Frank writes:
> It must have been hard to compose in a zoo without the depth-of-field tool.
I believe, that most of the wild animal photos are taken with relativ great
apertures because it is necessary to get short exposure times. And why
should these photographers buy such very bright tele lenses, if they would
use middle apertures ? On the other hand, despite the possibility with any
OM-lens (even third party) to use DOF preview, I don't use this because I
personally can't see anything in a dimmed viewfinder. I use my imagination
(sometimes with help of the DOF scale on the lenses) to "calculate" the DOF.
>There is supposed to be one of these Russian lenses in
>possession of a birder here in Melbourne, also producing
>great results. Mirror lenses in general don't deserve their bad
>reputation. The one I have is a Tamron SP 500mm f8, and
>has been yielding excellent results. (But I paid much
>more than US$95 for it!) I am not surprised at your bad
>experience with Sigma - I had one too, and we are not alone.
I have looked at some of the photos taken with this lens after I heard
about the bad reputation of mirror lenses with regard to their contrast.
But if there are some photos among them, which are eye-popping, I believe
the lens must have the capacity for good contrast. With my former Sigma
400mm 1:5,6 Apo lens I tried month to get such a contrast and it was not
possible (I don't give up believing in the capacities of a lens after just
one test film, because I think, that behind every lens there stand people
who knows better to build lenses than I can talk about them).
>The OM1 and OM2N are not very suitable cameras for mirror lenses.
>Animals tend to blend into their surroundings, so automatic
>exposure on the OM2N works well (stepless shutter speeds). Birds,
>on the other hand, are usually shot against sky or water, and I
>substitute meter on some foliage and then shoot on manual, losing
>the stepless speeds. In theory the exposure could be 1/2 stop out,
>but I got away with it with the film I used. Velvia is said to be
>much less forgiving. I need to do some more experiments with a
>faster film. On an OM4 one could use the spot meter on auto, which
>is still less convenient than manual if the bird is moving. Is
>anyone at Oly listening? The OM5 should have detents at 1 stop
>intervals on the shutter ring, but be accurate to 1/6 stop. And
>have mirror lockup.
I have taken back light pictures at a beach of the North Sea and with
correction of one aperture, they were o.k. With Velvia, many people say it
has 40 ASA, so pictures taken with 50 ASA "tend to the dark side".
>Because the lens is itself so light, vibration is a serious
>problem - even someone walking too close in the hide has
>caused obvious unsharpness.
I think the trick was to hold the lens with my hands to absorbe vibration.
Many people think, it is the best not to touch the camera-lens unit while
exposure, but I think the opposite is right. The famous German wildlife
photographer Fritz Pölking ( http://www.poelking.de or
http://www.poelking.com (?)) writes in a book published in 1997, that he
got sharper pictures, when he didn't use his remote (wire) release, but
used his hand (and he uses nowadays, after he started with OM and bird
photography in the seventies, the massive F5). This is the same
observation, I made.
>The Tamron lens also has UV filters front *and rear* which
>come off in nonobvious ways. On my example, they were very
>dirty and cleaning did wonders for the contrast.
>The doughnut bokeh is only a problem for those people
>who approach a picture with preconceptions. I can see this
>might rule out use of mirror lenses by professionals,
>who have to get their work past art directors.
With highlights on water, the rings are often lovely, but when looking at
my pictures I found one example, where on an unsharp face, there was a dark
cloud because of the bokeh. I think the differences between the bokeh of a
mirror lens and any "refractor" lens is greater than the differences
between "refractor" lenses with five and nine aperture blades.
Regards,
Matthias
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