Grebes, Gulls, Bridges and lens tests…

The new falcon nesting season is fast approaching, and I am trying to get ready for it. I check the building tops for falcon shapes every time I’m out on the street downtown. So far there haven’t been any for me to see. However, others have spotted them, so I know they are around.

This year, I decided to get a new telephoto lens with more reach and more features than my older 400mm f5.6 lens. I had to choose between the 600mm and the 500mm f4 lenses. There is a big difference in price and weight between the two. Plus only a few people are strong enough to hand hold the 600mm lens.

So I decided on the 500mm. This lens is huge, heavy and expensive. But I have tried it out, and I CAN hand hold it. It comes with auto focus and image stabilization, which helps steady the view and allows hand holding in dim light. It also improves sharpness even when the camera is sitting on a tripod.

Here’s a shot of the setup out on the waterfront in San Francisco.

The funky camouflage is called Lens Coat and is made of neoprene rubber and fabric. It breaks up the lens shape in the hope of making the lens less of a beacon of white paint that could frighten away birds and other wildlife. It also protects the lens from minor dings. It is mounted to a Gitzo 1348 tripod via an Acratech ball head and a Whimberley Sidekick side arm swivel mount. This arrangement makes it easy to pan and shoot with large lenses like the 500mm.

Note in the above photo, there is a Western Gull sitting out on a piling in the water.

Here’s an un-cropped shot of it with the new lens and an additional piece called a teleconverter.

The Canon teleconverter comes in two sizes measured in power. 1.4x and 2.0x. You can add one, the other or both to increase the reach of the lens. The 1.4x increases a 500mm lens to the equivalent of a 700mm lens. The 2.0x converter changes the focal length to 1000mm and if you stack the two together it becomes the equivalent of a 1,700mm lens.

You lose brightness when you add these and you lose sharpness as well. Any defect in the lens design is magnified along with any camera movement. In addition, if you stack them together it often means having to stop down even further to make up for the decrease in sharpness. When shooting birds, that can mean very slow shutter speeds.

For best results, I try to use the least amount of reach I can get away with. This gives me the best shutter speeds and I can use a less noisy ISO setting. It can mean being able to freeze wing movement or ending up with a mish-mash.

Here is a shot I took that day of an Eared Grebe. It was floating in the water just off shore in the bay and was relaxing between fishing dives.

This was a hand held shot using the 500 and the 1.4x tele converter. ISO setting 200, 1/1000 sec shutter speed and wide open at f5.6

Next are a series of un-cropped photos taken with different lenses. I start with the 17mm-85mm zoom that came with my Canon 20D camera. It too has image stabilization.

First 17mm setting…

next zoom in to 85mm…

Now I change to the 400mm f5.6 lens…

then I add the 1.4x converter…

take off the 1.4x and put on a 2.0x

Now the image is starting to look very soft. Shutter speed is way down and the 2.0x isn’t as sharp as the 1.4x.

Finally, the ultimate insult, stacked converters…

Now take off the 400mm lens and replace it with the 500mm lens, no extras…

Nice and clean. The image stabilizer is turned on.

Add a 1.4x again.

Then replace the 1.4x with the 2.0x and you get this…

Finally, stack the 1.4x and the 2.0x converters on the 500mm and you get this…

In case you were wondering why I chose this tower, several people have seen the two falcons George and Gracie mating up on the railing that wraps around the large anti-collision light . As you can see, even with a long lens and stacked converters, the image of a falcon on this tower will be quite small.

Note: The photos on this blog have been sized down in the editor. For a larger view, right click on the photo and select “view image”. Or, you can see the entire series of lens test photos at the larger sharper size at this link.

Good birding and thanks for reading.

Glenn