Advice please on wildlife lens

[Adrian]

No, I did realise that William! We are looking at wildlife generally: for example on the trip horizon is whale watching and probably an animal safari. I am in the process of booking a 2 days course with a well know wildlife and bird photographer who is published quite a bit in the UK, in order to reduce the learning time and error rate.

Adrian

[William W]

Good ho! I am off to sleep now. Keep me informed, please.

[Adrian]

Right, this is an upload trial. This goose was about 100 metres away and was busily swimming having just landed.

Zoom is at 375mm I think. On the Tamron. 1/2500 (sequence was in flight), ISO 400 f5.6 (as the sequence was attempting to blur out trees). Using the 70D.

It is not stellar obviously, but this was one of the first shots we took. Hand held.

[Adrian]

Right, this one is on the 5DIII body and was taken from about 9 metres away. Hand held. On the slow side an 1/250 483mm ISO 250 f 6.3 (deliberate attempt to blur the background). Dragonfly annoyingly kept flicking about! My son took this - I think probably in his first 10 tries with this lens. He is very familiar with the 5DIII as it is similar to his 7D.

This should be a macro subject really, so using a long telephoto is difficult. However, it was across a wet gully and was as close as my sone could get.

[Adrian]

This one, the last for tonight, illustrates the prime difficulty with this lens. My wife called to me that there was a Heron on an island in the lake. By the time I had move a few paces and got the camera up, the bird was taking off, about 100m away. I got six shots off and this was typical. I could get the bird in shot (luckily Heron's are slow) but there was no way I could get the zoom on at the same time as it is hard work! In my Canon 70-200f2.8L (that I am pretty used to) I would have zoomed as I brought the camera up. This is not easy on a long lens.

This is on the 5DIII at 1/320 - obviously too slow: I was set up for swimming ducks, not flying birds and I could not change settings fast enough (remember this is a hobby for me, along with motorbikes guitars, cooking, you name it - too many calls on time). Birds in flight are tricky I have discovered!

[Geoff F]

Regarding macro shots with a long zoom. I have attached an extension tube to my Sigma lens with reasonable success. Obviously not up to true macro standards but sufficient for insect identification.

ps. That 'dragonfly' is actually a very interesting Damselfly. I will have to consult the books and report back.

[Geoff F]

It looks like a Blue-tailed Damselfly. There is an almost identical Scarce Blue-tailed but as far as I can see, without a close up of the pronotum this is the commoner form.

[ajohnw]

There is a review of the Tamron here that seems to be sensible. I noticed the weight increase compared with the 200-500mm. More glass and VC despite the use of plastics - I favour that on lenses that need to light.

http://www.sumeetmoghe.com/2014/02/f...amron-150.html

The video on this link indicates that the zoom ring turns a fair amount to cover the range. They have no choice really as it's moving a big piece of glass. I would be thinking about trying to set framing very roughly before even raising the camera.

Looks like he uses a balance bar on a tripod even with a battery grip.

It also mentions continuous AF difficulties at the long end. That may be down to F6.x rather than F5.6.

I would want to see a decent test for full frame use before contemplating buying for that. Often the cheaper "full frame" lenses are great on crop but do show weaknesses on full frame. Take Tamron's 70-200mm F2.8 for instance pre VC. On crop it can be seriously compared with Nikon's. It does show slight weaknesses on full frame but often that can be worse on other lenses.

On weight and seeing shotguns mentioned an old training trick might be of benefit to some. Have a weight near your lounge chair. Periodically while watching telly or what ever pick it up in the left hand and extend the arm and hold it for period long enough to to site and shoot. The easily available weight in the UK was a I pint milk bottle filled with water. Our pints are a bit bigger than US ones. Canadian are I believe the same. Maybe a 1kg weight ball etc would be suitable for photography with a heavy lens.

On another comment I believe that shots must be panned through as they are taken otherwise the IS is likely to compensate for the stop. On hand held macro when I have had this cause problems it produces as sort of double image. It's a bit difficult to hold a camera steady at high mag so the IS is working continuously.

Not that I will be buying the Tamron lens yet. I've succumbed and just ordered an E-M1.

John
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[Adrian]

My impression so far is that the lens is useful on a crop if you really want to get close up top that 980mm end, but that it handles better on the 5DIII. Weight is not an issue in the slightest for me as I am tall and not stick thin, my 17 year old son had no issues with it either, but my wife definitely noticed that having a long (maybe 18 inches with hood) 4 lb or 2kg chunk of glass can be tiring to hold still. She used the grip on tripod mount though and found it very useful. The downside is it makes zooming a bit harder as the zoom ring has a lot of rotation and fair amount of resistance. She is used to lenses that zoom extremely quickly and easily. However, going from 150-600 is a big range and as John pointed out, a lot of glass is being moved.

I would still have bought this lens if had been say 350-600. Maybe shortening the zoom range would deliver silkier handling.

[ajohnw]

The impression I have got from comments on full frame is fine especially considering the price. On that aspect it's especially interesting. The Sigma 120-300mm F2.8 doesn't trombone may be easier to handle is some ways and could be used with a 2x converter. I believe that one comes in at 3kg, costs rather a lot and probably suffers a bit from the use of a converter.

DXO have tested the Tamron but I don't think their tests are much good.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news...nons-100-400mm

I use this site as a 2nd source of decent reviews - the lens fairs well on a 5D mkIII. I just wish they would give numbers so I can decide what excellent is. They will post shots at times showing that results may not live up to expectations.

http://www.ephotozine.com/article/ta...s-review-23866

There are plenty of shots taken with the lens here

https://www.flickr.com/groups/2470447@N21/pool/

I reckon I might buy one at some point.

John
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[Manfred M]

Adrian - I think you have hit the nail right on the head.

With long glass; yes, you get the reach from the long focal length; but the lenses are heavy, difficult to compose when hand-holding (small angle of view ~ 4° at 600mm), slow to focus, etc.

I've found that while you can get great wildlife shots, you get a lot more missed shots (soft, out of focus, motion blur, poor composition, etc.) unless you are working off a fairly sturdy tripod. That's hard to do when the subject matter is moving quickly (nicely said, it's easier to get a shot of an elephant than a bird).

[Adrian]

Final update:

Bill recommended the Canon converter. 2 times Mk III arrived about a week ago. Cost £305 and is frankly a no brainer if you have fast glass. It works extremely well with the 70-200 f2.8L Mk II: hardy any drop in focus speed, you lose two stops outoods but that is generally OK. Main benefit is the superb lens handling and quality remains.

Having both the Tamron and a useful Canon solution is the best of both worlds without spending silly money for big, heavy pro glass which forces tripod use (unhelpful for travelling at times).

We also bought a roller camera bag for travelling (Think Tank airport V2) - but that's a different story. (Not recommended).