Don Clary Offline Upload & Sell: Off
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jdc562: I had been led to believe that these photo vehicles all had various horizontal bars (sills, arm rests, etc.), to use for bean bags. I would have problems hand-holding a 600mm f/4 lens for a long time
I think Tim’s idea of elbow and body bracing works fine for short (200-300mm) lenses in bright (dry season) light.
But I have encountered situations where it is not effective. For example, holding a 500mm or 600mm f4 lens on a fish eagle in a tree, waiting for it to fly. You know it is going to launch out of the tree, but you don’t know when, and you need to be ready and framed on it every second.
My best picture of my recent trip was a 25 minute wait for a leopard in a tree. I kept my 500 f4 on my support system the full time, waiting for him to change expressions or move his eyes around. I could frame him, lock the ball head down and remove both hands if I wanted to. I couldn’t possibly hand hold the 500 on him for 25 continuous minutes. I have a 24” wide picture of him, and you can easily see the individual hairs of his spotted coat.
I plan to go back to Africa, next time possibly in the beginning of the wet season. I love the green backgrounds that time of year. I also love the soft quality of that light, vs harsh contrasty dry season light.
You can easily loose 3 stops of light on an overcast day, but there is another effect that I think very few people realize. The reflectivity of green foliage is about 1.5 stops less than the typical yellow brown foliage of the dry season. So when you give up 4.5 stops of light, you start very seriously thinking about how you are going to steady your longer lenses at that reduced level of light.
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