By Heinz Richter
Wildlife is a readily
accessible subject for photographers who are prepared, and a damn near
impossible subject for those who are not.
Any successful wildlife
photographer will tell you that preparation includes not only patience and knowledge
of the subject, but also at least one long lens. Convenience is almost never a consideration.
The possible subjects are of
all sizes and temperaments; the appropriateness of any particular lens must be
judged according to how well it allows the subject to fill the frame at a
practical shooting distance.
It should be understood from
the start that convenience in terms of size and weight should not play a major
role in the selection of equipment. Such
considerations inevitably lead to compromises of lens magnification or quality,
and then to compromises of results. The photographer,
who grabs his /her camera off the shelf, attaches a workhorse telephoto from
the camera bag, and goes for a walk by the lake hoping to catch a shot of the
loons he saw there last week will be sorely disappointed when he sees the
results, and when he has to explain that those little dots there in the middle
represent the Minnesota state bird.
Staying with birds as our
example: most birds, large or small, are rather shy, so naturally we end up
dealing with rather long shooting distances.
For those of us accustomed to 90mm or 135mm lenses, 200mm or 250mm may
seem amazingly, encouragingly powerful.
Yet even with a 250 you might as well forget it, because unless you kill
that bird first, you’ll never get close enough to fill even a quarter of the
frame.
To cover a 20” horizontal
with the 50mm lens, you would have to be about 28” (see accompanying chart)
from the subject - and it would take a good size bird to fill a 20” field of
view. A 200mm lens, giving 4x
magnification (with full frame sensors) over the 50mm, would allow us to be
about 9 ¼ feet away, and a 250mm would put us at about 11 ½ feet, still hardly
far enough to avoid scaring the wild and shy.
The shooting distance
increases to about 8 ½ feet with a 400mm, probably a (minimum) workable
distance for those with patience and persistence. So we begin to see that the 400, far from
being an exotic, is in this case a minimum requirement, the barest of
essentials if any good result is to be achieved.
Leica R3, Leitz Telyt 400mm f/6.8
But it isn’t really all that
bad, since we usually will be concerned only with filling half or maybe a
quarter of the frame with the creature.
The 20” filed would then be about right for song birds and small
animals, but for something like, for instance, a duck, which would have filled
the 20” field of view, we could stay as much as four times the distance away,
about 74-75 feet. In most cases this
would certainly be an easy distance to work with; however, I’ve found that some
animals are so very shy that even a hundred feet is too close. So you can see that for this kind of
photography one has to be a little bit power hungry as far as lenses go.
Leica R3, Leica Bellows II, Leitz Telyt 200mm f/4.5
Needless to say, the size and
weight of a lens like this is not small, and as we said earlier, there are no
real compromises. As far as physical
size is concerned, the smallest of the high magnification lenses are mirror
lenses. Few of those have maximum apertures
greater than f/8, which is pretty slow in many cases. Out of focus highlight characteristically appear
as doughnuts with these lenses and they do not have any aperture control past
the maximum aperture. Further, the
contrast of even the best mirror lenses does not approach that of a first rate
glass lens.
Leica R3, Leitz Telyt 200mm f/4.5
So we consider the glass lenses. They are definitely larger than the mirrors,
and the400mm Telyt, for instance, with its grip and shoulder stock weighs
nearly twice as much as most mirror lenses of a similar focal length. And for all that, the Telyt is still not a
particularly heavy lens, and with the grip and stock is extremely well balanced
and comfortable. With higher ISO
settings it becomes an eminently hand holdable wildlife lens.
Incidentally, most good long
lenses by design give you optimum performance wide open. Meaning that the
fastest shutter speed is naturally attained, something very importasnt if you
intend to shoot hand held.
Leica R4, Novoflex 400mm f/5.6
Shooting with your camera on
a tripod naturally allows slower shutter speeds. But since much of wildlife shooting is
necessarily handheld, higher ISO settings become a necessity. The rule of thumb in handheld work is that
the slowest shutter speed should not be less than the inverse of the focal
length of the lens; in other words, 1/50 (1/60) second for a 50mm lens, 1/250
for a 250mm lens, and 1/400 (1/500) for a 400mm.
Leica R4, Novoflex 400mm f/5.6
If you will be shooting
subjects which allow you to use a tripod, we recommend that you do so, by all
means. The results will justify the
extra hassle. As with so many other
things in photography, you will have to analyze the pros and cons in your own
work. The tripod will slow you down, and
in some cases it is just not an appropriate tool, as we mentioned earlier;
handholding would certainly be the lesser evil.
Try it both ways and see which gives you better results. Some people can handhold better than others,
some don’t like it at all. A third alternative would be a monopod. It is a lot less cumbersome than a tripod and offers a substantially sturdier support for the camera than handholding alone. Experiment.
Leica R4, Novoflex 400mm f/5.6
One final suggestion: all the precautions against bad pictures will
be meaningless if the lens on your camera does not perform to your
expectations, and there are an awful lot of mediocre to rotten long lenses on
the market.
Leica R4, Novoflex 640mm f/9, Novoflex 2x Extender
Leica R4, Novoflex 400mm f/5.6
Leica R3, Leitz Telyt 400mm f/6.8
Leica M5, Visoflex, Leica Bellows II, Leitz Telyt 200mm f/4.5
Leica M5, Visoflex III, Leica Bellows II, Leitz Telyt 200mm f/4.5
Leica R3, Leitz Telyt 400mm f/6.8
Sometimes equipment requires to be more specialized to get the shot we are after.
Leica M5, Visoflex III, Leica Bellows II, Leitz 560mm Telyt f/6.8
I am not familiar with Novoflex lenses. Could you tell us more about them?
ReplyDeleteNovoflex is a German company that used to offer an excellent line of lenses of their own, mainly long telephoto lenses. They developed a unique focusing system called Followfocus. The lenses incorporated a pistol grip which, when squeezed, would shift the lens to infinity. Releasing the grip slowly, would focus at closer distances. After some getting used to, this system focused faster than anything short of autofocus. The lenses were of the same, two-element design as the Leitz 400 and 560mm Telyt lenses and offered equally high performance levels. For a while, the Leitz 400 and 560 mm Telyt lenses were available from Leitz with the Novoflex Followfocus system. Lenses of the system consisted of 200, 240, 280, 300 400 600 and 640 mm lenses.
ReplyDeleteThat sounds like a further development of the "trombone" focusing Leica used with the 400 and 560mm Telyt lenses.
ReplyDeleteYes, and it proved to be much easier to use than the Leica system. I also found the focusing movement of the Novoflex system to be much sturdier. Leica used four appr. 5 inch long steel pins that fit in grooves to effect the focusing movement. Novoflex used appr. 50 such groves for the focusing movement.
ReplyDeleteLooking at some pictures of Novoflex lenses, it seems that the pistol grip focusing has a relatively short movement. Doesn't that put considerable restrictions on how close you can focus?
ReplyDeleteYou are basically correct. However, Novoflex offered a perfect solution. The interchangeable lens mount adapter in back of the lens is about 2 inches long. It can be replaced by a small bellows which then is adapted to fit the camera. With the bellows in its shortest position, the lens focuses to infinity. If releasing the pistol grip does not focus close enough, the bellows can now be used to focus closer. Setting the bellows slightly closer than necessary allows the use of the pistol grip for fast focusing changes. This system proved to be substantially more convenient and usable than any extension tube.
ReplyDeleteThe later Novoflex lenses replaced the bellows with a sliding extension tube. That too worked quite well, but to me the bellows has always been the most practical solution.