> Welcome, David. Holy smokes! We may have to rename this list to
> the Leica alternate or some such. :-) I just took a quick look at
> your site and was admiring the bird photos... in particular the
> Great Blue and Bald Eagles.
>
Thank you, Chuck, for the welcome!
You need three things, for bird photography. Time, lots of patience and
**very** long glass.
Sadly, this year I've been very short on the first one.
Two things that drew me back to Olympus were the in-body stabilization and the
2x crop factor.
My favourite lens, for wildlife work, is Leica's Telyt-400 f6.8. It's a 40+
year old lens, with "trombone focusing". It was made for sports photography,
before Auto-focus was invented. It's fast to focus and really lightweight, if
a bit long, physically.(It's a "long focus", rather than "telephoto" design,
and is one of the few lenses I know of which "breaks" into two halves, so you
can get it in a camera bag!)
Put it on a monopod, and it's great for hiking in the bush!
But, for small birds, I'd still have to use it with a 2x converter, making it,
roughly, an 800/f13 lens, wide open!
Using it on the Oly E3 meant an "effective" fl of 800mm, without the 2x
converter, and thus the availability of a "fast" f6.8 lens!
Best of all, my 40+ year old Telyt is now an image stabilized lens!
I've tried it with the 2x on the Oly, for a 1600mm/f13 equivalent, but it's
really not useable on a monopod, and a tripod is both too cumbersome to carry
in the bush and not fast enough, for birds.
Nearly all the bird photos on my site are taken with the Telyt-400 on various
Canon, Leica and Oly bodies. I use Oly glass (esp, the 50~200/2.8-3.5, often
with the 1.4x converter) for the larger animals and rodeos.
Thanks for taking the time to look at my site. :-)
Best regards, from high in the hills...
David.
--
David Young - Photographer
Logan Lake,BC, CANADA
Wildlife: www.furnfeather.net
Personal: www.main.furnfeather.net
A micro-lender through Kiva.org.
--
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