Mark's Blog

Last week I managed to get some “new” equipment.  I put new in quotes because I managed to pick all the equipment up used at various places on the internet.  The lens and body weigh about 10 pounds.  Needless to say that after walking around and shooting at the wildlife sanctuary this afternoon my neck and arms are sore.  I got a monopod to assist with shooting when I am out for a while.  I can hand hold the setup only for a little bit before the weight gets to me.
Well this is a size comparison to what I have been using for shooting basketball and any other sport.  The 300mm f2.8 is quite a bit bigger than the 70-200 f2.8 that I have been using.  This shot has the lens hood on so I could set the lens face down, to be honest almost all of the shooting that I have been doing with the 300 has had the hood on.

Here is a photo of the lens plate.

Here is a shot of the end of the lenses.  You can see that the 300 is A LOT bigger in diameter than the 70-200.

It is big enough to fit a soup can inside of the lens hood.

Now for the pic of the “new” camera.Now, here is a shot with the “new” Canon 1D Mark III, Canon 3oomm F2.8L.  The info for the photo 1/1000 sec., f4.0, ISO 125.

Another wildlife photo.  1/1000 sec., F4.0, ISO 125.

Yesterday I checked my email before I went to work and I find out that I am now going to be shooting SOME of the Packer games for the Shawano Leader.  Now, with that news I need to FIND/WORK for some money to get the 300mm f2.8 with the 1.4 multiplier since the 400mm is 9000, damn Nikon for being so expensive.  With the above combo it would give me the equivalent of a 420mm f4 lens.

Later

Today Camera Corner had reps from Canon come to their store. They were supposed to have Nikon come there but he was sick and I only got to use the lenses that they had in stock. I got to experiment with this lens and this lens.  The 14-24 is an INSANE lens, the angle of view of the lens is 114° at 14mm.  To give you an idea of how wide that is, imagine you have a cabinet about 4′ high and you are only about a foot away and you take a picture.  You can get the ground and part of the ceiling in your photo.

One thing I was blown away with was the speed of which the PROFESSIONAL lenses focus.  My 80-200 is a pro lens but it is an older design, I thought it focused fast but the new AF-S or SWM driven lenses put mine to shame.

Since the Nikon dude wasn’t there I tried some Canon equipment.  I am looking to buy this lens hopefully in a year, but I was forced to try the Canon equivalent.  There is really no difference between the Canon and Nikon when it comes to the Professional lenses except for the name and PRICE.  The autofocus of this lens was damn near instantaneous, I was experimenting with the Canon 7d, 5d mkII and 1d mkIII and the focus speed was very similar between the cameras.  The 1d was the fastest to focus and in frames per second, 10 (insane), but it is the pro sports camera from Canon.

The lens is hand holdable for only a short period of time then the weight gets to you.  After about 10 minutes of shooting with it I could feel the burn in the shoulders and arms from holding up the 8 pounds of camera equipment.  One thing I found interesting is that when the Image Stabilization, IS, was working you could feel the lens vibrate from the optics spinning around inside the lens.  The size of the lens also was surprising, I was expecting a big lens but not a lens with a 5″ front element on it and 6 pounds in weight.

Today was interesting.  This afternoon I wanted to go and shoot some traffic while experimenting with the blur that you see in magazines.  Well I waited until after school was out to go and sit by the school because I could see from both directions and there wasn’t any vehicles parked on the sides of the road.  Well, someone complained that I was photographing children even though there was no children anywhere to be seen.  After I had a talk with the officer that decided to come over and investigate me I continued to shoot.  Then a little later a high schooler comes in a car and tries to confront me about what I was doing.  He then proceeded to tell me that his photo “better not be on the internet” and then I asked him if he was trying to threaten me, he said no and then drove away after a second saying about “it better not be on the internet.”  So my experiment turned out to be a little more interesting than I wanted it to originally.

I think that the photos that I got turned out ok, I can tell that I need to get more practice at doing this in the future.  I would like to get a person to drive around a parking lot and let me experiment with flash and a few other things.  I will have to see about that in the future.

Today I received a newly purchased lens.  I got a 50mm f1.4 lens for a low light and walk around lens.  I have been wanting one for a while and finally had the money to get it.

After experimenting with the extremely limited depth of field with f1.4 I find out that some of the pixels in my camera are dying.  So now it is time to start saving some money and get a more professional camera.  I am currently looking to get the Nikon D700.  So I am disappointed now because the bike money I WAS saving is going to be put into a new camera.  So no more new frames for me I am going to be stuck with the Grand Failures for now.

New lens for some awesome photography.

The leaves that are out of focus around the beetle are only a few inches away.  So this shot’s exposure was 1/4000, f1.4 iso 100.  I am finding that focus is critical at f1.4 because of the LIMITED depth of field that the lens has.

I get a call from the editor of the paper that shoot for the other day and he asked if I would be interested going to shoot the Packers.  All I can say is that I was taken back by that.  I really could use a longer lens if that was the case, but I guess if I do I will have to make do with what I have for now.  I wasn’t expecting to be going from high school sports to professional sports in about 2 months of shooting for them.  Money is now welcome if you are willing to donate.  Or just by me this lens or this camera.

Later