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.

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.