As always, wonderful shots. I would say you have the focus thing nailed because in image #1 the eye of the bird on the right is tack sharp. Great job. Have fun shooting with "the monster." By the way what tripod are you using with this rig? I seem to recall that at one time you were using the Gitzo 1228 but I would not think this lightweight champ would be stable enough for the 800
No way near as pretty as Kurt's pictures, but here's a juvenile (fledgling) crow on a utility pole, shot from my back yard. We've got several fledglings around. You can still see its baby blue eyes. This one's with the 800/5.6 as well.
Fine images, Kurt. Clarity and colour excellent. 800 mm in FF terms is about 1100 mm! The only producer of this focal lenght I can think of is Canon with the 1200/5,6, a veritable monster that makes even your Leica seem handy...
The few times I have worked with such long lenses stabilizing the image in the viewfinder sufficiently to focus correctly seemed a problem. A two-point support helped a lot, but then of course one is constrained to non-moving targets. You seem to have managed this very well, care to post a picture of your setup?
Thanks for the comments Woody, Guy, Peter and Arne.
Arne, I was concerned about focus too, but it is much easier with the module system than I would have imagined. The large head is very bright making manual focus in the viewfinder relatively simple. My set-up for the crane shots was literally hanging the lens out of the car window. I didn't have time to set up a tripod or I would have missed getting the chick. All the credit should go to Leica for designing such a marvelous system. I received the 2X module yesterday, so those were some of my first images with it.
Here's another example. I drove around for an hour this morning to see if I could find the cranes again, but could not find them. Instead, I came across this group of wild turkeys. As soon as they saw me, they started to run away. This time, since I again did not have time to set up a tripod, I stepped out of the car with the lens and fired off a series of shots handheld (with arms twitching) into the bright morning sun. They all didn't turn out, of course, but I did come back with a few very nice ones. This was at 800mm, f11, ISO400 and 1/250 of a second.
Save some money. Sell your tripod and the Wimberley head. I'll gladly take (notice I said take and not buy ) the Wimberley from you. It's obvious you don't need either of those with a shot like the last one.
Guy, can you tell me a little more about what kinds of moving heads are available for monopods. That's something I haven't looked into yet. I have an excellent monopod and a plate for the lens...it's the only thing I'm missing.
Me, too. I'm actually using my ballhead on the monopod right now. You only need the tilt capability for a monopod, but I haven't found such a thing that has A/S quick release and/or rated at more than 6 pounds.
I have the RRS Clamp on the Manfrotto head you referred to at BH Photo although I bought my clamp from RRS as well. It works a charm and the Arca style quick release clamp is solid.
Today was rather crappy weather for Colorado so I just drove around looking for something to practice with my 105-280 with attached 1.4x extender. I captured the horses at the 280 end of the zoom so it was about a 400mm shot before the 1.37 multiplication of the DMR. I was pretty pleased with the results, especially the ability to get good focus. I took about 15 images in all and 13 of them were in really crisp focus. Only problem is that I don't know what went wrong with the other two! Using the Brightscreen Pro with the 13mm spot is really helpful. I found also that there is sufficient (barely) room outside the microprism circle to focus with the groundglass matte portion of the screen. In some conditions I get better results with the matte screen.
Anyway welcome your comments.
By the way the only processing was a slight trimming of levels. The sharpening is at the native settings for C1 (50/3 Soft Look)
Guy, as always, thans for your considered thoughts.
I am in fact going to br going back to long exposures for people portraits, which is how I started. Recently, Rainer, the German Photo-architect (whose work opens our OPF web site), shared with me his vacation pictures using a 4MB Casio. These were amazing hand-held street pictures.
He uses a slow shutter handheld resting on a ledge to allow the subject to fillout their form.
The result is that the obfuscatory details are gone, and we get left with the pure esthetics of how the subjects fit into this world. Rainer, BTW, speaks nothing of this touchy-feely stuff, he just knows how to take a great picture. It is so counter-intuitive for an accomplished landscape photographer know for his precison and detailed clarity. But there it is a guman side.
So I will revist the days of Kodachrome 64 and let life slow down.
Still for fast moving events where 500 images are needed in a 3 hour period with specific ceremonies to record, high speed setting are a wonderful cheat!
I'm returning tp slow speeds with the Koad SLR/c if I can find one without being robbed!
Stern words Guy, but generally I agee with you; high ISO should (still) be the exception, not the rule if high quality images are the goal.
Asher, I've seen some wonderful images made with the Kodak SLR-c, but beware if you start playing with the T/S lenses you'll get heavy colour-casts with this camera.
To return to the alternative images, here is one with 1Ds-II and Leica 19 mm.
I know Asher is going to kill me when I say this but...
Since reading about and investigating the SLR/c, it appears it might be an full frame option worth considering to supplement the R9/DMR. For example, the 15mm & 19mm with the SLR/c stay just that. You get 14 million megapixles, no AA filter, and from what I read really good color.
Has anyone used this combination; SLR/c, Leica glass, RAW with no camera processing? What does it look like compared to the R9/DMR? Any thoughts Guy?
