NTHP

The Big Lens

Photography

Being a lover of plane spotting, I’ve been itching to get closer from the start. Closer to the plane, closer to the bird. Well, I pulled the trigger on something that will do that.

Focal Length


If you look on my /photos page, you’ll see a focal length listing. To quote wikipedia.

The focal length of an optical system is a measure of how strongly the system converges or diverges light; it is the inverse of the system’s optical power. A positive focal length indicates that a system converges light, while a negative focal length indicates that the system diverges light.

Basically, the bigger the number, the more “zoomed” in the shot will be.

The lens I’ve used for plane spotting, is a Tamron with a 300mm focal length. That’s a pretty good zoom. But I wanted more. 400? No. 500? No. 550? More!

600mm


The lens I pulled the trigger on, is a SIGMA 150-600mm. Yeah, 600mm. That’s a lot of mm, and it’s a lot of lens. As in, you don’t put this on a camera. You put a camera, on the lens.

Now, I know this looks big, but this is at its smallest. Add the lens hood, extend it out, and slap a camera on it, oh man.

Now, if you’re thinking that this looks heavy, and a pain to shoot with… You’re right. Shooting this bad boy handheld is a workout. Thankfully the image stabilization, is insanely good.

Now, I did take this thing out plane spotting from my deck. But I didn’t really like the results… Turns out, I accidentally had the ISO set to 80 on my camera… Oops. Later went out and got some moon shots1.

Via nlp.photos, click for more info

I’m looking forward to taking this thing plane spotting2. I should be able to do that in the next few days. But, I also have a flight next month, to go plane spotting in Denver.


  1. This time without that ISO user error ↩︎

  2. Without massing up the ISO ↩︎


Reply via email