Brown Booby flight shot- Cayman Brac


Posted by stevebein on Sat Aug 30, 2003 10:25 am

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ON the east end of Cayman Brac, amid the razor sharp rocks, after one of our group fell and got cut up, we came to another spot on the bluff with better opportunities to shoot the Boobies and one soaring Frigate.
This trip was a dive trip with lots of u/w film burned up and some interesting images.
I was testing a Canon 70-200 IS f2.8 to see how it would focus and work with TC's. Unfortunately I was disappointed and sold the lens. It is great alone but gets soft with TC's. I emailed Chas and his experiences were similar.
This is as sharp as I could get this shot. In spite of the whitee cloud background, I like the composition and it came out pretty good. But all in all, I was disappointed with the TC assisted shots and will take my 100-400 next trip.
The AF was pretty slow using my 10D, not much different than the old D60.
Image

D60, 70-200IS, 2XII TC, hand held, ISO 20, no flash,
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by Greg Downing on Sat Aug 30, 2003 10:42 am
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Steve, great to see you posting here! This is a great shot and sounds like a fun trip. Nice comp too!

As for the lens I can't think of a single zoom lens that is not significantly effected when adding a TC.

That is the nature of any zoom lens and why I don't recommend attaching a TC to any of them, except in the case of an emergency. That being said the 70-200/2.8 IS does ok with the 1.4x (not perfect) and is one of the sharper zooms around (light years sharper than the 100-400).

Attaching a 2x to any zoom lens is not recommended under any circumstances and your are always better off with a lens of the proper focal length without a converter.

Knowing these limitations, I'm very happy with my 70-200/2.8 IS for its intended range of focal lengths.
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Last edited by Greg Downing on Sat Aug 30, 2003 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
 

by Rich S on Sat Aug 30, 2003 10:47 am
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Steve, good to see you here. I think this is the first booby posted on NSN. (You beat me by couple of days. Lightning fried my home internet, telephone and computer.) Like the composition and looks very sharp at least at this resolution.

I also don't care for the 70-200 with TC, but absolutely love it without. I gotta ask where is Cayman Brac?

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by tcgoetz on Sat Aug 30, 2003 10:47 am
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I like the implied motion across the frame at the same time that the wings form a diagonal.
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by stevebein on Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:11 am
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Thanks,
I sold the 70-200. I will tryout my 100-400. The reports I have heard are that some are good,some not. The 70-200 definitely did not equal the 100-400 for the longer ranges.
This was a dive trip and I was limited with my land photo gear for that reason.
Now I need some help with posting images. I had to try twice to get this one to work and I tried posting onthe So Cal site and landscape and it does not go to the image. Help.

Please email me with suggestions about how top get my posts to come up when I post them.
Steve Bein
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Last edited by stevebein on Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:13 am, edited 2 times in total.
 

by Matthew Whitley on Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:12 am
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Despite your TC woes, this is a fantastic shot. Great underwing detail and great 3D pose. Awesome!

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by Sandy Mossberg on Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:33 am
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Fine shot, Steve. I like the diagonal formed by the wings. Sharpness seems okay from here, but there's a bit of a halo from USM.

The 100-400 is not a bad lens but nowhere near the equal of the primes. I've used this lens with a 1.4x TC II with very acceptable results.
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by Greg Downing on Sat Aug 30, 2003 12:22 pm
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stevebein wrote:Thanks,
I sold the 70-200. I will tryout my 100-400. The reports I have heard are that some are good,some not. The 70-200 definitely did not equal the 100-400 for the longer ranges.
This was a dive trip and I was limited with my land photo gear for that reason.
Now I need some help with posting images. I had to try twice to get this one to work and I tried posting onthe So Cal site and landscape and it does not go to the image. Help.

Please email me with suggestions about how top get my posts to come up when I post them.
Steve, as I said, no zoom lens with converters will equal a comparable one without. The 70-200 is killer sharp at 70-200 and light-years sharper than the 100-400 in the same range, both compared without converters.

As for the image posts you have the BB code disabled in your profile, which is why it is checked as disabled in your posts. Nothing will work with the code disabled.
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by Jim Zipp on Sat Aug 30, 2003 8:02 pm
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Nice shot Steve!
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by Lillian Roberts on Sat Aug 30, 2003 11:56 pm
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Nicely done, Steve! Quite sharp, no complaints at all. Did you dodge and burn a lot to bring out the detail? Most of mine (all taken with the 100-400, though I doubt that was a factor) were lacking in detail until I ran them through PS.

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by stevebein on Sun Aug 31, 2003 1:55 am
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Lillian,
I over exposed to get the detail. And I did use PS a bit. Otherwise, I would have lost the detail. The sky is lighter than I would have preferred, but we did not have any choice in the matter, especially with the little time we had there.
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by Juli Wilcox on Sun Aug 31, 2003 11:29 am
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Nice, stopped action on the bird which lets us get a view of the wing details to the tip of the wings. Good discussion of zooms and teles. (I agree with Greg's observations.)
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by Jim Probst on Sun Aug 31, 2003 3:38 pm
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Steve,

Excellent flight shot! Very sharp and the exposure looks great!
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by Anthony Medici on Mon Sep 01, 2003 8:13 pm
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This is one of those images that need to have the bird and the background separated (layers) and then the bird sharpened.
I've played with my Nikon 70-200 VR with the TC-14EII (which is the 1.4x version) and it seems very responsive and sharp. With the TC-20EII, it focuses almost as slow as the legendary 80-400 VR and is not quite as sharp. That's why I'm keeping my 300 F4.0 for now, it works great with the TC-14EII also. And it's not so bad for portraits with the 2X.
The composition is right on and so is the exposure.
Tony
 

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