Thread: Birds photos with a kit lens

You can see by the natural light in the images that the weather it is not very friendly over there

Then again in the wrong time of the day the glare from the ice is terrible!

Originally Posted by slt

The following, while not with a kit lens were taken with a relatively 'cheap' Sigma 70-200 f/2.8 and a 2x converter... Iceland gulls and a male Eider duck from memory, from Iceland late last year (and I'll never again complain about cold weather anywhere in Australia ).

What do you think of that lens? I'm thinking of getting one, along with the 2xTC.

I have a 75-300 4.5-5.6 and am looking to upgrade quality and speed.

Cheers, Steve

I took this with my Sony kit lens:



I like the pic for two reasons. Firstly, it's a nice pic. Secondly, this was taken from where I sit when I'm working :-)

Cheers, Steve

Originally Posted by 300+

What do you think of that lens? I'm thinking of getting one, along with the 2xTC.

I have a 75-300 4.5-5.6 and am looking to upgrade quality and speed.

Cheers, Steve

I think it's an excellent lens for the price. When I switched from Canon to a Nikon D700 last year I opted for the Nikkor 14-24 f/2.8 and 24-70 f/2.8, but baulked at the $3k for the 70-200, especially since it was a pre-FX design. I went for the Sigma instead, which I got for $1100 at the time. It has no problems auto-focusing even with the 2x converter and is pretty sharp for a zoom. There's a fair bit of vignetting wide open (just the same as with the old Nikkor version), but at f/2.8 that's rarely an issue anyway. One thing that really attracted me is the close focusing distance of 1m, which allows it to be a pseudo macro.

The following is a 100% crop of a boat a good 2km away (with the 2x converter on), the little island is 15km away:



The next one is a good example of the bokeh wide open, which isn't at all bad in my opinion:



Only negative, it's not built like a Nikkor, but then it was a lot less than half the price

slt

PS. Apologies to Chucaro for hijacking the tread

Originally Posted by slt

PS. Apologies to Chucaro for hijacking the tread

It is Ok mate, the purpose of thisa forum is to share our knowledge and this thread is very good to talk about the images, equipment and other educative issues.

Go for it!

Very nice image with the Sony gear Steve. It is sharp and the tones are very good. With the best natural light this shot would be a killer!
Which camera body and lens are you using?

Cheers

Originally Posted by Chucaro

Very nice image with the Sony gear Steve. It is sharp and the tones are very good. With the best natural light this shot would be a killer!
Which camera body and lens are you using?

Cheers

It is an A100 with the 75-300 f4.5-5.6 kit lens. The shot was taken in the late afternoon. The main problem I had was the branch kept moving and making things fuzzy. As the light was fading the exposure was stressed - this was 400 ISO and 1/200sec at F5.6 & 300mm. But the fading light was a great colour! The main weakness of the A100 is noise at higher ISOs. I avoid going over 400 if I can.

There was minimal post processing just noise reduction, a tiny tweak on the levels and some sharpening.

Cheers, Steve

Steve, to reduce the ISO noise try to over expose a bit and then correct the exposure on the PP. Works very well on the Nikon 200. I tahe very clean shots at 800 ISO, a set up tat many Nikon users do not like to use.
Cheers