My friend's cockatoo slams her foot down hard when I ask if her great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great ... great grandmother was a Tyrannosaurus Rex. She's utterly incensed.
Third time now she opens a 1.5 lb. (680Kg) nut jar by unscrewing the lit with her beak and then tossing it. She's discovered the serrations on the side of the lit make turning the lid easier. The treat inside is raw pistachio nuts.
Dave who's glad he's not a snail
David fascinating animal. It is not a cockatoo…….it sounds more like a sentient being !! It should be allowed to own a car and vote !
Indeed good series, and another exemple of what such a lens could deliver.
Interesting enough, from my experience, to get sharp details, the bigger the animal the less critical the lens becames. And a gull is a big bird.
Is when I start to shoot the small criters, even from close distances, that I need the extraordinary quality of the big prime lens to reach pro results. And I'm not talking about cropping, is just to ataign those small feathers details...
Have you the same experience?
Interesting question. Mongo notes that you have some superb equipment and that from your comments on the site from time to time, you are a strong believer in primes. Mongo can only relay his experiences have owned and/or used all the excellent tele primes from 200mm f2 to 600mm f4. For Mongo , small critters would be say, a wren or robin. Gulls are many times bigger and eagles many times bigger again.
There is no doubt the big primes (if it is a good copy, used well, in the proper atmospheric conditions and circumstances) has generally yields the best detail/sharpness result. Of course, this must be compared to the best of the non-prime lens’ performance. There are not many high end tele zooms. The 70-300mm VR, 70-200 f2.8, the latest 80-400mm VR, 200-400 f4, 200-500mm f5.6. There are also what Mongo calls “the little big primes” like the AFS 300mm f4 and PF which is an excellent performer.
We must not forget that by virtue of being a “big prime”, it usually has the advantage of “magnification” of the small critter’s details. In theory, the 200-400mm f4 is probably the closest in quality and focal length to make any reasonable comparison. At the outset, Mongo declares that he bought one of these new, hardly used it at all and sold it due to disappointment. Nonetheless, other copies he has used have performed much better than his copy did.
Distance to the small critter is a very important factor in the outcome of the image sharpness/detail (all else being equal). Mongo’s experience with the 200-500 and a good copy of the 200-400 is that they are both capable of producing incredibly detailed images of small details. However, where the distance is long, the primes really come into their own by holding onto that detail and sharpness over the greater distance in comparison to the zooms.
All lenses are affected by distance but the primes seem to be less adversely affected than zooms. Just where the critical distance point begins depends on many variables but when it does cut in, the primes perform slightly (and sometimes, significantly) better.
Mongo really likes the image quality of his 600mm f4 but is often now surprised by the results of some of his 200-500mm images. Far from always but now and then, for some unknown reason (perhaps because all the stars in the universe align at that moment), it just outperforms reasonable expectations of it. Mongo believes this occurs becuase of focus accuracy. Lenses do not always focus exactly on the same spot each time. On the occasions that they hit the mark, the difference is noticeable.
By way of example, Mongo has attached 2 images of a Ravin taken with the 200-500 at a distance of a little over 30metres (100 feet) using D800E.
#1 - the original completed processed image;
#2 - a 100% crop of #1 image.
Mongo thinks that a 500mm or 600mm prime may not have given any better a result in this case. Had the distance been greater, then, the primes may have been slightly better or maybe not.
