We have several ponds in our neighborhood, and there's often a lot of birds (primarily ducks and Canadian geese) in the ponds, which made for some great photos.
It was a bit windy, which didn't help matters since I wasn't using a tripod, but I still got several decent shots. I'm impressed with the colors and clarity of the images, and it's nice to be able to get great shots without getting so close to the subject that you disturb it.
From 275mm:
From 400mm:
From 320mm:
From 400mm:
From 200mm:
From 100mm:
From 400mm:
Looks good. As much as I like my 2x telconverter, there's only so much image degradation I'll end up tolerating in the long run. I may look into this or a good prime.
ReplyDeleteDo you shoot in jpeg or RAW?
The bokeh on those last couple shots at 400 mm is excellent.
For now, I only shoot in jpeg. I may switch to jpeg+RAW when the price of CF UDMA 16GB cards comes down a bit more, or when I decide I have the time to work with the RAW files more.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I've noticed with this lens is that the images seem to take more time to write to the card than with my other lenses. It may just be my imagination, but I don't think so. This could be a combination of the processor writing and trying to manage autofocus for the next shot, but I'm not sure.
I definitely need to get this thing on a tripod to get better images. Most of the ones I posted were good, but I took a lot that didn't have level horizon lines and that had other issues caused by wind and hand shake.
Yeah, I was glancing through the EXIF data on some of them and it looked like some of your shutter speeds were a bit lower than your focal length but your aperture was up pretty high. I typically shoot in aperture priority mode so I can control the background. I think if you opened the aperture up a bit on some of those shots, you could have shot at a much faster shutter speed which would reduce camera shake.
ReplyDeleteThat's the drawback of long lenses... Quick shutter speeds unless you're set up on a tripod.
Shooting in RAW will help your images come out sharper, too. When you shoot in jpeg, your camera makes a lot of compression decisions for you while it processes the image in-camera.
Yup, I just had it in creative auto mode for all these shots, and just adjusted the background blur settings (i.e., aperture) depending on how I wanted the shot composed. This doesn't give you maximum control, but it gives you some--just not over the shutter speed. I have been playing with that around the house, but not anywhere else. One of these days, when I have more time and no conference calls hanging over my head, I'll have to spend more time outside with the lens and a tripod and play with the various settings more. Time is always the problem.
ReplyDeleteKeep posting the photos. I enjoy looking at them and trying to figure out all this lens stuff. I would love to be able to take good photos of all the animals in our backyard.
ReplyDeletei like the one with the baby geese.
ReplyDelete