After reading Captured by Moose Peterson and following his blog for a year or so, I finally decided to rent some pro glass and spend some time putting his advice to practice. I picked up a 600mm f4 from Robert’s rental department, slid it into my reconfigured Kata 222-UL backpack, and headed to southwest Florida. Moose made a point to know the biology of the critters so you can get a close as possible. This came fairly natural since I grew up stalking Trout and Salmon in tiny streams of upstate New York. Everything else was far from natural.
A thousand thoughts are flooding my brain as I approach a White Ibis feeding in a very shallow pool of water. I’m trying to recall f-stops, shutter speed, light direction, fill the frame, get close, ISO, plant the tripod, don’t drop $10,000 worth of gear, oh yeah – make a picture and don’t chop off the reflection thru the head. My D300 with grip rips off pics like an AK47. Blam..10…11..12..shots rip off. One has to be good. right. Well I’m pretty happy with this shot. Could be a tad sharper, but I’m happy.
I learned so much trying to put Moose’s teachings into practice. I now fully understand the importance of minimum focusing distance. I was using the older 600mm with a MFD of just under 20 ft so once a critter got closer than 20 ft I had to pick another subject. Good thing there were plenty to choose from.
I found it incredibly difficult to get the background just the way I wanted it. The 600mm compresses the background and blurs everything to creamy nothingless provided the stars are aligned just right.
If branches and whatnot are too close, they become a distracting blob. Condos in the background don’t really make the shot sing and a drain culvert doesn’t exactly scream artsy fartsy. Once I found some good separation between my subject and the background I started getting the types of shots that I came for.
At nearly 12.5 Lbs, the 600 mm lens puts the rest of your gear to the test. I admit, I’m a cheapskate when it comes to tripods. They are the biggest pain – awkward, heavy, etc. My mid-entry level sticks were buckling under the strain. I really struggled getting sharp shots in low, early morning, light. If I found a stationary bird, I used my timer (poor man’s cable release) to eliminate the shakes. I worked on my long lens technique, but it just wasn’t enough to get a sharp shot. Thankfully, 8fps came to the rescue. I’d rip off 6-8-10 shots and hope one was sharp. Not ideal. So I’m convinced that I need to upgrade a few things, but most importantly, I need to keep shooting.