Low light, birds, and zoom lenses

rainmaker · #1 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:27 PM

I'm pretty inexperienced at using big powerful zoom lenses - most of my pics are macro close-ups of flora.

But, I've gotten nto animals, and obviously birds, and managed to blag my little bro's camear for the weekend; I'm off to Martin Mere tomorrow, and I've been out and about for a bit of a practice this afternoon. Not got any great ones - a couple of alright ones of water fowl, that's about it.

What techniques do you lot use when the light is so poor, and the use of high zooms (OK, high-ish, @300) is necessary? I've got the tripod, which I use, the camera doesn't appear to have a timer (not that that's much good!), but I'm still getting vibrations, and some of it could be out of focus - not an issue I've had with it before!

Any advice appreciated!

CHris

mh68 · #2 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:38 PM

Even using the tripod there will be vibrations.You can minimise them by placing your free hand on top of the lens above the tripod mount - this will help absorb them.More info at the link below....

Proper Long Lens Technique

Good luck tomorrow, hope you post some pics if youre successful

Mark H

matt_xyz · #3 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:39 PM

this link might be helpful;

Proper Long Lens Technique

obviously the best technique in the world won't keep the subjects still, so a slow shutter speed will be very problematic for anything that's moving. The only answers to that problem are to raise your ISO to 800 or even 1600 and/or to use some flash.

Matt

matt_xyz · #4 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:41 PM

remarkable. Great minds must think alike

mh68 · #5 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:43 PM

Yep that is a bit spooky Matt

Mark H

pressld2 · #6 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rainmaker

and some of it could be out of focus

If you're not a regular user of long lenses then don't forget that the longer the lens the narrower the depth of field. And with low light you're bound to be shooting with the aperture wide open so when the eyes are in focus, the tip of the beak may not be.

Dave P.

rainmaker · #7 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 03:56 PM

Ahh, I see, the "if in doubt, read the instructions" brigade....

Cheers gents, I'll have a read of that.

I'm always a bit reticent to change the ISO, as that tends to worsen the image quality - but then I've not tried with anything other than flora photo's - are the quality implication fairly minor then?

I know what you mean about depth of focus - I've got a pic from today of the head of a water fowl (errrrm, new to this, white, goose type bird, beautiful blue eyes

) - the beautiful blue eye is perfectly in focus, the tip of the beak is blurry (actually, not that bad a pic, I'll try and get it posted over the weekend).

Cheers all

Chris

mh68 · #8 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 04:03 PM

Chris, if you post which camera youre going to be using i`m sure someone will be able to advise how much you can bump up the ISO before quality degrades too much...

Mark H

glsammy · #9 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rainmaker

Ahh, I see, the "if in doubt, read the instructions" brigade....

Cheers gents, I'll have a read of that.

I'm always a bit reticent to change the ISO, as that tends to worsen the image quality - but then I've not tried with anything other than flora photo's - are the quality implication fairly minor then?

I know what you mean about depth of focus - I've got a pic from today of the head of a water fowl (errrrm, new to this, white, goose type bird, beautiful blue eyes

) - the beautiful blue eye is perfectly in focus, the tip of the beak is blurry (actually, not that bad a pic, I'll try and get it posted over the weekend).

Cheers all

Chris

Don't be afraid of using high ISO settings. Here's a shot I took using ISO 1600:

Admittedly I've used neat Image to reduce the background noise, but I generally use it on just about every image!

HowlinWolf · #10 (**permalink**) 26-10-2007, 04:39 PM

Rainmaker:

The long lens technique mentioned above will only be effective if your telephoto lens has a collar and tripod foot. Mounting the camera to a tripod head via the body and adopting this approach will flex the set up too much to give accurate framing, giving unpredictable results. If this is the case, keep your shutter speed up to around the reciprocal of the focal length you are shooting with. Although this is a rule of thumb for hand-holding, it can be just as useful with tripod shooting.

Telephoto lenses take some getting used to, so don't be too disappointed if you get a low hit rate first time out.

HW