Sunday, April 29, 2007

Why I need a long lens :)

The 70-200 mm is simply not long enough :)

needlonglens
Posted by Arun at 10:51 AM

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

You could use a 1.4x TC with the 70-200mm to give you 280mm. Stiill not long enough for birding. I find my 300mm f/4 L IS short as well. I think you need a minimum of 400mm. Canon's 400mm f/5.6 L is said to be a stellar lens in terms of performance, but it does not have IS. Many expect Canon to update this lens with IS. The other Canon option is the 100-400mm L IS zoom - this has a push-pull zoom mechanism which enables rapid zooming, although people allege it is a dust pump as a result.

12:59 PM
Arun said...

The two things to be thought about are - affordability and transportability.

The 300mm f/2.8 L IS supposedly performs well with a 2x TC giving 600 mm f/5.6; it would be on the limit of hand-holdability. It is also expensive.

The 300mm f/4 L IS could take a 1.4x TC, giving 520 mm f/5.6 - and will be not heavier than the 70-200mm f/2.8 LIS, I think?

I think in roughly the same ballpark of cost as the 300mm f/4 LIS + 1.4 TC, the Bigma is another possibility. The Bigma is somewhat heavier than the 70-200mm f/2.8 LIS, and has no image stabilization; but people seem to have good hand-held shots with it.

So, Rajan, if you have a 1.4x TC, do let me know how it works with your 300mm f/4 LIS. :)

1:41 PM
Anonymous said...

I have used the 1.4x TC on my 300mm f/1.4 L IS very occasionally but for only compressed landscape shots and that too, on a tripod. The pictures, as I recall, were very good. Unfortunately I don't have any saved.

If you put a 2x TC on the 300mm f/2.8 L IS to convert it to 600mm f/5.6, you will seldom get sharp shots in the field (unless you have very bright lighting conditions) since shutter speeds of at least 1/600s will be needed. I think for handheld birding the 400mm f/5.6 is a beauty. Too bad it doesn't have IS.

I have not researched the Bigma. Many Canon L fanatics are not too excited about it.

By the way, there was a hilarious thread on dpreview some months back. One fellow in the US, not much into photography, got the big 500mm Canon lens as a gift from his wife to shoot his kids on the field. He complained that he had a hard time locating his boy with that narrow a f.o.v. and didn;t know what to do with the lens.

3:02 PM
Arun said...

:)

This may interest you:- there is an example of a 1.4x TC cascaded with a 2x TC and the 300mm f/2.8 LIS :)

http://www.digiscoped.com/canon300mm.html

5:20 PM
Anonymous said...

Arun,

See this -

http://tinyurl.com/yvwsuz

I have the TS-E 90mm but have yet to practise with it. Nori also has some very beautiful landscape and bird picture on his site.

4:23 AM
Ashish said...

mammaji.... check out my blog too http://ashishpaul2004.photoblog.com/

8:34 AM

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