Douglas L
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JWilsonphoto wrote:
You know, those new lenses are very tempting but here's my take. I owned and loved my 800mm EF, the 800 is an incredibly fickle tool. The lens itself is wonderfully sharp and fast, but one has to be so cognizant of when and where to shoot it, that one of two things ends up happening, it sits in the case a lot or you shoot a lot of soft images just because you don't want the much money sitting in a case. When everything aligns the images can be spectacular, but the day, the air, the photographer all have to come to an understanding. Warm temps are not it's friend, neither are windy days, nor areas surrounded by concrete, like air shows.
I finally, reluctantly , came to grips with all of the above factors, the final straw was realizing that I just couldn't keep swinging my 800 to the sky, handheld, and not end up on a back surgeon's table. The lens sat in it's case for a couple of years as I wrangled with the idea of parting with it, but I finally just ripped that band-aide off. I owned my 800 for more than a decade, unlike all my other equipment it never came close to paying for itself. That being said, when everything came together it produced some one of a kind imagery. Not sure what they'll be asking for the new RF versions, but I'd guess 14K+ for the 800 and 20 something for the 1200.
On the other hand, look what Douglas does with his 600 + a 1.4! But cost wise, that's a combination that you can live with compared to an 800/1200 prime....Show more →
Thank you, Jim. Ideally, I would prefer a 600mm f4 with a built-in 1.4 teleconverter, instantly one could be at 840mm f5.6 and back to 600 mm f4. I would take that versatility over a fixed 800mm. Nikon just introduced a z mount 400mm f2,8 with a built-in teleconverter. I must admit, finding the target at 840mm is not always easy. I have lost some opportunities just because I couldn’t find the target in the view finder fast enough. Case in point, when I was shooting the rocket launch last week, all of the sudden the rocket was generating a long and wide white smoke trail, by the time I located the smoke trail in the view finder, the rocket was not in frame anymore, just the smoke trail. When I was watching a snowy owl on a roof few weeks ago, he sat there for a long time, then launched directly towards my direction, he was so close that I just didn’t have time to react and find him in the view finder, otherwise I could have gotten some real closeup portraits of the snowy owl in flight. Need more practice.
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