at the minimum, for slow flyers, 1/2000s or faster for small/fast birds), and f/8 may be cutting close, much less 2-stops slower at the max zoom.
I looked on Danny's site, and he does have some very impressive examples of manual tracking focus on moving objects. I think he's unusually skilled, basically a human servo machine.
But, I'm holding my ground that it can't be done with this lens. As you pointed out, you'll never have enough light to freeze the action even if you could focus. F/8 is the fastest this lens can perform at the shortest focal lengths. At the longer focal lengths, you're looking at f/16 to f/32. The other issue would be just "seeing" your moving target as I would expect the viewfinder would be too dark to focus on your subject. While the EXIF on Danny's images don't show the aperture, it's clear from his use of low ISO and fast shutterspeed that he's shooting wide open with f/2.8 lenses, at least the ones I looked at. I mean, come on: ISO200, at 1/4000s? That's got to be f/2.8. That's not even possible at f/4.5 using Sunny 16, or possibly just barely. Those lenses he's using are vastly different than this lens.
So nope, I'm holding my ground. You're not going to use this lens to track moving objects any faster than a snail.
I think 650mm would be more than enough, especially on APSc bodies with nearly 1000mm equiv at hand, even at f/8. Using it as a MF lens really depends on how friendly it is towards that cause. Even reasonably high shutter speed would be possible at f/8 but we would be looking at ISO 400 in bright daylight for 1/1000s. Two stops darker, and ISO requirement jumps to 1600.
It will also require an EVF with Focus Peaking capabilities as in Danny's case (Sony NEX-7). But the biggest problem may be IQ itself. May be fine as a telescope substitute though. One may be better off picking up a Pentax 300/4 M42 screw mount and a 2x TC.
Yeah, my most wanted lens is a 400mm 2.8 Canon FD L series (running 2k), but it is also about 12 pounds and I don't think I want to haul that around, so might lean to the lesser quality 400mm that is about 3 pounds for $400-500... very torn on that one, but for wildlife photography 12 freaking pounds seems like too much...
I had the Canon FD 400mm f4.5 for awhile. Mine wasn't, iirc, an "L", but it was a damned nice lens. I picked it up on eBay, used it sparingly, let some of my "students" use it during workshops that I used to offer, then sold it on eBay a few years later because I was solidly into the EOS line-up. It wasn't particularly heavy but was solidy made. I can't remember what I paid for it or what I sold it for, but it wasn't much -- maybe $500? (It was in near mint condition.) https://www.google.com/search?q=cano...w=1366&bih=519
Here's a picture of my old lens with one of my students using it, plus some of the pictures she took with it. At least some of them (maybe most) had it coupled to a Canon 1.4X. Keep in mind, this was a first time student with less than a week to learn all I could teach -- no prior photo experience.
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