Canon 600d crop advice (1 Viewer)

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Retrodaz

Well-known member

• Jun 30, 2014

• #1

I've got a canon 600d and recently purchased a 400mm f5.6 lens. I understand that it becomes a longer range via the 1.6 crop, but images don't seem that closer in it when I look at birds that a far away. Does the canon 600d automatically convert the extra distance or do you have to turn something on to get the benefit? It just doesn't seem like a big upgrade over my 250mm.

 

Last edited: Jun 30, 2014

Weekend Birder

Well-known member

• Jun 30, 2014

• #2

You automatically get the 1.6x crop - you don't have to turn anything on.

This effectively gives you 640mm.

It should be much better than your 250mm for birds.

 

R

Retrodaz

Well-known member

• Jul 1, 2014

• #3

Hmm, maybe I've just got an unrealistic expectation of how close I can get with it then. Everything seems tiny.
Here's some spoonbills taking as is. I got as close to them as I could without getting wet.
Uncropped spoonbills by Darran Jones, on Flickr

 

Weekend Birder

Well-known member

• Jul 1, 2014

• #4

Those Spoonbills really are a long way away. Even with a 600mm lens, you'd only get a record shot.

 

Paul - Herts

Paul Herts

• Jul 1, 2014

• #5

Rule of thumb for magnification on a 35mm film camera, or full-frame digital camera, is that a 50mm lens will give you a shot roughly equivalent to the magnification of human sight. So your 400mm lens is 8x on full-frame. Introduce the 1.6x crop sensor on your camera and you have nearly 13x. If you look at the magnification of binoculars and scopes you will start to get an idea of what you can expect but for photographic purposes, even with the big telephoto lenses you need to be close to your subject for high quality results.

 

R

Robert_Scanlon

Well-known member

• Jul 1, 2014

• #6

Retrodaz said:

I understand that it becomes a longer range via the 1.6 crop, but images don't seem that closer in it when I look at birds that a far away.

Click to expand...

You don't get more magnification, just a smaller "field of view" compared to a full frame camera, so fewer wasted pixels around the bird.

The extra reach thing is a complete myth.

The pixel density of small sensors can be an advantage, but that is still not extra reach, only more pixels on the bird, which might give you better resolution when you view the photo on your monitor.

 

Roy C

Occasional bird snapper

• Jul 1, 2014

• #7

What you need to do is to learn how to crop the image more yourself during post processing. The following example shows the idea, the first image is how it came out in the Camera (taken with a 400/5.6 lens BTW) and the second image is how it looked after I cropped it up (and processed).

 

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Last edited: Jul 1, 2014

R

Retrodaz

Well-known member

• Jul 1, 2014

• #8

I typically do my crops in ms paint. I open up the image, put the slider to 50 and recut the image. Is that right?