Advice needed please

[paulr5604]

Re: Advice needed please

Thanks Paul.

On on hand I feel desperate for the extra reach as I really feel it is holding me back with my wildlife shots, which is my main interest with photography. On the other hand I don't want to just throw money at something that isn't going to work for what I want.

Decisions decisions

[Paulstw]

Re: Advice needed please

My mate uses a Sigma 150-500. He's used it for years and his pictures are off the scale. I'll never get that good. Why don't you get a hide?

[paulr5604]

Re: Advice needed please

My mate uses a Sigma 150-500. He's used it for years and his pictures are off the scale. I'll never get that good. Why don't you get a hide?

I thought about it but that would involve me getting permission to spend all day out with the camera lol.

[colin C]

Re: Advice needed please

For wildlife, you need:

• Dedication
• Research
• Fieldcraft
• Equipment
• Luck

Out of the first four, your only potential problem is equipment, so ................ up the anti on the other three. The last one (luck) seems to come as a result of all the others, plus being out there often enough to get your fair share of it.

[hectorpaljr]

Re: Advice needed please

Paul . I have a 40 yr old lens (400mm) similar to the one you are looking at . On film I used it just as Colin says, preset the focus point and aperture then wait till the subject comes both into the frame and to the focus point. Lots of missed shots - which was expensive on film !
More recently I have used some other older lenses (these were M42 with adapters) manually on my Canon 40D . Using the Av setting and again pre-focussing. Because of the dark viewfinder, found it difficult to focus accurately and eventually gave up the idea inspite of these old lenses being good quality like Zeiss and Tamron SP.
I suspect you will have a try and also give up on the idea as you are likely to miss so many pictures. If you can get the lens for a song it might be worth satisfying your curiosity otherwise I wouldn't bother, because I feel sure you will end up disappointed.

[antoeknee]

Re: Advice needed please

My bird photography in the past was all on film and manual focus. Kind of makes me wonder how I managed now.

Of course some of the focusing aids on these cameras helped but without doubt had more failed/missed shots then.

Personally I think you'd find older manual lens both difficult and frustrating to use.

[colin C]

Re: Advice needed please

Personally I think you'd find older manual lens both difficult and frustrating to use.

I also seem to recall that we had split and diagonal fresnel lenses in the focusing screen to aid focussing. Not used with digital as it is presumed all lenses will be autofocus.

[paulr5604]

Re: Advice needed please

Thanks everyone for your replies I will take your advice I think and just carry on saving and selling.

[antoeknee]

Re: Advice needed please

I also seem to recall that we had split and diagonal fresnel lenses in the focusing screen to aid focussing. Not used with digital as it is presumed all lenses will be autofocus.

Correct Colin. One of things I did with my Olympus OM was change the focusing screens as the fresnel could be nigh on useless with longer small aperture lenses, it just turned black. Just had split which was usually OK but of course did rely on having an edge/line to use.

[paulr5604]

Re: Advice needed please

Thank you to everyone who has replied.

I have now decided to save some more money with a view to purchasing the Tamron 70-300 VC USM lens, which seems to get very good reviews. This would give me a bit more reach and hopefully sharp enough images so if I need to crop into the images it shouldn't be a problem.

[Paulstw]

Re: Advice needed please

I do miss the simplicity and utter sharpness of the Tamron. The VC is great too. I still to this day wonder why I bothered selling it. It was better on my 600D than it was one the 7D right enough.

[Clickclock]

Re: Advice needed please

I know how you feel! Camera gear can be painfully expensive. Just a thought, but have you tried looking at sites like Preloved where people sell things quite cheaply. Or even Freecycle and other sites where folks actually give things away for free?. You can place "wanted" ads on there as well. You never know, someone might just have something tucked away gathering dust which they'd be happy for you to have. Certainly worth half an hour googling … best of luck.

[antoeknee]

Re: Advice needed please

Thank you to everyone who has replied.

I have now decided to save some more money with a view to purchasing the Tamron 70-300 VC USM lens, which seems to get very good reviews. This would give me a bit more reach and hopefully sharp enough images so if I need to crop into the images it shouldn't be a problem.

Hi Paul, some of images on my Flickr account are with the Tamron. Quite a few have been cropped particularly the kestrel images. If I had one thing to say about this lens its that it can be easy to switch off the IS but once your aware of this its not really a problem.

IQ is really quite good and for price an excellent buy.