Birdography

Todays photographic trip was just what i expected. Great weather. I mean GREAT weather. Gear working. Birds to take photos of. Nature. Damn, only thing i missed was coffee. What an amateurish mistake... I didnt take any coffee with me. If ever possible, this trip was nearly perfect succes.

I started this trip by setting a goal of taking pictures of atleast one specie of woodpeckers (two would be something very exceptional, considering time recourses available - 2 hours) I also wanted to have some pictures of random birds. Secondly i wanted to test the teleconverter and to achieve some kind of conclusion of its performance and usability. I started the session by thinking where would i find dead or rotting trees in the near forests. I had a clear vision in my mind of area with some dead birches so i decided to head up there. I was certain that i would encounter some small birds on my way there so i didnt really stress it that much. Certain mark of woodpecker habitance is woodpieces all around a dead standing tree. Its also very likely that strange holes on trees, dead or alive are made by woodpeckers. Thank god im not that fanatical that i would start to describe woodpecker droppings. It didnt cross my mind to take a photo about these marks, but i think you are getting what i mean.

It was an exciting trip, having to use all instincts to be able to find those little birds. First off trying to hear them to get a clue where they would be. After that just staying still and trying to see the exact spot of the birds. This is crucial, after knowing the area where the birds could be, one has to absolutely stay still and try to make sense of their whereabouts. I dont know if i have problems with my eyes but i cant simply see those small birds if im on the move.

Okay okay there was some downsides on it too. For some strange reason i took a tripod with me and yes i hauled it with me all the time. At some point i stashed it to some noticable bushes and retrieved it after the trip.

And to the gear... the tc-200... it exceeded all my expectations. This little cadget really made those annoying situations nonexistent where those little pesky birds being just too far away.

There were problems too. When adding teleconverter or taking it off one has to always be very careful not to leave camerabody on manual focus mode and remember to switch ones lens to autofocus. D2X performed as usual, perfect. The 300mm performed also very very well. I love this lens. On the whole trip i didnt even think switching to 17-55, this may give you some clue how much fun i had photographing birds.

Last but not least, the pictures. a spotted woodpecker, a blue tit and a great tit.

a great tit Nikkor 300mm f4.5 shutter 1 / 1600

a blue tit Nikkor 300mm f8 + Nikkor TC-200 Shutter 1 / 640

a spotted woodpecker nikkor 300mm f8 Shutter 1 / 640


a spotted woodpecker Nikkor 300 f8 + Nikkor TC-200 Shutter 1/500

Teleconverter!

The tc-200 arrived today and i gotta admit i am very excited to see it in action. My original plan was to go test it out today but since darkness came so "suddenly" i figured it was for no use to even try. If you're new to this blog you might wanna suffle back a few writings to discover my speculations and specs about this cadget.

When i first got my hands on the teleconverter i have to say i was little confused. Firstly i had some minor problems figuring out how adjust D2X's "No cpu lens data" part. In the end it was pretty simple: knowing that the 300mm's minimum aperture is f4 and knowing that the teleconverter will double the light needed, i set minimum aperture on the "no cpu lens data" on f8. All in all this means in practice that when i manually set my 300mm's to marked minimum aperture of 4 , my camera will understand that actually it needs to double that for balanced shots. It continues to next step, when i manually set the aperture to f5.6, the camera understands to pick f11 instead and so on. This was actually me thinking too complicated again.
Someone in to photography may think that how does it affect anything because actually by doing all these things will not affect to the size of the "aperture hole". Instead it will change the cameras behavior on the metering: the camera light meter understands that for proper exposure it needs to take x amount of light more because of the teleconverter.

It is yet to be discovered how does it affect - or does it affect the image at all to set the lens's focal length in to the "No cpu lens data" sheet. My current quess is that it will show only in Exif data sheet, but time and experience will tell. The second problem is which focal length to set on the data sheet? Its a 300 mm nikkor acting like 450mm nikkor on a crop body and with teleconverter on it will act as 900mm nikkor.
Also theres the issue on depth of sharpness on images. One has to keep in mind that cameras f8 is propably purely because of the metering, not the sharpness. Actually the "aperture hole" on f8 with this setup is still f4 in means of physichal size. If anyone reading this blog knows about these matters, i would ask him kindly to enlighten me on this a bit.

Tomorrow i have 3 hours time between lessons to test shot with and without the teleconverter. I also planned to take some wildlife shots. If im very lucky i just might return with pictures of woodpeckers.

Ill take with me the usual setup, 17-55, 300mm, Slik pro II tripod and a pack full of patience. The newcomer tc-200 will show whether its a useful part of my gear or just few extra grams to carry around. We'll see tomorrow!

TC-200


TC-200 attached to 300mm

Gear usability

I often read very precise and "scientific" reviews of different kind of camera bodies, accessories and lenses. It's actually part of the fun for me: getting to know the gear available for taking those shots. Yeah yeah, in my last post i said about saving money not having to buy those monster lenses, but seriously, who wouldnt want that Nikkor AF-S 600m F4 ? In the end its all about your budget and will to use it on to the things important to you. As my father once said: nothing is expensive if you are willing to invest on it.

Ok, back to reality, I study at university and even though im living in a society full of prosperity, i simply dont have the buck for the things im drooling after (on the other hand, who has ten grand to spend on a lens or 7 grand to a camera body, which value will decrease by the minute.) This is when i have to stop, i mean REALLY stop to think about priorities in life: hobbies, marriage, fatherhood, studies, relatives, income just to name a few affecting my life in a western society.

After all this prologue to the thing at hand: What's the usability of my very own ( very budgy ) camera gear? After all, you can still take those great pictures with improvised (and much, much more cost effective) setups.

For general photography, happy family trips to local zoo and usual snapshots i use Nikkor 17-55mm F2.8. This is certainly very usable lens. The focal length seems to be just right from usual shots needed to compose most common situations: pictures of people, family, landscape all in all situations needed to capture the moment. I cant stress too much that how important usability issue it is to have a "normal" range good quality zoom at ones camerapack. I seriously would feed prime lenses to baboons at the local zoo since having to take those backsteps all the time not even mentioning the disco needed to change a prime lens to your camerabody every now and then.

I like bulky, i really mean it. I dont care if a prime Nikkor 50mm F1.8D would do the same trick compared in quality, it feels like plastic, it is plastic and it doesnt emit those "trust vibes" like those metallic, heavy and bulky lenses do. Commenting on a prime lens its worth mentioning that in my use i found 50mm prime lens to be very one sided. The angle of view simply didnt fit for me in this "usual" focal length gategory. I found my self always taking backsteps trying to fit everything relevant in to the image. I will not comment the image quality on these lenses, i will comment the usability from my own point of view and whats relevant for me. Use those hyperlinks, they will take you somewhere more scientific.

Okay i will admit it here, im what they here in Finland call "varustehuora". I my self like to call it "equipment aware photographer" hehe.

For close up specie images of birds, wildlife and other living beings i have found the Nikkor 300mm F4 (on a crop body) to be very sufficient and useful. If i would be using it on an full frame format digital SLR i would bet that 300 mm wouldnt be enough. 300mm on a crop body is somewhat equivalent to 450 mm and thats just about right focal length for me.. usually. Sometimes or more often than sometimes i find my self figuring i REALLY need to get closer to subject. Everything is fine if the birds are landed or airborne, but on water... (even though i dont mind carrying heavy equipment with me, a rowing boat could just be too much for me.) Once again the build quality and the feeling on this lens meets with my demands. Its really sturdy, made of metal and it feels good in hand. In my opinion it has sturdy enough tripod collar and thank god it can be rotated so it feels right at hand even handheld. One more feature worth mentioning: the built in lens hood. It isnt really that big deal, but its convenient not having to attach and detach it all the time. It slips very naturally on the barrel when not needed and better yet, it stays there.

Last but not least is the D2X camera body. The great side and which makes it very very useful is the fact it produces wonderful imagequality, which is sufficient to my needs. It's also very sturdy and well built, so i dont have to be too careful with it. But the mother of all useful features: the envirvomental sealing... I dont think anyone would like their cameras broken because of rain or snow. I will not confirm that this body is totally 100% weather proof, but at least it hasnt broken up in my use on rainy or snowy conditions. Believe me it really takes the fun off any photographic trip having to protect ones camera all the time from basic elements of nature like snow and rain.

Later this week i will also continue with the tc-200 performance and usability.
So stay tuned !

Thoughts and speculations about teleconverter performance

As i stated in my previous post, i had bought second hand the Nikkor TC-200 teleconverter for my Nikkor 300mm F4 lens. In this post i will speculate about the performance of this combination by summing up my personal opinion and combining it to reviews and recommendations from respected authors of different websites. Main idea is to achieve a conclusion of what kind of performance is to be expected before the actual test.

From numerous sources: articles, blogs and forums there's very active but unfortunately also very unprecise discussion, mostly rumors and statements without any proof about performance about this teleconverter. This leads me to believe that this teleconverter is minorily used by photographers around the world. This is expectable, since the common opinion about teleconverters is that they will dramatically degrade image quality and increase the light needed to take those much sought for beautiful, sharp and revealing shots about wildlife. Optical fact is that they will double the minimum aperture of the setup, but im not ready to believe that the much discussed degrading of image quality is always the issue, especially on the crop format SLR bodies (since the image degrading is often reported due the corner falloff and corner softnes.) This is something that i will discover when the TC-200 arrives and i get to test it on the 300 f4. It would be very interesting to test the converter with numerous different lenses to see how it acts on different setups. It's also worth noticing that TC-200 is intended for use on lenses of focal length maximum of 200 mm. Due to the quite greasy price of TC-300 and the very thin availibitily summed up with the very rare dim of light from photographers reporting great results on TC-200 with longer lenses than 200mm, im very confident, maybe even overconfident of the results achievable. One more aspect is the Nikon's strange approach to teleconverters for AF(not AF-S) type lenses: they dont support autofocus.

Im not naive, i'm not expecting achieving same results as for example Nikon Nikkor 600mm f/4D but if i can achieve even nearly as good images on the planned setup i would be very glad just because the money saved (as if i would have the cash for that monster.) If everything goes as planned, i would still be able to get great results in ligthy and propably even dim conditions on f8 (c'mon people, f8 isnt THAT slow on a tripod)

Casual sunday

So this is my first post on my photography blog. Last sunday we took a walk near where we live here in Helsinki. Main intention of the trip was to get away from the urban lifestyle and to refresh our minds a little after pretty hectic weekend with our 3 week old baby Aamu (she is very moody at the moment.) But as always daddy had something else in mind too hehe, my newly bought Nikkor 300mm F4. I used it with crop body Nikon D2X, so the focal lenght is equivalent to some nice 450mm or so. I took pictures 3 different species of birds. First off some pictures of mallards followed by a picture of starling. We also encountered three mute swans.
I also noticed that for the smaller birds 450 mm wasnt nearly enough. Thats why i bought Nikkor TC-200 teleconverter second hand for 50 euros, which will double the focal length of the current setup. The drawback is of course the doubled aperture and unsupported autofocus function. The latter doesnt matter anyway since the little birds im photographing seem to always inhabit behind branches so autofocus is useless anyway. I hope that ill receive the teleconverter this week so i can report something about its affect on the nikkor 300's performance. I dont excpect it to be a great deal with crop body like Nikon D2X but we'll see.