Any RFFers enjoy wildlife photog. If so help!

gb hill

gb hill

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I have a few acres of land out in the country. Sunday after a nice walk through the woods, I thought about going back out there with my Canon AE-1p, tripod, & a 500mm lens for some wildlife photography. I don't wan't to spend alot of money on a lens if I don't have to. My question is this: Are those 500mm F8 mirror lenses decent? Have any of u RFF members any experience in wildlife photography. I have an old spiratone 400mm lens but it's not very good in my opinion. Maybe some of you have some nice wildlife photos or a few good tails of aventure you wan't to share. Hope soon to have a scanner up & going to share some of my stuff, but til then, look foward to reading your comments:

Greg
 
While I haven't tried any, the mirror lenses are pretty slow (at least f8) & often give a very harsh &/or distracting oof. That said, some of the better brands are reputably sharp & can be more compact than normal telephoto lenses.

In the last few months I've begun to get together a beginners set of lenses for wildlife work. I settled on Soligor/Vivitar T4 & TX interchangeable mount so I can use them on different bodies. Take a look at this site for some info (click). For about $40 per lens I was able to pick up a 200/3.5, 300/5.5, & 400/6.3 in near mint condition from ebay. If you are not sure if this sort of shooting will be to your liking it is a cheap way to try it out... I have taken the 400/6.3 out & run a test roll, but I don't have anything developed yet to show results.

Peter
 
I use a 450mm f:8 Soligar and a 500mm f:8 'Porters' mirror. The Porters is a generic lens that many stores branded.

The Soligar is really nice. I even use it with a 2X teleconverter and get good shots. Of course then it's an f:16! I use Ektachrome 400, and as long as there's good light, the shots are good.

The 500mm mirror is not as good. It's sharp enough, but it suffers from low contrast. I find this true of most low cost mirror lenses I have seen. If you photoshop your photos, you could punch them up a bit. I use transparancy film, so what I get is what I got.

I use the Soligar more. You can pick one up for about $50. Remember, this is an old lens - early 1960's, but for the price, it's a lot of fun and you'll get some good shots if you work at it. 😎
 
I went the mirror lens way about 15 years ago. It was a mistake. I used the Leica-R 500/8.0.
Slow, unbalanced on the camera, low contrast, and horrible,horrible bokeh. And that is the best one on the market.The slides of a three-week safari went into the dustbin for 90% and the lens was sold within the week to some innocent who thought he could use it who nearly paid the newprice for it.
FYI I have been on yearly photographic safari's in east, central and southern Africa for 15 years now...
 
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gb hill said:
Have any of u RFF members any experience in wildlife photography. I have an old spiratone 400mm lens but it's not very good in my opinion.
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Hey Greg...wildlife photography has been a large part of my job for many years...it is one of the most rewarding but most frustrating of all photographic genres. But if you get a real taste for it then sooner or later you'll find that you really do want a long, fast (expensive) lens... 🙁

I've seen good results from mirror lenses but their typically f8 apertures are a real handicap in so many situations...mainly for speed but also isolating subjects from a messy or busy background.

Sigma make some long lenses that can give satisfying results for reasonable prices but I've found better quality from a 200mm lens on a 1.7x tele than the older Sigma 500mm zooms. But Sigma and its ilk can be a great place to start for the inevitable results v cost. Zooms are popular because it's easier to locate at a wider angle and crash for the final shot...fast focus becomes essential as you get more involved...and silent focus for those subjects where stealth is all important.

By far the majority of wildlife photogs I come across in the field use Canon gear - I use Nikon - as a legacy from my more journalistic roots but there's no doubt in my mind that Canon is the more popular - and their long lenses are more accessible.

Should you get longer lenses then you'll find a need for better mounting than traditional tripod heads etc (wimberley being very popular) as well as camo gear and hides etc etc

Wildlife photography is generally a world of SLR of course...for obvious reasons...and digital at low 'iso' is perfect for those smooth, grainless shots that are now standard in the market. But digital or film, the body always takes a distant 2nd place to the lens...

Backyard wildlife photography is very rewarding and ensures you are 'in tune' with your local environment. I still spend many days a year photographing local wildlife...it's good practice and in many ways a lot harder than for example the big African animals...it's considerably more difficult photographing the squirrels in my back garden than lions and leopard in the Maasai Mara... 😉

Above all - have fun. 🙂
cheers
 
nice shot

nice shot

I love the Lumix for wildlife photography, the IS gives me easy hand-holding shots at 1/4 or 1/8th. Also, the lens is a Leica ASPH!

ferider said:
One thing you might consider:

my wife and me have gone on Safari twice ... It always amazed me with how many good shots she gets away with
using her 12x zoom and stabilizer on her Lumix. And the camera is tiny. When I play with the idea of buying
a digital camera I often think of a newer Lumix or Samsung first.

Best,

Roland.

PS: not a super photo, but this was taken with her camera and cropped a bit.
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Greg, find a camera show in your area and go. Film camera lenses, especially off brands, are selling really cheap. I bought a 400mm for my spotmatic for $10 recently. It's worth a long drive to find something. Check the web for shows in your area.
 
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check the bay, people don't want the 'stupidly long' lenses for 'obsolete' cameras. I don't really shoot nature at all, so I rid myself of the 300mm m42 lens I had, same with my sigma on the minolta af slr.. either way the m42 lens cost me £15, and the sigma was a 70-300mm AF and only cost £40 I think (that was over a year ago). Prices are crazy-low. Long as you don't tread on the toes of the hefty fast paparazzi-users' lenses, which still fetch good money
 
gb hill said:
I have an old spiratone 400mm lens but it's not very good in my opinion.
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LOL, that's probably the very same lens my brother had for his older Pentax. It was his "beach lens", and I guess you could call that wildlife in a way. 🙂 (Hey, boys will be boys, but today he would probably get arrested as a perv.) 🙁

Anyway, I tried this out a few times on my Spotmatic when I got it, and my impression was that it was soft, not very sharp, particularly on things off center. I also remember it was clumsy to set exposure on, not fully automatic. If you want to shoot fast, I don't think that would do it.
 
dmr to be fair, if you're shooting sleeping lions on the beach, they aren't really going to be moving so a slow-to-use lens is going to be ok... just make sure they don't wake up and catch you!!
 
dmr said:
LOL, that's probably the very same lens my brother had for his older Pentax. It was his "beach lens", and I guess you could call that wildlife in a way. 🙂 (Hey, boys will be boys, but today he would probably get arrested as a perv.) 🙁

Anyway, I tried this out a few times on my Spotmatic when I got it, and my impression was that it was soft, not very sharp, particularly on things off center. I also remember it was clumsy to set exposure on, not fully automatic. If you want to shoot fast, I don't think that would do it.
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Probably not too great but perhaps better than an inexpensive mirror lens.
 
As everyone said the Mirrors are not ideal for Wildlife photos. I shot a Maxxum 7 with my Minolta AF 500/8 before at a local lake for geese and it worked out very nicely. The Minolta 500/8 is a Auto Focus lens and it was quite handy. You really have to have good light and watch your backgound for hightlights. Otherwise the donut Bokeh will rule in your shots. I have not used any other brand of mirror lens but the Minolta was very sharp and it didn't seem to lose that much contrast.


Darrin
 
I have the Spiratone 400/6.9, a Panagor 400/6.3 and a Rubinar 500/8. They can give decent results in good conditions, but it's not easy. All 3 lack contrast, but the 500/8 mirror is the worst.

I did that for a few years, but my current setup is a 20D + Sigma 50-500.
 
I used one in school to shoot a baseball game for an assignment. It was a Nikon 500 mirror lens. I don't remember the minimum aperture.

The sharpness was fine as far as I remember, but the bokeh has little circles to it. Very swirly little circles all over the place, not like a normal lens.

-Mitch
 
keh.com has some Pentax (well, Asahi) m42 screwmount telephotos - they had the 500 4.5's in bargain condition for about 400 bucks last time I checked. They're about 18" long, between 8-13 pounds (depending on version, apparently), and supposedly have a magenta cast.

Still, for less than a tenth of the price of the Canon 500 4, and 1/3 stop slower...

Do you already have a good solid tripod and head to shoot the lens with? Big ones need big tripods. Manfrotto 3021B and a heavy duty pan/tilt would be about the minimum for slow-moving stuff, but ideally a Gitzo 1325 with a Wimberly head or a heavy duty ball head.

I'd love get one of them, but my tripod would take one look at that thing and s**t itself, so I'd need a new one to use it with, and I need a scanner first, etc.
 
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What I've found is that a lot of people are dumping their old and large tape-based video equipment. I've seen a lot of large tripods selling pretty cheap at flea markets and such. Although not designed for film cameras, they make a good substitute.
 
MadMan2k said:
Still, for less than a tenth of the price of the Canon 500 4, and 1/3 stop slower...
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My neighbor has that Canon 500/4 IS lens. Man what a beast!

He'll take it out into the lake chest deep in water and sit there with
his tripod and the lens 6 inches off the water to get shots of birds.

😱



Darrin
 
I appreciate everyones input and I think i'll steer away from a mirror lens. Kim,thoes were some good shots, especially fond of the penguins. Don't know which route i'll go yet but not going to get into a big hurry because it's still deer season around here and I don't trust some of these nuts with guns out there. By spring time i'm sure something will come my way. The Lumix Ferider mentioned looks tempting also. Bet your wifes awsome with an rf.😀
 
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