dhogaza
Posts: 525
Joined: Feb. 2006
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| Quote | | Step up to a 500mm lens, and Nikon offers an f/4 with image stabilization for $8,100. |
Nearly two decades ago, when I made the decision to upgrade from my old Minolta system to one offering a 600/4 for bird photography, I had my heart set on buying a Nikon system.
Then I priced out a full system and was staggered by the price differential for long lenses. Canon was noticably cheaper *and* had fully integrated auto-focus.
Still true today - Canon's 500/4 with image stabilization is about $6K, enough cheaper than the Nikon price quoted above for one to toss in an additional 300/4 image stabilized lens, a 1.4x teleextender, and an extension tube for close focusing (500mm lenses typically only focus down to 5m, for songbirds it's nice to be able to focus a bit closer).
And, no, you're not going to lose quality. Even Art Wolfe is shooting Canon these days (when did *that* happen?).
Not trying to start a brand war here - both Nikon and Canon are great, and Nikon offers the advantage of there being a huge pool of manual focus lenses available that will at least mount on modern bodies (autofocus is pretty meaningless for extreme wide-angle, or macro, lenses, though macro lenses generally are excellent for all-around use where AF will be more greatly appreciated).
For wildlife shooting I highly favor APS-sized sensors. I've just upgraded from Canon's 20D to the 50D, but even the 8MP 20D allowed me to make extremely sharp and salable 14x20 prints. Modern scaling algorithms used in PhotoShop along with a subtle bit of sharpening can yield some extremely impressive results. Publishers tend to want more megapixels, but gladly accept uprez'd images from my 20D.
Question for Wes: when you did your resolution analysis for the same number of pixels on APC vs. full-frame, did you take into account resolution falloff at the edges? One advantage of APC is that you're cutting out the sharper, center portion of the image circle when you use it with a lens designed for a full 35mm frame.
Anyway, I'd venture that in the field, any resolution difference due to sensor size when shooting wildlife with a long lens isn't worth worrying about.
One nice thing about digital is that the modern bodies perform extremely well at ISO 200, better than something like Sensia pushed to 200 (well, at least at the time I tried it - is Fuji still investing in improving their film? I doubt it).
For those of us who grew up shooting Fuji Velvia at ISO 40 in order to give magazine editors the saturation and pallette they wanted (though in later years I found they loved Kodak 100SW, and I really loved that extra stop), decent performance at reasonable speeds like ISO 200 combined with image stabilization can make the difference between chasing stuff with a heavy, awkward tripod or skating around blithely with a nice, easily-handled monopod.
With APC sensor bodies, a 500/4 is adequate for bird photography, especially if you invest in a same-manufacturer 1.4x teleextender. I bought my 600/4 back in the film days (and am looking to sell it, without much luck, thus far) but a 500/4 on an APC body is equivalent in field of view to an 800/4 on a film body. Nice.
A 500/4 is noticably lighter than a 600/4 (Canon's is 8.5 lbs vs. 11.8 lbs) and cheaper.
I think it's true that Nikon still beats out Canon at the wide end, though Canon's high-end wide-angle zooms have greatly improved in the last decade.
I second Wes's endorsement of 80-200/2.8 lenses.
I've also been in love with my Canon 28-70/2.8 (now offered as a 24-70 2.8) for many, many years now. Blindingly sharp. So sharp, actually, that a manufacturer of a system to print digital images on photo paper (similar to the chromera system) selected one of my images shot with that lens to show off the level of fine detail and fine color rendition their printing system can deliver. I'm old enough that I remember the days when zooms of any length were a real compromise regarding image quality. Not so with today's better ones - however, they're expensive.
Hmm ... well, here's the image the printer manufacturer chose ... Canon 1N, Fuji Velvia, EF 28-70/2.8L at roughly 50mm, tripod, mirror lockup, and Monterey Bay giving me a nice neutral background for this pretty guy sitting on the railing of the Monterey Pier.
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