Long lens use
Having arrived late (by about a year?) I've been skim-reading this thread. Fascinating! One notion that cropped up a few times is the skillset required to make the most of long lenses.
In the new year (if Santa is kind!!) I MAY be in the happy situation of being a 'long-lens-newbie'.
Can anybody point me in the right direction (another thread here or another website) to learn something of these dark arts ?
Regards - wiltshirejohn
I really think that the lens you are going to get will have a great impact on how you use it.
For instance, the Tamron is easily hand held in most if not all situations. I can tell you the few instances where I struggle when hand holding are birds that are perched high up and when it is very windy. That is about it. Otherwise I just hold the camera and lens steady and shoot.
If you get something like the new Sigma than maybe that will be too heavy. Not sure as I have not seen or held one.
Not sure what camera you use but I am sure that the large primes are all very heavy and not easy to hand hold. I know a few that do hand hold for a few shots but do not have best results when doing so. For best results they use a tripod and gimball type head.
Otherwise my best advice is to forget that you have 500 or 600 mm and get as close as possible to the birds without scaring them. I think that is the biggest mistake that most new owners make with longer lenses. They think that if they have longer glass that they do not need to get as close. I totally disagree. All of my best pics have been through close approach, good light and a steady hand. Very few of my large crops have results anywhere close to the shots when I was close.
Hope that helps.
