The fox and the rabbit

Like you, I got really frustrated shooting wildlife on inadequate lenses. To shoot garden birds I had to set things up remotely in the garden and wait for them to lane on the perch, or shoot through the lounge window :(

Now my wildlife set up is a 7D, Canon 300 f4 IS and a 1.4 EX, which delivers a focal length of 420mm @ f5.6 and is still quite sharp. This Avocet came quite close:

Avo_01 by Steve Jelly, on Flickr

This Kingfisher was quite some distance away, so this is a fairly big crop:

Kingfisher_01 by Steve Jelly, on Flickr

The lens was about £850 used, and I bought the 1.4 EX for about £90 (I think) so a reasonable set up for less than a grand. I've had the 7D for about 3 years.

I still need to work on my long lens technique, but persevere, you'll get there in the end.
 
Yes I'll still need to work on what I'm doing but I think it does help to have the right equipment to
 
Hi. This is quite a long thread, so I haven't read through all the posts. Maybe this has already been said, but here are my thoughts:

Looking at the rabbit shot, the comments on bad focussing are in my opinion not justified. That's because at this resolution it is hard to see that for sure, and actually (having used Sigmas myself) I imagine the lack in sharpness is because of the quality of glass in your lens. That's just a limitation of the equipment, and is why it doesn't cost £1000s.

I think you might benefit from a website I recently launched called Nature TTL. It's full of wildlife photography tutorials which you may find interesting. Take a look: www.naturettl.com/category/wildlifep/wildlifep-tutorials/
 
WillNicholls said:
Hi. This is quite a long thread, so I haven't read through all the posts. Maybe this has already been said, but here are my thoughts:

Looking at the rabbit shot, the comments on bad focussing are in my opinion not justified. That's because at this resolution it is hard to see that for sure, and actually (having used Sigmas myself) I imagine the lack in sharpness is because of the quality of glass in your lens. That's just a limitation of the equipment, and is why it doesn't cost £1000s.

I think you might benefit from a website I recently launched called Nature TTL. It's full of wildlife photography tutorials which you may find interesting. Take a look: www.naturettl.com/category/wildlifep/wildlifep-tutorials/
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will do thank you, i keep looking at that pic and it still doesn't look that bad to me ( i focused on the eye if i remember rightly which looks fairly sharp)but always interesting to see what other more experienced people have to say, i still have much to learn
 
There's very little difference between the 100-400 and the 400 other than AF. The zoom is not as fast focusing as the prime. If you shoot birds in flight then that may be the way to go. The push/pull of the zoom is very good at finding your subject then zooming in fast.
People usually look at 3 options when buying their first L super tele. 300/4, 400/5.6 and 100-400 zoom.

300/4 is lightweight, has IS, can take a 1.4x tele converter to give you 420mm, and still maintain auto focus. It will close focus to 1.5m and is considered a good Dragonfly lens.

400/5.6 is light and very good at tracking birds in flight. It focuses to 3.5m which can be limiting if a small bird hops in close, you'll be sat there watching it instead of snapping away. It's lack of IS can be problematic in low light depending how steady your hands are.

100-400 brings the best of both lens together in a compromise. No need for a TC, it will focus at 1.8m and has IS. It's zoom is great for framing larger animals ( think Red Deer in UK or big game on safari ).

The image quality is a wash between them all, there's not much to separate them. Saying that, the push/pull zoom can slide from 100 to 400 and jar against the stop if the resistance is set too low. This can leads to soft copies and people to claim the zoom is soft. It isn't if is in calibration properly.
 
Thanks for all your comments been really helpful, ive chopped and changed many times and its taken a while to know what i want out of photography and what my passion to photograph is though i've always known its wildlife. I'm now going to sell all my dslr gear and have just bought a fuji s1, i started with a bridge camera and its what really got me to love photography. I always found them fun to use so i'm going to spend a few months with it and save a bit so i can get what i really want next year, now i know what i need, and what i want to do
 
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