I mean, it’s only $750, and it looks great.
So I’ve heard about these cheap 650-1300 mm (1000-2000 mm crop sensor equivalent) F/8 lenses and decided to hop on eBay and give one a shot. They’re not supposed to be very good, but I’ve never touched a lens with anywhere near this kind of length, so I was pretty excited to go outside and try it out. Unfortunately there’s no moon at the moment, but I found a couple other subjects instead.
These were taken handheld at maximum zoom (and it probably looked like I was a drunken lunatic trying to aim a bazooka). I’m sure I could nail down the focus a little more (this lens is all manual), and there is some chromatic aberration which I could clean-up.
And I was just able to catch this before it set. This was at minimum zoom with no prep. It was just above the horizon when I saw it and by the time I hoofed it to the back of the 40 acre lot to get around most of the trees, I only had time to snap half a dozen pictures before it was gone.
I don’t regret buying it, but I can already tell it’s going to take a lot of work to get nice results from. It does not have tremendous clarity, and it does suffer from the aforementioned aberration in various circumstances. I’ll definitely have fun with it, though!
Wow thats a long lens! Haven’t used anything beyond 300mm, I can imagine how much fun playing around with a 2000mm lens must be. Though like you said, its probably essential to fiddle with the image in lightroom afterwards.
Have fun!!
At some point I suppose you just give up and get a lens mount for a serious telescope, treating the camera as an attachment to the lens system instead of the other way around…
So far our cameras have always been on the convenience end (compact and point and shoot) of the spectrum, and mid consumer grade. For example our current model is a Panasonic ZS-20.
How much would I have to spend to get a decent camera? Something that wouldn’t be a pain to bring along on a hike (that’s why we’ve always gotten things like the one we have - so easy to put in our pocket.). How much of a different would such a camera be over the ZS-20 we have now?
Got a couple rolls of landscape shots back from the lab. These were taken with my Mamiya as I was getting used to working with a tripod and colored/graduated ND filters.
Yeah, those photos are amazing, if a little bleak.
Thanks! The first one is just a deep red filter. The fourth one was a bit over-complicated… I had an orange filter over the whole shot with a 2-stop hard GND angled at about 45 degrees to match the foreground, and then I held up a soft 1-stop ND upside down to darken the very bottom of the frame.
My next project is to start shooting some landscapes on slide film, so this was all kind of practice at controlling the exposure before taking the shot as I’ll have a narrower dynamic range to work with there.
Hah! Yeah, I guess I have shot a lot of dead trees lately. But at least they make for good and dramatic high-contrast shots when the sun is good.
I thought about renting the Nikon one (Coolpix P1000, which has a 3000mm full frame optical zoom equivalent AND will do 4k) for fun. I may get it for Yellowstone this May along with the other goodies.
— Alan
Those Nikon superzooms are incredible. I’m sure you’ll have loads of fun with it.
Here’s a shot of the moon I took tonight.
And another sunset picture from a few days ago.
I work pretty much across from Mattel headquarters and have walked past it dozens of times. I’ve never been compelled to stop there until today:
How long did you need to pose to let them make it to your likeness?
You look good in that pose, Brian.
Are you guys saying…I look like…voice goes up a few octaves…He-Man…?
Either He-Man or this one, take your pick.
Is her name She-Woman? I’m really curious.
haha, google says:
Possible related search: he man female toys