More Telephoto

Look, I know a woman who shoots owls while humping a Canon 500/4 through the woods. I mean, that is dedication to the art, as we are talking about 8-10lbs worth of lens and whatever the camera body runs. I mean is you have the will-power to do it, great! Personally, that's serious work, as you tack on the miles.

Remember the short, Diffractive Optic 400/4 that Canon produced?

Attachment 58902

It was a backpacker, for sure. Priced accordingly. It was definitely lighter.

Again, the 300/2.8 is a serious lens... and I applaud its capability, just not its portability.

That looks like a fine piece of glass. Don't let Don's detractions get to you. He's just slower on the uptake to good glass. He touted low end just a few years ago and he's slowly starting to see the virtues of better faster glass, his collection (and I mean COLLECTION) is in a slow evolution. In the meanwhile he'll belittle choices that aren't his, but then later they'll become his, then everything's good with that choice. That wolf example is reason enough to pass up on that 70-400, it's nowhere's near sharp (although I think if he would have chosen a crop of the other wolf it would have been much sharper.)

I'm with Rooz. 100-400, yeah pretty good, 300 f/4 better, 300 f/2.8...hooo boy!!! There's a reason for the big guns.

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Originally Posted by DonSchap

Look, I know a woman who shoots owls while humping a Canon 500/4 through the woods. I mean, that is dedication to the art, as we are talking about 8-10lbs worth of lens and whatever the camera body runs. I mean is you have the will-power to do it, great! Personally, that's serious work, as you tack on the miles.

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Speaks to your dedication to "get the shot" eh?

Guys... if you are into heavy equipment, god bless ya. I have seen these lenses in the wild, so to speak. If you can do it... right on. All I am suggesting is that there are a myriad of lighter alternatives, if you are not honor bound to going at it "hardcore."

I suppose the Canon 1200mm f/5.6 is also a lens to have for shooting something.

Attachment 58903

Hug that baby tight... as you jog on down the trail.

don, we can accept that there are smaller lighter alternatives, all we are suggesting is that they aren't in the same league. that's all we are saying, its not really that complicated really. i also find it mildly amusing you talking about humping gear around when i reckon your pack would weight double mine even with the 300/2.8 attached. lol besides which once its on a monopod then they're all the same pretty much and i can guarantee you that even on a bad day the 300/2.8 will smoke anything coming out of a long range zoom. sometimes, (most times), what matters most is the IQ.

try doing this with a 70-400 thru 1 inch thick grubby plate glass. its the difference between getting a shot and not getting a shot.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7167/6...88673b52_b.jpg
Untitled by .Chris.K, on Flickr

Not into heavy equipment...into the best for a given situation. Unfortunately that almost always (always) means heavy. What did that bag of yours weigh when you did that heavily lighted train shot? How many trips? That's dedication, doing what it takes, if that means lugging a 5 lb lens around then so be it. When was the last time you lugged your gear into the wilds of Illinois (Brookfield) more than a few hundred yards, let alone tacking on the miles?

500mm f/4 IS = 8.53 lbs, I carry much more than that around my middle, maybe it'd be good for me to hike around with a 12 lb pack on my back, eh? I can't blame anyone for that but myself. Read about Moose Peterson, or Thom Mangeleson hiking routinely with a 500mm monsters, they're dedicated to getting the best shot they can, and pay for it in equipment weight. It's just part of the equation, and theres no reason to make fun of someone that puts that kind of dedication in. That dedication equals a better shot when the time comes and I applaud the hard work rather than ridiculing it.

I remember hearing a quote attributed to Ansel Adams about his favorite camera being the heaviest one he could carry.

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Originally Posted by DonSchap

Does ANYONE own a SONY/Minolta AF 300mm f/2.8 G SSM lens? Heck, I'd like to see an example of that $6000 bad boy under some extreme conditions. I suspect a lot of them are still on shelves, somewhere. That's a lot of money to tie up in a seldom used piece of glass for most folks. It also weighs in at a substantial amount. Glass is glass, of course. f/2.8 is big glass...........

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Don, I'm surprised you ask seeing as you know I have one. It was a new car or the 300mm; well what would you choose?

Look at the Rabbit on the first page of this thread. That was handheld so not necessarily representative of the best the lens can do.

In another thread, in the SONY DSLR forum, I spoke of trying out the brand, spanking new SONY 500mm f/4 G SSM... but they also had a couple of SONY 300mm f/2.8 G SSMs just lying around, so I grabbed it... mounted on the a850, went handheld, SSS-on and proceeded to shoot and play with it, using the 10-foot distant a77 exploded display. Obviously, I wanted the f/2.8 aperture to test, so the resultant depth of field was so shallow, it was close to nuts (1/2-inch around center focus). As such, I took several varied-focus shots and stitched them back together, as best I could, as a panorama.

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r...-w300mmf28.jpg

This was a solo frame of that pano... it gives you an idea of how little area you can pack into a 300mm-shot at 10-feet. Guessing, maybe 8" x 10". The entire a77 exploded display was about 18-inches long. It is easy to see that shallow DOF.

http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r...8w300mmf28.jpg
EXIF: SONY a850 w/ 300mm f/2.8 G SSM
300mm - f/2.8 - 1/250th/sec - ISO-400 - Ambient - W/B adjusted in post.

After doing that, I quickly realized that having a "fixed" lens of this length, INDOORS, was almost close to useless. Gentlemen, for $6000, useless was not what I had in mind.

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Originally Posted by DonSchap

.....After doing that, I quickly realized that having a "fixed" lens of this length, INDOORS, was almost close to useless. Gentlemen, for $6000, useless was not what I had in mind.

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Useless is not an adjective that comes readily to mind concerning this lens.

Attachment 59008