Quote:
Originally Posted by Otter Spotter  the type of photography I would like to do is Birds, Mammals and Dogs, mainly working field dogs,so the action will be fast.
Do you think the 150-500mm lens whilst giving me more power will be able to capture the speed of action required?
I hasten to add that it would be my intention to buy a faster 300mm or 200mm lens for taking the pictures of the working dogs.
Thanks 
Take care
Andy |
the ability to capture fast action is not going to be determined soley by the lense - the bottom line is that you will need a fast shutter speed and this will in turn be determined by the apperture and ISo set - and these will be determined by the available light.
although a "faster" lens (ie one with a larger maximum apperture) will allow you to set a bigger apperture the times you are going to use f2.8 or f4 are limited anyway due to the narrow depth of feild thse produce. The other benefit of faster lenses is that they help the AF function better as most modern lenses are not stopped down until the shutter is fire the faster lense allows more light into the camera and helps the AF maintain lock on - which can be particularly important in low light conditions
and the third benefit of faster lenses is that they work better with matched teleconverters thus allowing you to create really long focal lengths (e.g a 400mm f2.8 with a matched 2xtc will act as a 800mm f5.6 - while still allowing AF etc to function - although you could theoretically use a 2xtc on a 400mm f5.6 that would create a 800mm f13 which wouldnt have a prayer of auto focusing.)
I digress - the basic point i was making is that the 150-500 f5.6 will be fine for fast action in most lights but might struggle if you were doing a lot of work at dawn and dusk - I use the predecessor the 170-500 (aka the coffee grinder on account of the noising focussing) and have used it to photograph fast flying birds such as diving gannets , and also to cover jet ski , rugby, and motorsports without a problem.