Photography - help needed with picking a lense

[RudolfMDLT]

Hi there,

I need some advice from the wise Ubuntu folk! :)

I need to invest in a lens for a Canon 350D. The camara came with a lense but as far as wildlife photography is concerned it sucks.

I'm looking at taking photo's of wild life and birds. With the current lens i need to poison the birds and freeze them in order to make them sit still long enough for me to take the pic.

I heard that Sigma make good lenses? For someone on a tight budget a 500mm looks like it's going to out of the question, then again, will a 300mm suffice? Basically, will a 300mm be okay for taking good photo's of wild life or should I save another couple o months for the 500mm?

Any brands/makes that you would like to suggest? Any other advice would be awsome!

Thanks,

Rudolf

[Papi-KB7VGW]

I don't know much about this new fangled digital stuff but as a old hand at film cameras the best advise I ever got was to but the best quality lens. It proved to be true for me. The best were always Minolta, Canon, Nikon, & Schneider. Especially with a telephoto you need very good quality. Sigma is not what you want IMHO. Save your $ and get a quality Nikon or Cannon 300mm. Don't forget your going to need a sturdy tripod for whatever you buy. :)

[popch]

You might consider a mirror telephoto lens. Also, depending on your country, you might find a second hand one.

To save on poison, go for the maximum aperture you can get. The smaller the number, the bigger the aperture.

[@trophy]

Mirror lenses = blurry = bad. Stick with traditional optics, and 300mm will do you fine if you can't afford a longer telephoto. Just remember to get better at hiding... you want to get as close as possible without scaring the birds. Also, bring a tripod or monopod. Always. No matter what.

[popch]

Mirror lenses = blurry = bad. .

Not so. There are quite nice ones. They suffer from limited depth of field, however. Quality of pic much depends on resolution and quality of the camera electronics.

[RudolfMDLT]

Thanks for the advice guys - appreciate it! :)

[ssam]

have a check around the canon and sigma websites, i got them to send me lens brochures in the past with lots of glossy pictures.

how big you budget is will make a difference. there are lens between £50 and £5000. the expensive lens are not expensive just for fun, you get what you pay for to a large extent.

get a good tripod, it can be better value for money than spending more on a lens.

[@trophy]

get a good tripod, it can be better value for money than spending more on a lens.

I disagree. Camera bodies come and go, tripods are fine as long as they can hold your camera still, but glass... the glass is the important part. It will make or break every picture you will ever take. Invest as much money as you can into good glass.

[eentonig]

Sigma makes some good lensen (photo wise). Build quality is more a problem.

But I must agree. If you want quality pictures. Invest (a lot) in good glasswork.

300mm will work somehow. What you could do is to add an extender. But don't forget that you'll loose diafragma when doing so.

[regomodo]

Mirror lenses = blurry = bad. Stick with traditional optics, and 300mm will do you fine if you can't afford a longer telephoto. Just remember to get better at hiding... you want to get as close as possible without scaring the birds. Also, bring a tripod or monopod. Always. No matter what.

I've found mirror lenses to be surprisngly good. Even an old Tamron 500mm i got for free worked pretty well on my D70 (i.e. 750mm). However, it needs good light as f8 is fairly slow.

Whatever you do don't get a teleconverter. Biggest waste of money i've ever made.

About monopods/tripods. It's best if you can actually mount them to the lens as it pretty annoying on the camera body with a long heavy lens

[RudolfMDLT]

I disagree. Camera bodies come and go, tripods are fine as long as they can hold your camera still, but glass... the glass is the important part. It will make or break every picture you will ever take. Invest as much money as you can into good glass.

I agree with this - thanks! I've heard a lot about Zoom VS Lens quality debate when a budget must be met.

Thanks for all the info guys! :) Please keep it coming!

As for mirror lenses - how much light have you lost in practicle application? Do the pictures come out horribly under exposed or is it just a matter of preference?

[regomodo]

As for mirror lenses - how much light have you lost in practicle application? Do the pictures come out horribly under exposed or is it just a matter of preference?

A decent telephoto should be no slower than f4. A mirror lens is f8. Almost 2 whole steps slower. If you don't know how to meter or use the histogram then you will get under or over exposed images.

It sounds like to me you lack some basic photographic knowledge. Learn up on some composition theory (golden section/rule of thirds), characteristics/physics of lenses (bokeh/depth of field/aperture), metering (matrix/spot/incident/reflective/18% grey) and many other things before you start parting with some hefty amounts of cash.

[red_Marvin]

A decent telephoto should be no slower than f4. [snip]
What do you mean? f# = apperture values do not say anything about the shutter speed, or are you referring to the speed difference you get at a given light situation when comparing f1/4 and f1/8? (If so, don't mind me, I've just never heard it expressed with those words)

I do agree though that a big apperture will be necessary, since you will be working with existing light, and want to have reasonable shutter speed even if you are using a tripod.

Mirror lenses are both good and bad;
+ Light - no heavy lenses, smaller (shorter), Since it uses mirrors and not lenses you'll get less chromatic aberration (Different colours are refracted (word?) differently in a lens)
- fixed apperture (At least the one I've used) = lesser flexibility
Light sources that are out of focus will also get a ring/donut shaped appearance, (bokeh), which can be both constructive and destructive for the final image depending on if you can use it.

I'd say that 200mm is a good focal length to start with, and since the light sensitive area, on the 350d is smaller than the one on a 35mm film camera it will "appear" as 320mm (bad choice of words I'm sorry).

Myself I've been drooling for the canon Ef 200mm f1/2,8L II Usm, but it's about 851€ ;_; ...

[RichPeter]

Definitely go with glass...that's where you'll get your best value...perhaps go used so you can get the top model you can afford.

[@trophy]

I'd say that 200mm is a good focal length to start with, and since the light sensitive area, on the 350d is smaller than the one on a 35mm film camera it will "appear" as 320mm (bad choice of words I'm sorry).


Yeah I have a Digital Rebel XT, and it has the same size sensor. It's important to note that the slight telephoto effect is an illusion... what's actually happening is your camera is cropping the picture for you because some of the light from the lens hits outside the sensor. The part that really sucks about this is if you get a really really wide angle lens it will crop off the edges and make it look like you spent a lot less on that lens than you really did.

Oh, and if you can get some prime lenses, they're way better than zoom quality wise. They are also sturdier, which for a wildlife photographer would be a good thing, no?

Man, we should have a photography forum where we can share all our stuff with each other.

[popch]

the slight telephoto effect is an illusion... what's actually happening is your camera is cropping the picture for you because some of the light from the lens hits outside the sensor.

Oh, and if you can get some prime lenses, they're way better than zoom quality wise. .

Just to be precise: Lenses are termed 'telephoto', 'wide angle' and 'normal' according to their ratio of focal length to the diagonal of the 'sensor', that is, of the area recording the image.

Thus, with the widely used 35mm format the image area is 24mmx36mm, the diagonal in the order of 50mm. Anything noticeably longer than 50mm is termed a 'telephoto', shorter a 'wide angle'.

While the quality of the lens is very important for the quality of the final picture, it has possibly been overstated for this case.

The optical resolution of a modern film (both slide or negative) exceeds the resolution of most sensors in digital cameras by a wide margin. Thus, improving the glass on a camera which exposes a film almost always yields an improvement in the resulting image, while improving the glass on a digital camera possibly just raises the price without any noticeable effect on the image. That will be the case if the errors in the produced image are smaller than the individual sensing elements of the sensor.

[regomodo]

What do you mean? f# = apperture values do not say anything about the shutter speed, or are you referring to the speed difference you get at a given light situation when comparing f1/4 and f1/8? (If so, don't mind me, I've just never heard it expressed with those words)

I do agree though that a big apperture will be necessary, since you will be working with existing light, and want to have reasonable shutter speed even if you are using a tripod.
.

Well, im simplifying things a lot here but you aren't going to have fun with a slow telephoto mainly because autofocus will be an issue in dark light and shutter-speeds will not help sharpness. I talk in f#s as i'm always an available light person and British weather is usually dark, even in summer like it is now!

I guess if you go for a not-so-fast lens but with VR then thats fine as most lens with VR aren't bad. For me VR is a bit of a con as the object has to be perfectly still. Horses for courses i guess.

Me? I try to stick with primes, MF and BnW which i develop and print myself. I prefer it to digital for many various reasons which i wont get into. Nope, i'm not an old fogey.

[popch]

British weather is usually dark, even in summer like it is now!.

Yes, I've noticed that. It's often a bit brighter once you go out of doors.

[@trophy]

The optical resolution of a modern film (both slide or negative) exceeds the resolution of most sensors in digital cameras by a wide margin. Thus, improving the glass on a camera which exposes a film almost always yields an improvement in the resulting image, while improving the glass on a digital camera possibly just raises the price without any noticeable effect on the image. That will be the case if the errors in the produced image are smaller than the individual sensing elements of the sensor.

Yeah, as of right now it's not going to make a whole lot better picture (although I still can notice some difference with better lenses). But as sensors are getting better all the time, it's best to buy good glass. That way next time I upgrade to a newer body I'll have better pictures, or if I decide to go back to film I'll have better pictures.