ilkka_nissila
Offline
• • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.13 #13 · Sony 400-800 f/6.3-8 G It's here!! | |
zeitlos wrote:
As someone who has never shot a longer tele lens I am wondering, if f8 at 800mm can still be considered good (and also useful?). Those who have used focal lengths like this one can surely judge better.
In addition, as someone who really wants to travel to an African country with wildlife isn’t he closer future I also wonder, if this lens would be your choice then?
It depends on the subject, distance to subject, and the lighting conditions.
Lenses like 100-400/4.5-5.6 and (150/180/)200-600/5.6-6.3 are commonly used and people often end up cropping at the longest focal length. If so, then the 400-800 would actually give more light to the sensor area covered by the subject's image than these shorter (but wider f-stop) lenses. Thus the image quality is probably a bit better from the 400-800 at 800 mm. However, handling the larger lens is more cumbersome and can be tiring quickly, depending on the photographer's physical fitness and temper. Thus I think a lot of people would be using the 400-800 with a tripod or at least a tripod head attached to a hide window.
Of course, if there is not enough light to shoot at f/8, and get acceptable results, then there is not enough light. But sometimes you can have a situation where the light at longer distance is better than the light at close range. When photographing birds on water in a location near me, ideally I would like to have the setting sun's light on the bird, creating nice warm/cool color contrast. If I am shooting with a 400 mm or 500 mm lens, to fill the frame with a reasonable composition without cropping, the birds are so close that the ridge surrounding the body of water blocks the setting sun's light from hitting the birds. If the birds are close to the the middle of the water, the sunlight does hit them from a low angle, creating good visual conditions for the photograph. This leads to a lens like the 400-800 which would enable photographing the birds when they are in the well-lit middle of the water area and also at different positions. In this case the ISO would be elevated but not ridiculously high, and probably the image quality would be quite good. Of course, a 600 mm f/4 will enable the use of lower ISO settings and better image quality, but then it's a lens of a completely different price class.
For subjects that are nocturnal such as deer, they tend to be the most active when the light is dim and probably this is because they feel less threatened by humans in low light and can come closer, leading to a situation where a larger-aperture but shorter lens is appropriate, and f/8 just wouldn't give good results.
So the answer: it depends (oh, I said that already ;-)).
I haven't been to Africa, but I understand that there are subjects of different sizes at different distances, and lots of different lenses can be used, but because of dust, zooms can be preferred so that you don't end up changing lenses often, and exposing the sensor to dust.
|
