• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

My new lens

Ihaveworms

Ihaveworms

Ukfay Ancerkay
Joined
Jul 25, 2006
Messages
4,757
I got my first non stock lens today and I am happy! :D

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM

newlenssmall.jpg
 
Last edited:
Nice - you'll have to post some pics once you start shooting with it. Is that hood really as big as it looks in this photo?? Looks larger than that actual camera - funny perspective.
 
It is supposed to be pretty nice Friday so I am going to try and go out and get some pictures.
 
lol, u wont get past security at any concerts with that badboy :)
 
skyline889 said:
Congrats! I love my 70-300mm (Though mine is the Nikon VR :p).
Click to expand...

Ya, I have the Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR as well - it's a little soft and hard to focus at the long end, but for the price it definitely gets the job done. My new life's mission is to take a picture of it where the hood appears to be at least 3 times the size of the rest of my rig. (not to be out-done, of course ;) )

BTW, the newest addition to my collection as of yesterday is a 24mm F/2.8 prime - now I can take wide-angle stuff without the fisheye distortion (and portrait shots of more than one person at a time!). Kindof boring, but I felt it was a gap I needed to fill in my capabilities. I'm officially done buying lenses for this year. :)
 
madFive said:
Ya, I have the Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR as well - it's a little soft and hard to focus at the long end, but for the price it definitely gets the job done.
Click to expand...

For what I do, it's perfect. Wide open at 300mm it's a little soft but stopped down to f/8, it's tack sharp. I use this lens primarily to shoot paddling races so with full sunlight, stopping down isn't a problem for me. The 70-200mm range is also pretty sharp even wide open and there is zero distortion or CA. The lens does tend to hunt at the long end though, even in bright conditions. Usually when this happens I just switch to AF-C and it focuses fine however. The rotating front element during focus also makes it a bitch to use CPLs with the hood. Still a great alternative to the 70-200mm VR though and much, much cheaper! For the rare occasion I do shoot in the dark though (Like graduation...which is the original reason I bought this lens :rolleyes:), I sure would love to have the f/2.8. :(

BTW sorry to get so far off topic OP!
 
skyline889 said:
Wide open at 300mm it's a little soft but stopped down to f/8, it's tack sharp.
Click to expand...

Ah, once again, apperture info I hadn't considered before - thx again skyline - this will probably help quite a bit.
 
Can you explain how the f value works? I thought I knew, but I don't seem to. I thought you were limited to the f value of the lens but I see people changing to to 8 for example, how does this work?
 
Well to cover the basics first, in a lens, the lens' iris (The multi-bladed diaphragm you can see when you look into the lens) controls how much light get's through the lens to the camera's sensor. The diameter of this opening relative to a specific focal length is known as the aperture value or f/stop. When referring to f/stops, I'm sure you know that the larger the number (e.g. f/11), the smaller the diameter of the opened iris, and thus less light gets through to the sensor. Vice-versa, the smaller the number (e.g. f/1.4), the wider the diameter of the opened iris, and therefore more light is able to get through to the sensor.

Now when looking at a lens, a lot of times you'll see a lens being advertised as f/1.4 or f/2.8, this is simply the largest (In terms of opening diameter) aperture or f/stop that the lens is capable of. Just like there is a maximum aperture of a lens though, there is also a minimum aperture of a lens, or the smallest opening diameter that the lens' iris is capable of being closed to (e.g. f/32). You are not however just limited to choosing between these two aperture values. Between the maximum and minimum apertures values that the lens is capable of, there are multiple f/stops that allow you to adjust just how open, or how closed you want the lens' iris. This is important because by manipulating this value, you can create different results.

A wider aperture like f/1.4 will allow more light to get into the sensor which will allow you to use a faster shutter speed a lower ISO value but the depth of field at this aperture is also very shallow, which means that only part of your picture will be in focus, the rest of the picture will be blurred (Which is referred to as bokeh). This is beneficial when shooting things like macro or portraits, where you don't need the entire photo to be in focus. At a narrower aperture like f/8, less light will get through, which means you'll have to decrease shutter speed or increase ISO values however, depth of field will be greater, meaning that more of your picture will be in focus as both objects near and close will be in focus. This is beneficial when shooting things like landscapes, architecture, etc where you want the entire photograph to be in focus.

To get to the reason why I stop down to f/8 at 300mm on my 70-300mm, for most lens' there is a peak usually around f/5.6-f/8 where the lens appears to be at its sharpest (While this may not be true for high end optics like the new Nikon 24-70mm, this is the case for most lens'). For my 70-300mm VR, perceived sharpness peaks at about f/8 at 300mm. Eventually smaller apertures no longer yield sharper results and will in fact begin to degrade sharpness due to the effects of diffraction (Usually around f/16 on) however in general, stopping down from the maximum aperture will yield a greater perceived sense of sharpness.

Holy crap, that came out to a lot of typing. :eek: Hope all of this helped!
 
^^^ The "F" value (I forget what the F actually stands for - anyone know?) is the size of the opening that the light comes through when it hits the camera's sensor. The value is actually 1 divided by whatever number you see. For instance F 1/2 is usually written as: F/2 or just F2. So the smaller that number, the larger the hole. F1.2 or so is about the largest aperture you can get. I'm not sure what an aperture of F/1 would mean, but it'd be freakin' huge :p

The smaller the hole, the larger the F number. Most lenses have a minimum aperture somewhere between F/16 and F/40. Theoretically the smaller the aperture, the more depth of field you have in focus in a shot. The famous photographer, Ansel Adams, was part of a group of photographers called the "F64 Club" - I'm not sure if he actually used a lens that could do F/64, but he was famous for his photos that had perfect focus of items at all ranges of depth in the image.

On modern cameras, using manual or aperture-priority mode, you should be able to set the aperture of the lens before shooting - limited of course by the capabilities of the lens.

- The larger the opening, the more light will be let in, so a lens that goes as wide as say F/1.8 will be a lot brighter than one that only opens up to F/3.6. Lenses that are capable of very wide apertures are referred to as "fast glass" because more light being let in means you don't have to leave the shutter open as long.
- A larger aperture also means less depth of focus in the image. If you want to isolate your subject and make everything else in the image blurry, use a wider aperture like F/1.8. If you want everything in the whole image to be in perfect focus, you want a tighter aperture, like F/8 or smaller.
- What Skyline keeps reminding me of, is that the lenses I'm buying aren't as good as Ansel Adams' :p, and that they mostly tend to start losing sharpness once the aperture is tightened past a certain point. So even though the camera settings will let me make the aperture as small as F/40 on some of my lenses, they don't actually get any sharper than they would be at say F/16. (I still don't understand how that works)

You pretty-much just have to read reviews or just practice a lot and analyze your photos to know what your lens is capable of.

edit: LOL- skyline also types faster than I do... oh well, hopefully I'm not being too redundant. :)
 
F is for focal length.

Ansel Adams used large format gear which is another reason he could shoot at such small apertures. On normal SLR gear you should not shoot over about f16 as you will start to get diffraction very quickly.

EDIT: northrop beat me to it ;)
 
Congrats on your new purchase! I had that lens briefly but it wasn't for me. Today I have the Nikon equivalent and can't live without it!
 
I almost got that very lens last week, but I couldn't see buying it over the 55-250.

Soon as they're back in stock, maybe get a 50mm f/1.8 too. It's handy to have (especially indoors...) and a bit under $100.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top