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Post by lar on May 30, 2016 19:20:41 GMT -5
I bought the new lens because I like doing animal and bird "portraits" and I needed more reach. With that in mind I went to the Milwaukee Zoo today to give the new lens a good workout. I also wanted to see how my new tripod would perform in the field. I had to buy a new tripod after I discovered that my existing tripod wasn't quite beefy enough to handle the load of a 4 lb, 10" lens. I was quite pleased with the results. Here are some samples:    |
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Post by millring on May 30, 2016 19:22:40 GMT -5
Great fun!
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Post by frazer on May 30, 2016 20:02:54 GMT -5
Great stuff. Did you get any of the giraffe with its blue tongue sticking out?
I need to get back to taking some proper photographs. I used to take my time and think about the image and get pretty good results back in my SLR days, but now I seem to have fallen into the 'snapshot' mire.
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Post by lar on May 30, 2016 20:35:41 GMT -5
Great stuff. Did you get any of the giraffe with its blue tongue sticking out? I need to get back to taking some proper photographs. I used to take my time and think about the image and get pretty good results back in my SLR days, but now I seem to have fallen into the 'snapshot' mire. Actually, I did. The zoo has built a stairway leading up to a platform. They let visitors, mostly kids but I did see some adults do it to, feed some kind of leafy green vegetable (looked like cabbage) to the giraffes. It was kind of cool. The giraffe sticks out a tongue that looks long enough that he could lick his eyebrows, and then someone lays a leaf on it and the giraffe pulls it into his mouth. It looked like everyone, including the giraffe, as having a good time. The kids really enjoyed it. I try my best to avoid snapshots. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Back in my SLR days I couldn't afford to experiment or really learn how to take photographs. Film and processing was too expensive. Now that I have a DSLR it's a much different story. I can make all of the mistakes I want and delete them. I can now read about a technique and actually experiment with it. It's made a huge difference for me. |
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Post by billhammond on May 30, 2016 20:55:28 GMT -5
That lion has clearly been working out. Great shots, Lar! (Would that lens work on my Instamatic?)
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Post by jdd2 on May 30, 2016 21:09:05 GMT -5
Those are all great shots--can you guesstimate the focal length? Full 600? Something (much) less? *** I don't have the zoom for it, but I noticed some weird wildlife on out my window this morning. And it didn't take long for them to spin a cocoon.   |
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Post by Marshall on May 30, 2016 23:05:31 GMT -5
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Post by dradtke on May 31, 2016 16:30:03 GMT -5
A guy I used to work with had a lens that was a couple feet long and maybe 6-8 inches in diameter. I couldn't begin to tell you the magnification on that thing. He had a tripod for the lens, because the weight of the camera hanging off the back was negligible.
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Post by millring on May 31, 2016 17:15:59 GMT -5
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Post by drlj on May 31, 2016 18:23:28 GMT -5
That first picture of Todd is really impressive.
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Post by lar on May 31, 2016 20:13:29 GMT -5
Those are all great shots--can you guesstimate the focal length? Full 600? Something (much) less? *** Here are the stats: Polar Bear: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/1000, 226mm Giraffe: ISO 100, f/5.6, 1/320, 309mm Lion: ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/100, 428mm The focal lengths shown above were at least somewhat dependent on my distance from the animal. All of these are cropped to some extent. The Lion shot had the tightest crop because he was the farthest away from me and I wanted a good image of his head. Here's another shot of the Lion that I made at 600mm, ISO 100, f/6.3, 1/320. This one is uncropped. All I did was to reduce the size of the photo from the 18 X 12 native format of my camera to a more manageable 9 X 6. I was somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years away from the animal. I have to say that I'm very impressed with the sharpness of this lens. My Canon 70-300mm lens is just a little soft at each end of the focal length spectrum and that's common for zoom lenses, especially the ones with longer focal lengths. This lens is sharper overall. I was shooting wide open here and at the max focal length and I don't think I could ask for ask for a sharper image from a lens in this price range. At the shorter focal lengths the minimum aperture is f/5.0. I noticed that shots taken at that aperture produce some very nice bokeh.  |
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Post by lar on May 31, 2016 20:14:10 GMT -5
That lion has clearly been working out. Great shots, Lar! (Would that lens work on my Instamatic?) Only if you wanted to store the Instamatic inside it. |
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Post by lar on May 31, 2016 20:22:32 GMT -5
A guy I used to work with had a lens that was a couple feet long and maybe 6-8 inches in diameter. I couldn't begin to tell you the magnification on that thing. He had a tripod for the lens, because the weight of the camera hanging off the back was negligible. Wow, that lens much have had some magnification. I'm drooling at the thought. This one isn't quite as big. It's about 10 1/2" long unextended and weighs 4.3 lb. It's too big and too heavy to mount on the camera. Instead I mount the lens on the tripod and then mount the camera on the lens. It didn't take me long to realize that my tripod, great performer that it is, isn't beefy enough to handle this lens. I ended up buying a new tripod that's is much sturdier and made to handle a larger, heavier lens. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the new tripod, which is a pro model, is easier to control, even with smaller lenses, and will do some things my other tripod wouldn't do. I wasn't crazy about having to spend the money but it did turn out to be a win-win situation. |
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Post by Marshall on Jun 1, 2016 6:40:18 GMT -5
Nice work. I think cropping is an important part of the art of photography. My tendency is to balance the object with the background. And I don't often center the subject, unless the pose is very direct to the camera. With the lion ascance looking to the left, and a large dark area behind, I'd push him to teh right and have him gazing over the void.  I have no photography training. Haven't even read any manuals. That's just what feels right to me. Photography and photo editing is a mature art form. We are bombarded by high quality photo art every day. So, even our subconscious becomes an art critic. I'm not saying my ideas are better than anybody else's; certainly not better than yours. I just thought I'd share some ideas on photography. I miss Sekhmet and Cornflakes regular installments. Great work. |
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Post by lar on Jun 1, 2016 9:00:15 GMT -5
I agree with you, Marshall, particularly your thoughts about cropping that photo. How I frame a particular shot varies with the shot and the conditions at the time. In fact my cropped version of that photo looks quite a bit like yours.
In this particular shot I was quite a distance from the Lion. I knew I would be cropping and enlarging but I wanted to leave plenty of room to do that. Many photographers can frame a shot so that it looks much like the finished product. I'm not one of them. I know that my viewfinder gives me about 95% of what the camera is seeing. And that's about all I know. I don't have a feel for what I'm going to be able to crop.
The majority of my photos are cropped to 8 X 10 and the format of the camera is 12 X 18, a much different aspect ratio. I can't look through the viewfinder and see what the photo will look like in it's finished form. I like to give myself room to maneuver when I'm cropping.
This Lion was lying still but that's not the case with a lot of animal photos. Much of the time I compose animal and bird photos with the subject in the center of the shot because they are on the move and I don't have an opportunity to frame the photo in the way I might prefer. Even when the animals stop for a moment it's usually brief. For that reason I've adopted the habit of doing most of the composing when I'm processing the photos.
If I'm shooing macro photos of flowers I do a lot more composing through the viewfinder. The flowers aren't going anywhere.
Like you, Marshall, I have no formal photographic training. I've read quite a lot about the subject. Years ago Kodak put out a pretty decent paperback book small enough to fit in the back pocket of your jeans. It covered the basics and that's where my learning began. I subscribe to two photography magazines. They often contain good tips as well as repeating over and over again some of the very basic elements of photography. Eventually, some of that stuff sinks in.
I'll admit to being more of a technical photographer than an artistic photographer. I have a decent understanding of the techniques of proper exposure, aperture settings, and focusing. It's the artistic part that often eludes me. I know a good photo when I see it. I just don't have a good feel for seeing that photo when I'm looking through the viewfinder. The result is that a lot of my best photos are surprises and some of my planned shots don't turn out quite the way I expected.
In the shots above I didn't notice the Polar Bear's facial expression when I made the shot. I was too busy trying to follow his pacing. That photo is one of a series of shots I made as he paced around his enclosure. This one was by far the best of the bunch because of the facial expression. The Giraffe was planned and it turned out the way I expected. The Lion did too. My only concern when I took that photo was whether I would be be able to enlarge the image as much as I wanted to.
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Post by jdd2 on Jun 1, 2016 23:11:48 GMT -5
Trying for some of that differential focus, hard with only a P&S (about 100mm equiv max):  |
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Post by lar on Jun 2, 2016 7:19:46 GMT -5
It's difficult to get that soft out of focus background unless you can control aperture and exposure. In this case it appears that your camera opened up the aperture enough for that to happen and you got a nice shot. Not bad with a point-and-shoot.
I don't have the first clue about how an automatic camera figures out aperture and exposure. Did you have the program setting on portrait? If so I'm guessing that the camera is programmed to try to produce the out of focus background as that's something that is often a part of portrait photography. It depends a lot on how much light is available. In bright sunlight it should be easier for the camera to produce that kind of result.
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Post by jdd2 on Jun 2, 2016 19:12:25 GMT -5
That was just the basic auto setting--I didn't think to try portrait mode...! I'll have to explore that. That was full zoom, I think 100mm, and tho that's a cropped version, I was close enough (and the background far enough), and there were enough flowers that the camera didn't get confused about what to focus on. I do know how aperture affects depth of field--increase it by stopping down and vice versa. I think that's why the traditional 90-105 range were called portrait lenses, you could stay back enough that you weren't in your subject's face, but still use the lens to isolate the face. The camera that I would like to try is fujifilm's X-E2S (or the older X-E2, which just got a major firmware upgrade, even a new manual for the changes). From what I read it makes older people who know that world feel like they're running a film camera again. More like a rangefinder than SLR. With an adaptor, I have a couple older canon lenses that could be used with it. I need to dig those out of the closet, see exactly what they are, and whether I'd start with those, or try one or another from fujifilm. |
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Post by lar on Jun 2, 2016 19:22:14 GMT -5
That was just the basic auto setting--I didn't think to try portrait mode...! I'll have to explore that. That was full zoom, I think 100mm, and tho that's a cropped version, I was close enough (and the background far enough), and there were enough flowers that the camera didn't get confused about what to focus on. I do know how aperture affects depth of field--increase it by stopping down and vice versa. I think that's why the traditional 90-105 range were called portrait lenses, you could stay back enough that you weren't in your subject's face, but still use the lens to isolate the face. The camera that I would like to try is fujifilm's X-E2S (or the older X-E2, which just got a major firmware upgrade, even a new manual for the changes). From what I read it makes older people who know that world feel like they're running a film camera again. More like a rangefinder than SLR. With an adaptor, I have a couple older canon lenses that could be used with it. I need to dig those out of the closet, see exactly what they are, and whether I'd start with those, or try one or another from fujifilm. That sounds interesting. I encourage you to run right out, buy it, and post some photos. Don't even think about it, just do it. I enjoy photographing flowers close-up. Not long after I bought my first DSLR I decided that I NEEDED a Canon f/2.8, 100mm, macro lens. I've never regretted the purchase. That large aperture makes for some very nice narrow depth of field photos. The beauty of some of my flower photos goes way beyond my ability to actually plan and execute the shot. |
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Post by jdd2 on Jun 2, 2016 20:00:26 GMT -5
Smr bonus comes July 1st (usually), so maybe. One down side for using an adaptor and non-fujinon lenses (from what I've read) is that you're stuck with using them wide open. (tho maybe not if they're old enough to have an actual, physical ring on the lens??)
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