Are you looking at me?

[RoadKingLarry]

Sitting on the front porch waiting for birds to come in to the feeder and this little darling dropped in for a visit.



Caught this guy Sunday morning he(she?) hangs around the marina and isn't easy to get close to.



Almost enough to make a guy want a longer lens

[230RN]

What the heck was that first "thing?"

"Almost enough to make a guy want a longer lens."

Funny, both my sons were bragging about getting huge lenses recently at a photo show or something.  So I search-engined <photographers with huge lenses> images.

Some of them are pretty funny, but the one I e-mailed them was of a well-muscled photog with biceps a-bulged holding a huge lens attached to his little itty-bitty (by comparison) camera.

I made several snarky wise-assed impolitic remarks about them needing a little more excercise to manage those lenses.

I don't think I'm going to get anything in my Christmas stocking from either of them this year.

Terry

[RoadKingLarry]

The first "thing" is a little bitty orb weaver spider that lives under the eaves on my front porch. Not much bigger than the finger nail on my pinky finger.

The lens in your picture is the Sigma (Bigma) 200-500 F2.8. One hell of a lens with a $26K price tag on it. A wee bit out of my league.
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/telephoto-lenses/200-500mm-f2-8-apo-ex-dg

[230RN]

Only two words to describe that critter.  "Uhg" and "Lee."

[230RN]

Heh.  So smartassed Son1 sent this to his smartassed father:

http://akashinfo.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/worlds-biggest-canon-5200mm-lens.html

It's even got its own spotting scope.

[Hawkmoon]

Heh.  So smartassed Son1 sent this to his smartassed father:

http://akashinfo.weebly.com/2/post/2012/04/worlds-biggest-canon-5200mm-lens.html

It's even got its own spotting scope.

Minimum Object Distance: 120 meters (Approx 393 feet!)

That sort of limits the everyday applications a bit ...

[230RN]

That sort of limits the everyday applications a bit ...

Heh-heh.  I know they recommend longer lenses for portraiture and model shoots --except for bust shots.

I can imagine some poor photog screaming at the model 393 feet away,

"THAT'S IT, HONEY, NOW GIVE ME A POUT !  <click-whizz> OH THE CAMERA LOVES YOU LOVE IT BACK ! <click-whizz> PROFILE NOW, HONEY, BRUSH YOUR HAIR BACK."

"What?"

"I SAID GIVE ME A PROFILE AND TIP YOUR HEAD BACK A LITTLE !  THAT'S IT! <click-whizz>"

"OK, THAT'S A WRAP !  I'M GETTING A LITTLE HOARSE!"

"What?  You want me to ride a little horse?"

And so it goes.

Terry

[roo_ster]

The first "thing" is a little bitty orb weaver spider that lives under the eaves on my front porch. Not much bigger than the finger nail on my pinky finger.

The lens in your picture is the Sigma (Bigma) 200-500 F2.8. One hell of a lens with a $26K price tag on it. A wee bit out of my league.
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/telephoto-lenses/200-500mm-f2-8-apo-ex-dg

Bug-eating spiders are welcome outside my house, as long as they don't get overly optimistic and spin a web in front of the doorways.

[RoadKingLarry]

Speaking of longer lenses

The UPS fairy delivered this today.



100-400mm which gives me an effective 160-640mm on my crop sensor camera.

Kind of felt dirty taking a picture of that rig with a cell phone though.

[Monkeyleg]

Man, that lens is no cheap date.

[Boomhauer]

Holy chiiiiitt that's a top of the line lens for sure.

[RoadKingLarry]

Canon 100-400 F4-f5.6L IS USM MKII
The in lens image stabilization on this thing is rated at 4 stops.
UPS didn't deliver till 10 minutes after sundown.  I still had to take it out and play.
I was able to get reasonably decent results with no detectable camera shake shooting at iso6400, 1/40, @400mm, 30 minutes after sundown. Of course today is forecast for rainy and stormy all day, not the best conditions to wring out a new lens but we'll see.

[Sindawe]

The first "thing" is a little bitty orb weaver spider that lives under the eaves on my front porch. Not much bigger than the finger nail on my pinky finger.

The lens in your picture is the Sigma (Bigma) 200-500 F2.8. One hell of a lens with a $26K price tag on it. A wee bit out of my league.
http://www.sigmaphoto.com/lenses/telephoto-lenses/200-500mm-f2-8-apo-ex-dg

Are you sure that is an orb weaver?  The eyes look too developed for a spider lurks in a web waiting for dinner to snag itself.  Looks more like one of the jumping spiders to my eyes/

[makattak]

Are you sure that is an orb weaver?  The eyes look too developed for a spider lurks in a web waiting for dinner to snag itself.  Looks more like one of the jumping spiders to my eyes/

Also a lot more hair than the orb weavers I'm familiar with. The orb weavers hair usually looks more like spines than hair to me.

[230RN]

I was able to get reasonably decent results with no detectable camera shake...

I was kind of wondering about that with the offset leg of the tripod socket hole...

On the other hand, in thinking about modern e-cameras, you don't get any shutter shake as you would with a mechanical chemical camera, so I didn't ask.

When I was doing some real macro work with an SLR mechanical camera, I had to jinn up a heavy steel plate with a socket hole and a 1/4-20 screw sticking through it to add mass to the rig... to kill the kerchunk-kerchunk.  (Didn't have a camera that would pop the mirror and then wait for you to kick the shutter.)

Terry

[RoadKingLarry]

Yeah probably a jumping spider, still kind of cute though :)
For the really sensitive stuff mirror shake is a bigger issue. Canon's "Live View" mode puts the mirror out of the path and uses the LCD view finder for framing and focusing like a P&S. That mode takes the mirror slap out of the equation, set up on a tripod and use a remote release app on my smartphone and camera shake is banished.
This however is hand held, almost 30 minutes after sunset iso 6400 SS 1/40, while aesthetically kind of crap it shows a touch of the capability.


 
Got out to play with it this evening for a bit but kind of dark and dank weather, shooting at high iso to get reasonable shutter speed but this beast is pretty impressive having a minimum focus distance of 3' makes it almost a macro.

This one was shot at iso 2000, no cropping, this is the actual image straight out of the camera. Snapped this one just as she caught her supper.



Supposed to see the sun tomorrow, hopefully she'll still be there for another portrait session with better light.

[Monkeyleg]

Larry, have you done side-by-side comparisons of lenses with image stabilization and without? I'm curious how much affect, if any, that has screen resolution photos.

[RoadKingLarry]

I've only had the big lens for a day so I haven't had time to do any fair comparisons with my "kit" level EF-S lenses but they also have IS. My one modern non IS lens is a 14mm F2.8 manual.
As far as IS Vs. IS off, or non-IS go, nothing I have read on the various photography forums has indicated there is any loss of image quality with IS what so ever. I don't think there are any major players in the lens maker world that don't offer a stabilized lenses what ever they call it- vibration compensation, optical stabilization or image stabilization like Canon's version.
Yeah I learned how to hold a long lens to get a good shot but I still had misses in my film days. With the IS lenses, being able to hand hold a 640mm (equivalent) lens at 1/40 and not see camera shake tells me it works pretty good.

When I get some good light where I can stop down a little I will take a few shots with IS off and IS on and see if I can see an image quality difference but I suspect the only difference I'll see is from camera shake.

[Monkeyleg]

Yeah I learned how to hold a long lens to get a good shot but I still had misses in my film days. With the IS lenses, being able to hand hold a 640mm (equivalent) lens at 1/40 and not see camera shake tells me it works pretty good.

I could have used that on action shots years ago. It never ceases to amaze me how technically advanced almost every device is. There's probably been more advancement in DSLR's in the last 10-15 years than there was in all cameras for the prior 150 years.

At the last studio I worked, we used Phase 1 digital backs. The image quality was very, very good, but still wasn't film. What's amazing is that the image size isn't drastically much more than a DSLR, but the price is about $30K.

[RoadKingLarry]

The IS on my new lens has 3 modes. 1 is an overall stabilization, 2 is used when panning a moving subject, auto detects vertical or horizontal camera movement and compensates appropriately and mode 3 is complicated and I don't understand it yet.

The medium and large format world is a pretty rarified place. If I had the unlimited funds to play with that stuff I would but it would be a horrible waste of equipment capability based on my skills and talent.
For now I'll stick with the 35mm and APS-C format DSLR universe.  Some of the newer Canon offerings are pretty intense with the recently released 5DS and 5DS R sporting 50.6 MP sensors and a pretty incredible dynamic range coupled with a pretty incredible price tag at.around $3600 for just the body.

[Regolith]

I've only had the big lens for a day so I haven't had time to do any fair comparisons with my "kit" level EF-S lenses but they also have IS. My one modern non IS lens is a 14mm F2.8 manual.
As far as IS Vs. IS off, or non-IS go, nothing I have read on the various photography forums has indicated there is any loss of image quality with IS what so ever. I don't think there are any major players in the lens maker world that don't offer a stabilized lenses what ever they call it- vibration compensation, optical stabilization or image stabilization like Canon's version.
Yeah I learned how to hold a long lens to get a good shot but I still had misses in my film days. With the IS lenses, being able to hand hold a 640mm (equivalent) lens at 1/40 and not see camera shake tells me it works pretty good.

When I get some good light where I can stop down a little I will take a few shots with IS off and IS on and see if I can see an image quality difference but I suspect the only difference I'll see is from camera shake.

My understanding is that IS can cause issues if you have the camera mounted on a tripod, though. Apparently, the IS can start tracking its own movements and start trying to compensate for them, creating a feedback loop that will introduce blurriness.

It's also apparently not that great for moving objects.

B&H has a good article on the subject: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/image-stabilization-when-use-it-and-when-turn-it

[RoadKingLarry]

B&H has tons of good info and a near direct tap into my toy account.

I knew about turning off IS when on a tripod but didn't learn about it till after I'd done some long exposure stuff.  I didn't see any issues with the images I got but didnt know there could be a problem, if we get some clear nights I want to try some more astro shots and once the moon starts waxing I'll be shooting that also with IS off.

[DustinD]

I absolutely love IS lenses for low light hand held work. Night and day, no pun intended.

[Monkeyleg]

Interesting that Nikon doesn't make an 18-55 or 55-200 with both vibration reduction and ED ("extra low dispersion") glass. It's either or. They've always charged more for lenses with ED, and the claim for decades is that the ED glass is better.

I always take such claims with a grain of salt. If the glass is better, why not put it on all of the company's lenses? If it's on $75 lenses, it can't be that expensive to produce.

[KD5NRH]

I knew about turning off IS when on a tripod but didn't learn about it till after I'd done some long exposure stuff.  I didn't see any issues with the images I got but didnt know there could be a problem, if we get some clear nights I want to try some more astro shots and once the moon starts waxing I'll be shooting that also with IS off.

Poke around OpticsPlanet for telescopes too; often a decent 4-8" reflector can be had for a couple hundred on an equatorial mount that will take a $20-40 clock drive so you can do real long exposure astrophotography.  At least Celestron often puts a 1/4" stud on top of the scope rings so you can mount the camera there if you don't want to actually use the scope's optics.  (There's something fun about a 1200mm Newtonian as a camera lens, though.)  Definitely want to make sure you're shooting the stars in RAW mode, and doing dark frames every now and then to subtract in post, though; 10+ minute exposures benefit a lot from DFS.