Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/05/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Sat, 27 May 2000, Mike Stoesz wrote: > > Nice website Doug. I love the bird photos. Can you please tell us a little about how you photograph birds and what equipment you would recommend? > > Best Wishes, Mike > Mike, The prevailing wisdom among wildlife photographers is to use a long, fast lens such as a 400mm f/2.8, or something as long as a 600mm f/4, combined with 1.4X and/or 2X extenders, on a solid tripod with ball head or Wimberly head, attached to an auto-everything high-speed motorized body loaded with Velvia. This is a very effective equipment setup for many people and it's the last thing I would want to use. I prefer the greater mobility and quicker handling of a hand-held lens, and the thought of setting/checking AF mode, AE mode, IS mode, Motor settings and custom functions makes my head spin so I use a completely manual camera. Mind you a lightweight motor would be handy at times but I'd rather go without the motor than use a camera body that has more functions than I want. The quickest-handling long lenses I've found are the Novoflex follow-focus lenses (280-400-600mm) an the Leica f/6.8 Telyts (400mm & 560mm). In my experience the Leica lenses produce photos with cleaner colors, and besides they weigh much less than the Novoflex system, so that's my lens of choice. The sliding focus becomes intuitive with a little practice, and with a bright viewfinder like the Leicaflex SL, SL2 or R8 has, it's very quick and sure. With either the 400 or 560, and the SL viewscreen, tracking and focussing on birds in flight is not a big problem. I get around the camera shake problem by using a shoulder stock. The stock was included originally with the 400mm and 560mm lenses, and I use it on the 250 (E67 version) as well. With a little practice, shutter speeds of 1/60 sec with the 250 or 400 are not a problem (Prairie Warbler and Wild Turkey on my website, and 1/125 sec is possible with the 560mm lens (Pied-billed Grebe). I generally use shorter lenses than other wildife photographers do, so to get an equivalent image size I have to get closer. This ususally means taking more time to allow the birds to become comfortable with my presence. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. The 400mm and 560mm Telyts will be the subject of the 2nd of my "Leica Reflex pages" and I'll include photos made with thses lenses (as suggested by another LUGger). Doug Herr Sacramento http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/telyt ___________________________________________________ The ALL NEW CS2000 from CompuServe Better! Faster! More Powerful! 250 FREE hours! Sign-on Now! http://www.compuserve.com/trycsrv/cs2000/webmail/