Lens Musings
 

Years ago when I traded in my medium format Bronica SQA kit for a D100, my entry into both digital and autofocus, I got 3 A/F lenses to go with it. 18-35, 28-105, and 80-200. During the years before WPF the 80-200 was hardly ever used, most of my pics being in the range 18 to 50mm. With the advent of WPF and a lot more photography generally, I realised 18mm was not wide enough and traded that for a 12-24 and that has become my favoured out and about lens. The 28-105 still gets a bit of use, and until the 'Shooting the Moon' thread the 80-200 was hardly used. I took it to Titchwell a couple of times but that was really a waste of time as any birds were just dots in the frame. If we were treking any distance I would take the 200 f4 AIS as it weighes a fraction of the zoom and is a lot smaller.

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to swap the 80-200 for an old manual focus 400mm IFED f5.6 lens. There were two thoughts behind going for the swap. I would have a prime for those moon pics, and I would be able to use it wide open for those background blasting shots that are the regular fare of Rob and others. Well it turned into a cloud magnate, so apart from a Starling shot I posted, and a couple of moon shots I have not really had an opportunity to give it a whirl.

At this point regular users of long lenses may be thinking so what, and perhaps 400mm is not that long for bird photography, but a move from 12-24 to 400mm is quite a leap for general photography.

The design of the lens goes back to the 1980's so the minimum focussing distance is 15ft, and at that distance dof wide open at f5.6 is a mere 1 3/4" going up to a massive 3 inches at f8. You have to get to 40ft at f5.6 for that dof to become 12". Infinity dof at f5.6 is quite amusing for a wide angle user, 2820ft or 940yds - infinity. :eek:

Well the cloud curse was finally lifted on Friday. A quick check on the satellite cloud imagary confirmed a good day, so we decided on a trip that would allow a play. Wells Next The Sea on the North Norfolk coast.

Wells was a real eye opener. With the tide out there was no need to trudge through the mud to get onto a sandbank for a picture of the yacht stranded on that sandbank. In fact I had to move back to about 1/2 a mile away to enable me to get the yacht and mast in frame. I tried a shot of an anchor by the harbour masters office to make use of the shallow dof and could get no further back due to a wall, so it is a tight composition, and this is from about 40ft away. I tried a few shots of ducks on the quay side which is also used as a car park. Again moving back far enough to get them in frame was a new experience, with Stevie having to watch my back to prevent me becoming a traffic casualty.

So I now have a whole new learning curve on subject and composition with this lens, and the crazy thing is that my wide is A/F where massive dof could easily cover focussing error, and the 400 is manual focus with non existant dof. Lots of practice needed.

Any long lens users out there that have bought into a real wide angle and are suffering from viewfinder agoraphobia. :)

The attached pics are all full frame. Yacht and ducks at f8, and the anchor at f5.6, an experiment in blowing the background, but f8 may have been a better option at this subject distance.

Don

The anchor is my favourite Don. The colours, lighting, textures and DoF all combine to make it a very pleasing picture. The spider is a nice touch too.

It seems you have a good lens there Don. I also much prefer the anchor photo, it shows real originality. The other 3 are all technically excellent shots but there are so many photos around like them.

I didn't spot the spider on first viewing but yes it certainly adds to the picture. I just love the lighting and texture to the anchor.

Presumably you had the camera on a tripod.

Dave

Hi Dave,

I used a monopod for these. They were really taken as a see what it can do resolution wise hence the ducks plumage. I have to get used to the shallow dof when thinking subject matter and angles. A bit like using a macro in that respect.

They can look fine until you put them up on a pc then out of focus really shows up. :eek:

Don

Whatever you did is lovely, all the shots should make you proud of your new lens. Beautiful contrast on the ducks.

Don,these shots are amazing,so sharp and clear.Could not quite understand which lens you used for them,is it the 400F5.6?.
I use the 400F5.6 Canon for all my birding shots.The lowest priced 400 lens,also very light.But my shots are not so sharp as yours,they are excellent.

Hi Christine thanks,

Yes it is the 400mm f5.6. Its an old manual focus job from the 1990's. I will only get an A/F version if the useage it gets justifies the cost.

Don

The anchor is my favorouite as well that & the detail in the ducks plummage. Your focusing is spot on.

sadly Nikon do not do an AF equivalent. The 300mm AFS F4 + TC14E is the closest match. Sigma used to do a 400mm F5.6 APO Macro AF which is said to be on a par with the manufacturer's lenses and which is inexpensive. (I will soon find out.)

Enjoy your lens. I see you are already squeezing nice sharpness out of it!

Don, you ask if anyone suffers trying to use wideangle. Well I tend to see pictures for telephotos and my Canon 10-22 on a 20d does not see a lot of use as I just struggle to see and compose wideangle shots. I like the anchor shot best and it's certainly a great lens. If Christines Canon does not do as well I wonder if she uses it handheld with no suport so the sharpness is spoilt by camera shake as it has very good writeups in the mags.

You are not alone.

Knowing a lot of members here are bird photogs therefore long lens users was what made me think it worth a thread. Before I got this I only used a long lens + tc for moon pics, so for me it was quite a culture shot to take it out in daylight. :eek: :D So it is nice to know that I am not alone but in reverse. :)

Having moved from medium format I am a bit of a sharpness freak so anything a bit off that beam goes straight in the bin. Hence using a monopod as minimum on anything over 135mm and sometimes less.

Don

I've been a bit pushed for time recently, so I haven't had time to make comments on this or Leif's 400mm lens threads -as a long time 400mm user I have some experience of using this focal length in all sorts of situations!

You've got a great lens there, Don - I think the original design might even go back to the late '70s. A mate of mine used to have a Nikon with 500mm mirror lens and when he trading in for this 400mm his photos improved by leaps and bounds.

I'll try to make a fuller reply this evening.

I would suggest to consider a faster 400mm before going for an arm and leg loose on a brand new AF VR etc. Something like this one:
LINK
I have seen them a lot cheaper than what this seller is selling for. If you need to have that special Bokeh, you must go for fast lens. Additionally with lower light situation, birds are a lot sharper frozen, utilizing that fast F stop. The problem obviously is weight. I am personally not at all for AF or even IS as both of these options (On the lenses that I have and support them) are usually turned to OFF. So why pay for something that I am not using often. I like to know who else feels like me or completely feels in opposite direction.

Totally agree Sassan for my needs anyway.

If this lens gets the use, I will have to consider selling my scope to help fund the faster aperture. :D

Prices over here are not as good as yours though on this older kit. :(

Don

...or perhaps tomorrow :(

Today I decided to try some bird shots with the 400mm and have attatched some results.

These pics were taken at Titchwell RSPB Reserve. Quite a lot of time was spent just sitting still on the side of the large pond nearest the beach, so the birds became accustomed to our presence and came near enough for worth while photography. I tried for some shots at Hunstanton earlier, but some people seemed to think their dogs needed a close up view of the shorebirds.:(

As this was my first experience of this, unlike a lot of members here, and in view of Sassans post, I thought worth relating my observations.

Manual focus on birds on the move is a challenge when using a manual focus f5.6 lens at 400mm. Adding a 2x converter, so effectively focusing at f11 is an even greater challenge. I found 400mm a bit short for this sort of thing so I now have a better understanding of the need for even more reach with this subject. Adding a converter really cripples effective aperture so I now fully appreciate the benefits of as large an apperture as possible if a converter is to be added, which it undoubtably will.

A/F, well I did seriously miss it but there is a definate buzz to getting a sharp image without it.

VR, not sure I would have seen a benefit as I used a monopod. I will qualify that by saying that although I think the lens is up to scratch, Nikon does not recommend it be coupled to the TC201 converter so there is image degradation. So for the stars of this type of photography I know these are in the lower resolution order, and Andy's pics for example would well prove that. For these guys I understand VR is a must for absolute quality.

However I think these do show that you can do this sort of photography reasonably well without the absolute ' bees knees ' in kit. It just takes time and patience, and you do miss shots if like me you are operating on single frame. Yes I know, still operating in film mode. :D :D

Pics attached are all full frame 1.6 crop sensor.
Pic 1 : At 400mm.
Pic2 : Similar distance but 400 with 2x converter attached
Pic3 : Stay still and quiet long enough and something will come into range. Again 400mm & 2x converter. In fact this bird ended up under the radar so as to speak.

Don

Now your showing off Don,;) Brilliant bird photos.

Thanks Christine, I can see that this can become quite addictive.

If I find A 500mm f4 AI lens the scope may have to go. :D

Don

Super images Don, the lighting is wonderful. That is some lens or is it the person behind the lens?

Dave

Both I suspect. Nice pictures. He is certainly inspiring me to get outside and have a go.

Leif,

I am pleased this has given a bit of inspiration to have a go.

As like me you will be on a first outing then hopefuly this from yesterday may be helpfull.

If you think of shore birds, then you need to think of how small they are, and with little cover on a beach how close you can get.

For the Ringed Plover at Titchwell I was behind and old WWII concrete job on the beach, and a couple of these came fairly close but not close enough. So even with 2x converter on, they are small in the frame. The crop shows the negative effect in terms of softening of using the converter if you have to crop to make up for lack of lens magnification.

At Hunstanton with lots of dog walkers life was a lot trickier. As the dogs were effectively flushing the Turnstones along the shoreline. I used that to my advantage by watching where they had been, and settling down and hoping that they would eventually duck back behind the dogs. I was really lucky here as they did, but the window of opportunity only lasted a few minutes before the arrival of another dog walker. For this I was using the 400mm without converter. The difference in image quality if you can get away without using a converter, provided you can get near enough, is quite noticeable, unless you can get near a frame filler.

For all my pics I used a monopod, as with only 400mm, needing to get close was going to be the priority. In the event in all cases a tripod would have been unusable without moving further back, either to levelish ground or staying back for fear of putting the birds to flight.

Don

Well you seem to be doing all right, Don! Using other people (with dogs) is a good trick - and if the birds do fly away, the dog-walkers get the blame and not the photographer!

Actually, I remember quite a few years ago 'twitching' a difficult wader at Felixtowe and a couple of well-known bird-photographers came along hoping to get 'the' shot in a bid to ascertain the identity of the bird once and for all. Having been shown where the bird was, together with several other waders, they promptly walked straight out towards the mud where they were feeding, having spotted a small mound behind which they intended to settle down to shoot the bird from cover. Predictably, the birds all flushed but within a minute of the photographers settling down the birds had wheeled round and landed right back where they had started! They were confident that this would happen from previous experience and, yes, they did get the shot that was used in a paper published in 'British Birds' showing why it was one species and not the rarer species hoped for.

Not all species are as obliging as these waders can be and once disturbed, some are gone for good! Some species that rarely encounter humans can be very approachable but each individual can react differently with some much more wary than others of the same species - you just have to get the 'feel' of each bird and if it looks like a flighty one then move on to one that's more obliging.

Conversely, some birds that have to put up with constant disturbance from humans, such as at the local park, etc., adopt a sort of indifference to all but the most intrusive activity. My local woodland has a good range of species but it is fully open to people who use the facility at every opportunity so any bird that wants to live there has to accept a constant stream of dog-walkers, etc., which they seem to do without to much concern.

Throughout the winter months a few people regularly put out food for the birds as they walk around the wood and they always seem to put the food on the nearest gate posts - purely out of convenience, I suppose - which means that any of the birds that accept the food are quite used to humans passing quite close. They just move a few feet farther up into the trees until folks have passed by before returning straight back to the food.

By putting some food (especially sunflower seeds) down for them at the usual spots and then waiting close by I've got quite a lot of real close-up shots of birds without taking any cover whatsoever! Not all species respond - you're never going to get a UK Woodpecker to feed out of your hand like Downy Woodpeckers seem to do in the USA - but many of the smaller species, such as the Tit family soon ignore you and get on with the job of feeding.

I find my close-focussing Sigma 400mm lens ideal in this kind of situation. With sufficient light, hand-holding is possible and you can rattle off several shots in order to get at least one sharp. The auto-focus is better, I find, as it's one less thing to 'fiddle' with and it gives you a constant grip on the lens to help keep it steady. A tripod can be useful but often the birds will come straight in, take a seed and fly off with it to stash it away somewhere. You never know for certain which branch they will perch on momentarily before dropping onto the seed, so hand-holding is much more flexible than tripod-mounting in this situation.

Many of the shots that I've got in the Birdforum gallery that are located at 'Burbage Wood,' 'Burbage Common' or 'Elmesthorpe Plantation' have been taken using this method.

By the way, Don, isn't the recommended 2x converter for your 400mm lens the TC301 model?

Adey,

You are right about the TC301 on Nikon AIS lenses over 200mm. However from Bjørn Rørslett's web site with reviews of lots of Nikon lenses, old and new, there are some old lenses and lens + tc combo's that do not perform well on digital. In this case I do not think the TC301 is worth the investment in case the results are no better than the 201.

If I find the usage of the 400 makes it worth upgrading I might go with the 500 f4 AIS, if and when a reasonable one appears. Most of the used versions will probably be rather beaten up ex press or hire jobs, as in their day this was seriously excotic glass for the amateur market which tends to look after their kit, so it would be a while yet even if I do decide to go that route.

Don

Some of those AIS long-toms do turn up from time to time at sensible prices - the 600mm F5.6 was always a popular one amongst bird photographers - so good luck in finding one.

My wife, my bank manager and my shoulder insist that I stick to my more modest 400mm lens ;)

looking good Don... if you want to photograph waders up close try Salthouse, a 400mm lens should easily get you close enough, even without the tc.

400mm lenses, plus teleconvertors? For turnstones, try a bag of cold chips and use the 18-55 kit lens.

It can be done, ........ and it's a lot cheaper.

Are they able to fly afterwards, or do they just waddle off? And do you give them knotted hankies for the head too?

I remember that in Florida the Ibis and other birds loved chips (or French Fries if you must).

Very good Duncan. At Wells you can only get this close to ducks and starlings using chips. :D

Don