Tag Archives: telephoto

Equipment, Morning Musings, Technique

Lenses for Landscape Photography (Morning Musings 1/12/15)

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This isn’t exactly a regular “morning musings” post, but I wanted to share this stuff and it seemed like a good pretext! This post concerns two related articles at the website:

From time to time I share new posts in my “Photographic Myths and Platitudes” series. These articles deal with common ideas about photography that range from “open to question” to quite wrong. I try to look at these issues from a perspective that is both objective and based on actual photographic practice.

I wrote the first of these two articles about lenses for DSLR landscape photography back in 2010 after reading one too many claims that wide-angle lenses are landscape lenses and that longer focal lengths are not good ‘landscape lenses.’  It shouldn’t be a surprise that I disagree. The first article goes over reasons to consider a wide range of focal lengths for photographing landscape.

When I wrote that first article I realized that there was another notion about landscape photography that needed a closer look, a belief that prime lenses are better than zoom lenses for landscape photography. This long-cherished idea probably has its roots back in an earlier period of photography when all photography (not to mention all landscape photography) was done with prime lenses, and in a somewhat later period when early zoom lenses had some serious shortcomings. But things are a lot different today, and most of the excellent contemporary DSLR (and a great deal of medium format) landscape photography that you see and enjoy today was done with zoom lenses.

Knowing what a sensitive issue this is for some photographers, I delayed writing part II for over four years! I’ll acknowledge in advance that there are some reasons to shoot landscape subjects with non-zoom lenses, and that my perspective is not The Truth about landscape photography lenses. However, I’m certain that the majority of landscape photographers will be best served by today’s excellent zoom lenses.

In any case, part II deals with this issue, and it is available now. I hope you’ll enjoy it and perhaps learn something new.

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment. Connections to photography may be tenuous at times!

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Commentary, Equipment, Reviews

Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens — A First Look

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(Note: Updated 12/24/14 to add thoughts about “who should buy” this lens.)

Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS IICanon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II

Canon recently released the successor to their venerable 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens, the new EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II lens. I have relied on the older model for some time now… but my copy of the new lens arrived a few days ago. Now that I have used it for a day of wildlife and landscape photography I would like to share some first impressions

Four Sandhill Cranes
Four Sandhill Cranes

Four Sandhill Cranes. San Joaquin Valley, California. December 22, 2014.
© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell — all rights reserved.

First, a few technical details. The new lens covers essentially the same range as the older model — a focal length range of 100mm to 400mm and a variable aperture range of f/4.5 (at 100mm) to f/5.6 (at 400mm). Both lenses use a zoom mechanism that extends at longer focal lengths. However, there are some technical differences:

Continue reading Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens — A First Look →

Deals and Sales, Equipment

Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II Lens Announced

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(Updated) Canon has announced the long-rumored replacement to the venerable 100-400mm L lens. It is the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II.

Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II
Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II

The lens it replaces has been a very valuable “go to” lens for many photographers who wanted more reach, a reasonably small package, good optical quality, and the flexibility of a zoom. I’ve been an enthusiastic user of the older version for some time now.

Recently Canon has updated or augmented their lens line-up to improve the offerings in certain categories. For example, earlier this year they introduced their ultra wide angle zooms by adding a new EF 16-35mm f/4L IS lens. That lens has been a real success, not only adding image stabilization to lenses in this class for the first time, but also providing excellent resolution across the frame — more so than either of the lenses that many photographers used before it was introduced.

For some time, many have felt that there was a lot of potential for updating the 100-400. Although it is good performer in many ways, there has been room for improvement. More modern IS systems can provide up to 4 stops of stabilization, while the older lens only provides perhaps two. The older lens has good image quality, but it could be better in keeping with more recent lenses from Canon. In fact, rumors about the introduction of the updated 100-400mm zoom have been floating around for years.

We don’t know what the optical performance of the new lens will be yet. As I write this I have seen no real reviews. (I have seen some “reviews” that are mostly lists of specifications and speculation.) When we do see them, it will not surprise me at all if this lens provides valuable improvements in the same way that the 16-35mm f/4 has. Here is some of what we do know from Canon specifications:

  • Rather than the “push-pull” design of the earlier lens, this one has a more familiar rotation ring to change the focal length.
  • As was the case with the older model, the front of the lens extends as you zoom. This means that the lens is more compact when packed.
  • Image stabilization has been updated to provide up to four stops of stabilization — especially important with longer focal length lenses.
  • Other features include 9 blade diaphragm, the familiar 77mm filter thread diameter, and more.

The list price of the lens is $2,199. That may seem like a lot of money, but if it provides the sort of image quality we all expect it is actually a rather good deal for a lens with these capabilities.

Update: I have now had a chance to look at the MTF charts for the new lens (available at the Canon web site) and they suggest that the new zoom should be a very good performer in terms of image quality. The chart suggests better image quality than the existing 100-400 (which is quite decent) and the 400mm f/5.6 prime.

I expect that this lens will be in short supply at first — for the usual reasons related to any new product introduction, but also because of a pent-up interest in the update. The lens has been announced but is not yet available — though you may preorder it if you want to be first to get one.

As for me, there is a very good chance that I will get a copy of this lens before too long. In fact, I’m leaning more and more towards placing a pre-order — something that I rarely do.

© Copyright 2014 G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
Blog | About | Flickr | Twitter | Facebook | Google+ | 500px.com | LinkedIn | Email

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Technique

Camera Stability and Long Lenses

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I responded to a question somewhere else and thought that it might be useful to share the response here, too. A photographer asked some questions about using long focal length telephoto lenses for landscape photography and how to deal with the issue of camera/lens stability, bringing up related questions about things like live view modes, mirror lockup, image-stabilization, and so forth. Here is what I wrote in response…

Rocky Creek Bridge, Surf and Fog
Black and white photograph of Rocky Creek Bridge with winter storm surf and fog. Big Sur coastline, California.

If you are shooting landscapes from the tripod…

  • Do use live view – it is the mode that introduces the least amount of shutter vibration.
  • Either mode 1 or 2 will perform essentially equally well when it comes to shutter vibration. (In both cases, there really isn’t any shutter motion vibration before the exposure since it is initiated electronically.
  • If you use a remote release (and you do, right?!) then there is no reason to use any delay setting on the camera to avoid vibration. (Many cameras have settings for 2 second or 10 second delays – mostly there so you can run and get in the photo, too!)
  • Mirror lockup is irrelevant in live view. The mirror is up by default in live view.  To be even more explicit, live view and MLU are mutually exclusive modes – they cannot be used at the same time.
  • After touching the camera, moving the tripod, etc., wait a few seconds for vibrations to dissipate before making your exposure. I  think that 2-3 seconds is sufficient, though some folks will claim that even longer might help.
  • Speaking of this, I would tend to avoid using either auto-focus (AF) mode when making landscape photographs with such a long lens. Either can introduce some amount of vibration to the system, but especially the mode that momentarily flips the mirror down, auto-focuses in the usual manner, then flips the mirror up to make the shot in live view. I prefer to manually focus at 10x magnification. If you must autofocus, do so before switching to live view mode, and then turn AF off before making the exposure.
  • Realize that the large area of these big lenses, combined with their very long focal lengths and great magnification, make the system far more susceptible to vibration from air movement. Even relatively weak breezes can create enough vibration to create a bit of blur and soften the image. Continue reading Camera Stability and Long Lenses →