Wildlife Photography and camaras

30th December 

I got a 420 to 800 m lens for Christmas. I got an adapter and a mount so that I could mount it on. recently I foumd I couldnt take pictures when the lens is attached but today I found out it is cause the camara thinks it hasmt got a lems atached so you need to find a hiddem setting on memu and set it to shutter without lens and then the camara will take pictures with the lens 

Enjoy your new lens Zo. Look forward to seeing the results ...

sorry for the late reply. the day after I commented  my phone and i pad  were out of battery from holiday and I was having a problom chargeing them but I took that oportunity to try my lens out and take pictures of Wildlife out my window then the day after I got up early to get ready to go home to be picked up in an hour then at almost half 9 a Goldfinch appeared. cause of where the sun was shineing from  the bird was completely  siloutted so couldnt make out what species of  bird it was but I increased the iso and took a picture with my lens. and as if by magic it revealed it to be a Goldfinch and it was very very close 

when I went home and got home after 10:30 my family were taking down the decorations and Dad sugested I  have a go with it in my Dads study. my family calls it his bat cave  cause he spends the majprity of the time working in there but he puts bird food out in a window feeder and bird feeders in a tree for the birds. and he keeps bringing up that I should go in there and wait for them so I decided to take the oportunity and use my lens. the window feeder birds were cautious of the lens

so I had to go for the tree dwelling and ground birds ones that move about alot  cause the bird moved alot and wouldnt stay still for long  I had to find where the bird has gone next get the bird in the frame before it moves somewhere else again then re adjust the sharpness again and take a picture then get ready for focusing on the next place cause it has a narrow field of view but I still managed to get some photos. 

only problom I had was my camaras shutter released slower than normal and demanded I switch flash on otherwise it would be slow and I didnt want to switch the flash on in case it startles them so I had to make exstra effort to keep my camara still and I couldnt take pictures when we webt to the field cause it rained as soon as we left  but   I mansged to get some pictures with the lens and its a very good lens 

Unknown said:

That can be a problem with adapted lenses - presumably it will be manual focus too. Still, it should get you closer to the wildlife :-) Good luck with the extra reach!

yes my camara automaticaly sets itself to Manual but I can still change modes on it like C1 or C2 which I use alot. not sure if the adapter might afect the long lens though interestingly on the box the mount came in it says the mount adapter you mount onto the camara has high speed auto focus pd/mix /cd auto focus another icon with writeing underneath says prevent reflections and full frame and aps-c and the mount is an EF EOS M mount with AF beside that aswell. the telescope itself that ataches to the camara adapter has a focal length of F8.3.

it is also a zoom lens so you can zoom in and zoom out from the 420 to 800 cm which can be helpful in some situations if you may need to adjust the magnification depending on how far away or how close the subject is from you particularly if its a subject that moves about alot like tits the one i mainly took a photo of that was running about on the floor was a Dunnock it visited freqently and wasnt bothered by the lens which meant i could tske a picture although I did have to move the long lens alot and readjust the sharpness depemding on the distance since the part you focus on goes in focus and the background behind or in front of the subject or away from the subject in focus but that makes the subject stick out from the background and it has been very usedul for if i need to keep my distance but still get some good close ups aswell. thanks for the good luck 

Billysdad said:

Enjoy your new lens Zo. Look forward to seeing the results ...

thanks 

Whilst your adapter may allow autofocus to work (when using an EF lens on your EF-M mount), that only applies when the lens itself is AF. I suspect your lens is manual focus, so you'll have to practice a bit to get sharp pics :-)
f/8.3 is the maximum aperture - 420-800mm is the focal length. You'll probably want to use it at that max aperture to get the most light in, especially at this time of year with it being so gloomy. It's worth making sure you have ISO set to Auto so the camera can be used with a higher shutter speed (you'll need a decent shutter speed with the longer focal length or you'll get blurred pics from camera shake). It's one of the difficulties with long lenses, they're hard to hold still!

Unknown said:

Whilst your adapter may allow autofocus to work (when using an EF lens on your EF-M mount), that only applies when the lens itself is AF. I suspect your lens is manual focus, so you'll have to practice a bit to get sharp pics :-)
f/8.3 is the maximum aperture - 420-800mm is the focal length. You'll probably want to use it at that max aperture to get the most light in, especially at this time of year with it being so gloomy. It's worth making sure you have ISO set to Auto so the camera can be used with a higher shutter speed (you'll need a decent shutter speed with the longer focal length or you'll get blurred pics from camera shake). It's one of the difficulties with long lenses, they're hard to hold still!

 I knew the telescope would probably be manual but I didnt  know if AF mounts could afect the way the lens works or anything. my camara does auto maticaly come on as manual by default and by that I mean if its not in manual focus before I put the lens on the telescope lens on my camara automatically says MF when I switch it on so the  camara sets to manual focus automatically.  but thought I would double check,  Iv looked into the specifications on my telescope. f/8.3 at 420 mm f/16 at 800 mm its a linear push and pull zoom system the focusing is manual, manual helical(rotary)  operation and not AF compatable.

I sort of exspected it to be though since you need to make sure you set the camara to manual before useing a  telescope lens it didnt end up being nessacery though cause my camara sets automatically when I put the lens on. my lens can also lock and unlock at certain focal lengths if i want to lock it at 800 or something for example as I found out when I used it. the sharpness on the lens is quiet good cause Iv found most of  the subjects in my photos to be sharp when I take a picture of it and I have found its sensitivaty to movemnet not too much of a problom

 iv tryed taking pictures through telescopes before but just with an i phone or i pad. and to me even though I got the hamg of it and was good at keeping my hamd still iv found that it had alot more problems with camara shake.my m6 is my predominant camara now that I use and its my first time useing a telescope on it but so far I have found it to be easyer to take pictures with than when I used to use my phone and i pad with a telescope. the super telephoto lens is the best telescope iv used so far and the easyest and sharpest and most helpful one and it will be fun practicing with it

but strangely when I changed the settings later at home sharp photos were more difficult to get cause it became even more sensitive to movemnet than it is normaly with the lens.  my camara would be very slow to release the shutter but automatically took more than one photo even when I only pressed the button once even though burst mode was off.  and processed them so slowly  it was more sensitive to movemnet than normal as in even the slightest movement and this wasnt a problom until I changed the settings at home and started useing the lens in the study. it caused some of the photos to blur.

 if I set it to flash on the issues go away and goes back to normal if i switch flash off the issues come back. although the telescope probably exagerated the issue further cause there already sensitive to movemnet im suspecting it is to do with a setting iv changed but not quiet sure what. interestingly theres only a certain level of shutter speed it will let me go up to when useing the lens aswell compared to not useing the lens 

Zo Clark said:

my camara would be very slow to release the shutter but automatically took more than one photo even when I only pressed the button once even though burst mode was off

Sounds like you've accidentally engaged something like HDR mode (if the camera has it), where it's taking multiple pics and blending them together. You'll have to check through all the settings in the menus to work out what's changed! One of the problems with modern cameras, too many options! :-)

thanks.il see what settings I might of Changed then see if that works