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Registered Member #75
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 09:30AM
Location: Montana, USA
Posts: 711
The Wumpus wrote ...
You can actually get long telephoto reach without going into DSLRs, and at faster apertures too, for an affordable price. E.g., cameras such as the Panasonic FZ30 digicam ( provides 35-420 (35mm equiv) at a constant 2.8 aperture.
Well, I hate to correct you there, but thats not really the truth. While the focal length has been converted to 35mm equiv., the aperture has not been, so you are comparing apples with carrots here. What really counts for good telephoto shots is light, and the easiest way to measure the amount of light you get is the effective aperture. Incidentially, this is how the aperture rating of a lens is defined: Effective aperture divided bz focal lengh. With a 300mm f/2.8 lens, this is a whooping 10cm, but with the realistic 30mm (?) of the FZ30, it is only 1cm, so unless you are in really bright light, you will get motion blur or noise. There is really no alternative to a DSLR for animal pictures, and definitely not a film based SLR.
To get back to topic, this is a crow which poses as a B52 Steath bomber:
Registered Member #27
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 02:20AM
Location: Hyperborea
Posts: 2058
That is what i thought at the time but if I had brought a big fat lens I would have taken more than 1 second to focus and shoot and I would have missed it completely.
I can see the resemblance to a duck in the main picture.
Registered Member #325
Joined: Fri Mar 17 2006, 12:42AM
Location: Turku, Finland
Posts: 55
joe wrote ...
The Wumpus wrote ...
You can actually get long telephoto reach without going into DSLRs, and at faster apertures too, for an affordable price. E.g., cameras such as the Panasonic FZ30 digicam ( provides 35-420 (35mm equiv) at a constant 2.8 aperture.
Well, I hate to correct you there, but thats not really the truth. While the focal length has been converted to 35mm equiv., the aperture has not been, so you are comparing apples with carrots here. What really counts for good telephoto shots is light, and the easiest way to measure the amount of light you get is the effective aperture. Incidentially, this is how the aperture rating of a lens is defined: Effective aperture divided bz focal lengh. With a 300mm f/2.8 lens, this is a whooping 10cm, but with the realistic 30mm (?) of the FZ30, it is only 1cm, so unless you are in really bright light, you will get motion blur or noise. There is really no alternative to a DSLR for animal pictures, and definitely not a film based SLR.
Yes, you get a smaller effective aperture with a digicam, but you also have a smaller sensor to expose. Focal length, aperture diameter and image circle diameter all scale down linearly so that f/2.8 will always give you the same shutter speed in the same light for the same ISO sensitivity. It does not matter if it is a tiny cellphone camera or a view camera.
So, in the comparison to the Panasonic, in the picture at we can see from the lens that the focal length range of this camera is 7.4-88.8. Since the camera is advertised as 35-420 35mm equivalent, this gives a FOV crop factor of about 4.8, which would place the 300mm (35mm equiv) mark at about 62.5mm. The "effective aperture" at this focal length is this 62.5 / 2.8 = 22.3mm. Now glean from the spec in the link the sensor size (7.18mm horizontal) and check the ratio of the effective aperture to sensor width, it is about 3.1. Basically you get the same for 35mm SLR with a 300mm 2.8: (300 / 2.8) / 35 = 3.1
You are right about noise, though. Because the pixels are packed into a smaller sensor the signal contains much more noise for the same ISO sensitivity.
Registered Member #75
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 09:30AM
Location: Montana, USA
Posts: 711
Yeah, thats basically what I am saying, you cannot get enough light on a small sensor. A DSLR has about 10 times the sensor area, so there will be 10 times as much light striking it in the above example with the "effective" 300mm 2.8 lens. This will cause a signal to noise ratio 10 time (or sqrt(10)? heck!) better than the panasonic. (Dont get me wrong though, I love panasonic, and if I had not just blown my budged on a Nikkor 180/2.8 prime, I would seriously consider a Lumix for general "recreational" picture taking)
Yeah, the on topic animal picture:
This one was caught speeding:
And I am sure I couldn't have done the last one with anything else than a DSLR, because the ISO was up to 1600 for 1/30s at max. aperture. Finland ist a very dark country. But still there is very little noise, even after cropping heavily.
Registered Member #325
Joined: Fri Mar 17 2006, 12:42AM
Location: Turku, Finland
Posts: 55
The hare is very nice, you have really captured the sense of motion there. It is easy to plead for more sharpness in the hare itself, but knowing how extremely difficult these panning shots are, you did a good job.
Registered Member #30
Joined: Fri Feb 03 2006, 10:52AM
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
Posts: 6706
Excellent photos wumpus! Did you use a flash on the squirrel peeping out of the tree hole? I can see the little reflection in its eye, so I guess you did. What sort of flash setup did you use?
I had to go and look up the word "bokeh" on google. It's cool that we have a word for it now I guess mirror lenses probably have the worst bokeh ever.
Registered Member #325
Joined: Fri Mar 17 2006, 12:42AM
Location: Turku, Finland
Posts: 55
Thanks Steve. I used the Nikon regular SB-600 hotshoe mount flash. Most of the time I tilt the flash upwards and tape a piece of stiff paper or plastic to the flash at an angle, so that the light is reflected and scattered. A simple solution and gives much better light than direct flash. Squirrel eyes don't just get red when you flash them directly, they get a yellow-purplish out of this world glow which looks really strange:
This is a problem with most mammals, e,g, cats have reflective retinas, as can be seen here:
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Native Animal pictures
But still there is very little noise, even after cropping heavily. 
Did you use a flash on the squirrel peeping out of the tree hole? I can see the little reflection in its eye, so I guess you did. What sort of flash setup did you use?
