Nature photography newbie!

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matttnt1

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Hi guys,

I have a couple of questions that I hope you can assist me with - as context, I have booked myself onto a photography excursion to take photos of Red Deer in England. I primarily boxing/MMA events and have NEVER done (proper) nature photography before! So I'm really out of my comfort zone :)

The workshop provider suggests nothing smaller than a 300mm lens.

My questions are.....

1/ The easy one - any particular recommendations? I intend to rent one for the workshop

2/ Why would one pick a 400mm (for example) prime lens over a 300-400mm telephoto for nature work. I understand the technical differences but surely you are completely reliant upon your subject being in exactly the right place. Does the photographer 'hope' that his subject strays into his field of view? I'm clearly missing something!

Thanks in advance

Matt

*EDIT

I am using a Nikon D700
 
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I use a 300mm on a crop sensor at a deer park close to me. As I have to stay on footpaths I have to hope they move close enough to me. With animals there is some luck with them moving to the right position but knowing where they are likely to be, being quiet and down wind of them helps. Unfortunately you just cant ask them to stand here and look at me, there is an element of visiting a location many times to get great photos. If they are far away you can get an image of the deer in their environment, if they are closer you can get portraits. I know of a guy who gets stunning photos of deer using a 600mm f4 on a full frame camera, the fixed focal length is not something that seems to bother him.

What camera do you use? Anything like a 300 f2.8 with maybe a 1.4 tc would give you two focal lengths to choose from whilst still giving the possibility of a nice fast aperture. If you use nikon then renting a 200-400 would probably be a good choice as it would give the versatility of a zoom. Don't forget a tripod would be good if you are out all day, large lens can be quite heavy after a while.

I would also suggest giving the workshop leader a call and ask for advise, most of the time they are very helpful and they usually take into account what people are using focal length wise too.
 
I forgot to mention lens choice comes with experience, the size of the subject and how close it is likely to be. I recently went to the 2020vision talk where Mark Hamblin had been photographing Black Grouse at a Lek site. He went 16 times in under 3 weeks to get the action he saw. A lot of nature photography is sitting for hours waiting to get that one shot, but its worth it when you get the shot. The workshop should be a great introduction, its definitely different to your boxing/mms.
 
If it's your first time I'd recommend Sigma 50-500 OS over any prime. Reason being, if you don't know the location very well and how close/far you're gonna be from animals, Sigma will give you flexibility and it's great otically as well.
I recently had a situation when herd of Fallow Deer came really close to the hide and my 300mm f/2.8 was too much. My friend was using sigma and took some great photos of them while I was just watching.
 
Thanks all, so presumably a prime is only of use (for nature photography) where you know where the subject is going to be i.e. feeding stations etc
 
Hi Matt, the value of primes is that they're generally faster than zooms and take sharper pictures. Not being able to zoom out is only a problem when the wildlife comes too close. A nice problem to have but if it happened that often we wouldn't all be craving longer lenses all the time :)

So in your 300-400mm vs a 400mm prime example chances are you'd be using your zoom at 400mm most of the time, so why bother with a zoom? I'm not suggesting zooms are bad or anything, that flexibility is nice to have for those cases when you need it. But they might not come up as often as you think so you shouldn't discount primes completely.
 
I remember one instance where I was using a 400mm prime for birds and up popped a water vole, It just sat there hardly any distance from me

By the time I had gone back far enough to get it in the frame and focused all I photographed was the ripple as it went under the water.

Not that well up on Nikon, but believe they do a 200-400mm which would certainly fit the bill.
 
I use a 150-500mm Sigma for wildlife and birds etc

I love the flexibly of the zoom, down side is the aperture at 500mm is a max of f6.3 - I would not swap this lens for any other and its a reasonable cost too

just my 10p's worth

Les :D
 
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