Lens Musings

[Leif]

Originally Posted by Dave Smith

Super images Don, the lighting is wonderful. That is some lens or is the person behind the lens?

Dave

Both I suspect. Nice pictures. He is certainly inspiring me to get outside and have a go.

[Don Hoey]

Leif,

I am pleased this has given a bit of inspiration to have a go.

As like me you will be on a first outing then hopefuly this from yesterday may be helpfull.

If you think of shore birds, then you need to think of how small they are, and with little cover on a beach how close you can get.

For the Ringed Plover at Titchwell I was behind and old WWII concrete job on the beach, and a couple of these came fairly close but not close enough. So even with 2x converter on, they are small in the frame. The crop shows the negative effect in terms of softening of using the converter if you have to crop to make up for lack of lens magnification.

At Hunstanton with lots of dog walkers life was a lot trickier. As the dogs were effectively flushing the Turnstones along the shoreline. I used that to my advantage by watching where they had been, and settling down and hoping that they would eventually duck back behind the dogs. I was really lucky here as they did, but the window of opportunity only lasted a few minutes before the arrival of another dog walker. For this I was using the 400mm without converter. The difference in image quality if you can get away without using a converter, provided you can get near enough, is quite noticeable, unless you can get near a frame filler.

For all my pics I used a monopod, as with only 400mm, needing to get close was going to be the priority. In the event in all cases a tripod would have been unusable without moving further back, either to levelish ground or staying back for fear of putting the birds to flight.

Don

[Adey Baker]

Well you seem to be doing all right, Don! Using other people (with dogs) is a good trick - and if the birds do fly away, the dog-walkers get the blame and not the photographer!

Actually, I remember quite a few years ago 'twitching' a difficult wader at Felixtowe and a couple of well-known bird-photographers came along hoping to get 'the' shot in a bid to ascertain the identity of the bird once and for all. Having been shown where the bird was, together with several other waders, they promptly walked straight out towards the mud where they were feeding, having spotted a small mound behind which they intended to settle down to shoot the bird from cover. Predictably, the birds all flushed but within a minute of the photographers settling down the birds had wheeled round and landed right back where they had started! They were confident that this would happen from previous experience and, yes, they did get the shot that was used in a paper published in 'British Birds' showing why it was one species and not the rarer species hoped for.

Not all species are as obliging as these waders can be and once disturbed, some are gone for good! Some species that rarely encounter humans can be very approachable but each individual can react differently with some much more wary than others of the same species - you just have to get the 'feel' of each bird and if it looks like a flighty one then move on to one that's more obliging.

Conversely, some birds that have to put up with constant disturbance from humans, such as at the local park, etc., adopt a sort of indifference to all but the most intrusive activity. My local woodland has a good range of species but it is fully open to people who use the facility at every opportunity so any bird that wants to live there has to accept a constant stream of dog-walkers, etc., which they seem to do without to much concern.

Throughout the winter months a few people regularly put out food for the birds as they walk around the wood and they always seem to put the food on the nearest gate posts - purely out of convenience, I suppose - which means that any of the birds that accept the food are quite used to humans passing quite close. They just move a few feet farther up into the trees until folks have passed by before returning straight back to the food.

By putting some food (especially sunflower seeds) down for them at the usual spots and then waiting close by I've got quite a lot of real close-up shots of birds without taking any cover whatsoever! Not all species respond - you're never going to get a UK Woodpecker to feed out of your hand like Downy Woodpeckers seem to do in the USA - but many of the smaller species, such as the Tit family soon ignore you and get on with the job of feeding.

I find my close-focussing Sigma 400mm lens ideal in this kind of situation. With sufficient light, hand-holding is possible and you can rattle off several shots in order to get at least one sharp. The auto-focus is better, I find, as it's one less thing to 'fiddle' with and it gives you a constant grip on the lens to help keep it steady. A tripod can be useful but often the birds will come straight in, take a seed and fly off with it to stash it away somewhere. You never know for certain which branch they will perch on momentarily before dropping onto the seed, so hand-holding is much more flexible than tripod-mounting in this situation.

Many of the shots that I've got in the Birdforum gallery that are located at 'Burbage Wood,' 'Burbage Common' or 'Elmesthorpe Plantation' have been taken using this method.

By the way, Don, isn't the recommended 2x converter for your 400mm lens the TC301 model?

[Don Hoey]

Originally Posted by Adey Baker

By the way, Don, isn't the recommended 2x converter for your 400mm lens the TC301 model?

Adey,

You are right about the TC301 on Nikon AIS lenses over 200mm. However from Bjørn Rørslett's web site with reviews of lots of Nikon lenses, old and new, there are some old lenses and lens + tc combo's that do not perform well on digital. In this case I do not think the TC301 is worth the investment in case the results are no better than the 201.

If I find the usage of the 400 makes it worth upgrading I might go with the 500 f4 AIS, if and when a reasonable one appears. Most of the used versions will probably be rather beaten up ex press or hire jobs, as in their day this was seriously excotic glass for the amateur market which tends to look after their kit, so it would be a while yet even if I do decide to go that route.

Don

[Adey Baker]

Some of those AIS long-toms do turn up from time to time at sensible prices - the 600mm F5.6 was always a popular one amongst bird photographers - so good luck in finding one.

My wife, my bank manager and my shoulder insist that I stick to my more modest 400mm lens

[postcardcv]

looking good Don... if you want to photograph waders up close try Salthouse, a 400mm lens should easily get you close enough, even without the tc.

[yelvertoft]

Originally Posted by Adey Baker

By putting some food (especially sunflower seeds) down for them at the usual spots and then waiting close by I've got quite a lot of real close-up shots of birds without taking any cover whatsoever! Not all species respond

400mm lenses, plus teleconvertors? For turnstones, try a bag of cold chips and use the 18-55 kit lens.

It can be done, ........ and it's a lot cheaper.

[Leif]

Originally Posted by yelvertoft

400mm lenses, plus teleconvertors? For turnstones, try a bag of cold chips and use the 18-55 kit lens.

It can be done, ........ and it's a lot cheaper.

Are they able to fly afterwards, or do they just waddle off? And do you give them knotted hankies for the head too?

I remember that in Florida the Ibis and other birds loved chips (or French Fries if you must).

[Don Hoey]

Very good Duncan. At Wells you can only get this close to ducks and starlings using chips.

Don