Hints + Tips
Todays photographers and the consumer market have many choices of equipment to cover the interests and preferences be it Architecture, Landscapes, Macro. Portrait or Wildlife. From Super Zooms offering 18 x magnification to the Professional Primes costing many thousand pounds.
This article is perhaps aimed at image quality first within a reasonable budget avoiding the extremes of trying to cover the range of 10 -600mm in 2 easy superzooms or a vast amount of very expensive prime lenses.
Assuming our photographer covers all the interest of vast areas of landscape to the distance grabbing wildlife our lens choice will be 4 lenses with a limitation zoom of 4 x taking into account full and 1.6 sensors.
Our choice for both full frame and 1.6 crop Sensors.
Full frame...........12 - 24mm, 24 - 70mm, 70 - 200mm, 100 - 400mm
1.6 crop..............10 - 22mm, 18 - 55/70mm, 70 - 200mm, 100 - 400mm
Camera Branded or 3rd Party Lenses:
The big three of Canon, Nikon and Pentax have there own criteria on how there sensors react to light and branded lenses quite often are matched to these sensors, colour rendition etc. 3rd party lenses are much better these days as the likes of Sigma, Tamron and Tokina development on varying sensors are almost matching the camera brand manufacturer.
This gives the photographer more choice in his equipment at reduced costs especially in the wide angle and medium telephoto zoom areas. Also do we really need those fast lenses costing thousands of pounds when for one F stop you can get that lens within your budget. Sometimes a £100 tripod can get you that extra F stop at a fraction of the cost.
Still Under Construction:
You don't always have to use a macro lens, sometimes a 70-200 might bemore convenient when you can't get to close to the subject. The most important parameters is depth of field and camera movement. Usually its getting the right balance a small aperture F24 might give you enough depth of field but the shutter speed drops and any slight movement the image will suffer. Usually its a balanced compromise push that ISO a little bit more than you want to, try and achieve between F11 and F16 but you will need that tripod or something solid to stop camera movement. If you have got time even use your remote or timer. Close up work often means a depth of field in a few millimetres.
Normal "rule of thumb" that magic 1-2 hours at sun rise or sunset is when the colours and scene depth is at its best, when the sun is low down in the sky, thats when ultra violet light is at its least damaging. For landscape detail get the sun behind you, for good shadow details look at side light and for moody shots try pointing that lens against the sun. For those midday shots, forget the thought I need to get some sky in the viewfinder in quite a few situations you DON,T. Use the canopy of trees to naturally "frame" your shot or zoom in to show some unusual landscape detail.
OK.... so you want to show sky in all your landscapes, then perhaps the rule of thirds becomes more significant, 1st third foreground interest, 2nd third central subject, 3rd third hopefully that "cotton wool" cloud with blue sky.
Taking pictures can be a nightmare in low light if you are not prepared to "up" that ISO setting and get that shutter speed at the right value when you are on the focal length limit of your "best I can afford" telescopic lens. Not everyone have these fast 2.8 fast prime/ zoom lenses, its really technique not equipment that takes importance in this instance. Also you have OS, IS and VR which does not compensate for that "twitchy bird" thats in your viewfinder for what appears to be nanoseconds.
By experience I,ve found the following "sedate times" averages.
Finches and Tits...........1 second
Robins + Thrushes.......5 seconds
Herons + Fowl ............. 10 seconds
Birds of Prey................ 5 second panning
The working basic rule (Full frame) min shutter speed = 1/focal length eg 400mm = 1/400 sec. The comment is I can,t get that, not enought light, I,ll try 1/100 sec, I might get lucky..................You WONT.
Most popular telescopic lens are around the range 4.5/5.6 between 80 to 400mm some with/without image stabilisation. So ISO settings of 200 your success rate is going to be very un productive. Up that ISO to 400 or 800 and now "we are cooking on the gas" for these small "twitchy critters".
Finches and Tits need 1/500 sec because although you are well in focus and you,ve got the right depth of field there,s still body movement going on. for landing and taking off you need 1/1000 sec. For improved success rate its better to predict (by experience) what the bird is going to do or if there is a popular landing site focus on this point and let the bird come onto your camera set up. Lately I have been taking pictures by remote and not even bothered looking through the viewfinder, because when you do and try to respond, the bird has probably already gone.