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Strategies & Market Trends : Galapagos Islands -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (18877)	12/29/2002 3:42:50 PM
From: PuddleGlum	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 57110

I have some nice photos of my own, but they don't hold a candle to what mish has on his website (really good stuff there, mish!). My cousin is a professional photographer, and I just asked him about digital cameras a couple of days ago and here is his response (read fast, before Jorj boots us off the thread for all of this photo-talk): About your camera questions...wow that is a tall order. First and foremost, I must tell you in advance I do not have a lot of experience with digital but I will help all I can. As for the quality lens, you are definitely headed in the right direction there. The lens quality makes a huge impact on results. I shoot Canon EOS equipment and have invested a lot of money into it. Not as much as some, but far more than most. The reason I chose Canon is because they are way ahead of Nikon right now and many Nikon shooters (big time pro’s that have tens of thousands invested in Nikon gear have either made the switch to Canon or are seriously thinking about it.) And although I hate to say this, it really depends on how much you want to spend... For macro work I shoot the Canon 100mm macro lens which focuses from life size macro (going from memory at this moment, but it seems it will focus at about 1’ to infinity). Then you can put doublers or extension tubes on your camera and increase magnification. I shoot almost all macro photo’s using a tripod, and tripods are expensive. At least the good ones are and I can tell you from experience, buy what you want the first time or you will spend almost twice as much to buy it later. Gitzo tripods are the best and then comes Bogen. I just bought a Gitzo Carbon Fiber tripod #CF1348 and it cost $630.00 and that does not include the ball head which was $340.00. But it is a dream to use and extends from ground level to higher than my head which is a must for what I do. As for the telephoto lens: I shoot the Canon 100-400mm “L” series Image Stabilizer zoom and I also have a 300mm f4 “L”. I photograph everything from Nuthatch’s to eagles with these lenses and my one complaint is that I always wish I had more telephoto and a larger f-stop, such as a 600mm f4 and then put my doubler on for those really long range shots. 400mm seems huge, but it is roughly equivalent to a 5X pair of binoculars. I photograph the Bald Eagles that migrate into Lake Coeur d’ Alene this time of year and even something as big as an eagle at 100 feet is too small on film when I get the slides back. Publishers won’t buy images with dots on them that I call eagles! (ha ha) For example on prices... my 100-400mm zoom (I use the image stabilizing function a lot when I am kayaking during the summer) costs about $1,600.00 the 600mm f4 lens I yearn for costs in the neighborhood of $7,000.00 dollars. I don’t know what that amount of money is to you, but it is a lot for me. The lenses I am talking about above will fit on either the Canon 35mm cameras or the Canon Digital cameras. And one thing about magnification, if you put a 400mm lens on a digital camera, due to the CCD size, you actually get in the neighborhood of 650mm with no loss in f-stop which normally occurs when putting doublers or such things on your 35mm camera. There are other lenses such as 400mm f2.8’s, 500mm f4’s yada yada yada. Anyway, maybe I blew you out of the water, or maybe I just whet your appetite, but let me know if you have anymore questions or if I can help in any other way. Oh, the top of the line Canon digital camera body goes for around $5,000.00 and the 100mm macro lens I mentioned earlier is going for around $600.00 now.

To: Lizzie Tudor who wrote (18877)	12/29/2002 3:57:09 PM
From: mishedlo	Respond to of 57110

ah... thanks misheldo, that is what I thought, the digital cameras available now are for the casual user only. I also have canon lenses that I spent a fair amt on, I assume I would be able to use those if I went digital but who knows? Maybe there is some kind of techncal thing you can do in a digital camera that makes a huge lens unnecessary, that would be nice because I had to carry a 300mm lens up a tree once and it was no fun! Actually with the 1.6 magnification a 300MM lens would be a nice 480mm equivalent. Canon and Nikon both have recently solved that problem (well with telephotos it is not really a problem as extra length is usually wanted), but with wide angles it is horrendous. But the new bodies are $4K or so. The cheap digital cameras that everone has with a 28-80 lens or whatever are not SLRs. I call them cheap, but for most users, they perform just fine. For sports and wildlife uasge, taking a 300MM F2.8 and making it into a 480 F2.8 is a nice thing! A 500 F2.8 would weigh about 15 pounds I guess and cost 10K or maybe even more. I am guessing prices and weights as this stuff is all out of my league at those prices, weights, and being I primarily takes landscapes anyway. I have Canon L series professional lenses 17-35 2.8 28-70 2.8 70-200 2.8 100 mm macro 2.8 24 mm tilt/shift lens Very nice stuff but 210 is not long enough for sports or wildlife. 300MM is barely getting there. 400MM is better. A 300 MM with a 1.4X converter does work nicely at a cost in light dropoff of exactly 1 Fstop. I do have 1.4X and 2X converters but rarely use them. Film is Velvia 80% of the time if not more. M