Tag Archives: 300mm

Photography is an art of finding something interesting.  

Posted by enmanscamera on

Gosh, the first day of spring (has passed) and the temperature is climbing.

I stood out on my porch looking at the melting snow along the walkway to the driveway thinking that winter seems to have come and gone in a rush this year.

It was a lazy day for me and I really didn’t want to do anything except have another cup of coffee and maybe snooze on my chair listening to music. However, I do like pointing my camera at things and this would probably be my last chance to photograph things poking out of the snow. And if this year is like most I expect the cool spring rains will be pounding on my roof in short order.

So, as hard as it was I ignored the waiting coffee grinder and went off get my camera.

My latest acquisition is a 300mm lens. I like that focal length and have had several since the first Pentax I owned back in the 1970s. This latest lens came with a 1.4 telextender that gave me a 450mm of reach.

I have a longer 150-600mm lens, but the 300mm takes up less room in a bag or on my car’s seat, it focuses very fast and is just darned fun to use.

Although I sometimes photograph wide landscape vistas my preference is tight close shots. It’s the intimate, close cropped “parts” of a scenic that catch my eye. So after making sure I had an empty memory card and charged battery I mounted the 300mm lens on my camera and set off to see if I could make some interesting photographs of things resting on, or poking out of the snow.

By the time I drove down the road the sun was high in a bright blue cloudless sky. My choice was to head up into the hills or down to the river. But I wondered if the small pond was still frozen over so I went up.

The pond was frozen without a footprint or even a lonely bird in the tall lifeless reeds that circle the pond. I was disappointed, but as it has for the past 40 years, this rural place where I live, always offers something that catches my eye. The long lens was the perfect tool to isolate and exclude as I focused on the remains of a tree poking out of the snow. That broken and rotted stump in a desert of white snow was crossed with neat long thin shadows that made up for the boring pond.

I stopped to photograph what was left of an old log building that once might have been for storage or maybe living quarters for some ranch hand. When I first drove down what was then a bumpy dirt road many years ago it still had a glass window and roof, but now only the decaying log walls remained.

I drove around getting out of the car and trudging through the wet snow trying to photograph subjects I have photographed before in a new way.

I often wonder what the people in the cars think when they, once again as they have many times before, pass me pointing my camera at some subject. Most are not photographers, making the things I am photographing of little interest to them.

It always seems new to me. A bit familiar for sure, but this was the first time I photographed anything in my neighbourhood with this particular lens.

So yes, new.

I know I’ll be back photographing everything again when it rains or maybe when the grass begins to grow or when there are geese in the pond or anytime I am in the mood.

I know I have included this quote from American photographer Elliott Erwitt before but it just seems to fit.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

How about telephoto Lenses for Scenic Photography

Posted by enmanscamera on

           

Last summer I wrote an article entitled, “What is the Best Lens for Scenics?” in which I discussed using different focal lengths, depth of field, and the effect upon perspective, however, I left the answer as to the preferred lens for each scenic location to individual photographers. My opinion then, as now, is that it really depends on what a photographer wants to say about a particular scene. I also said that I regularly used lenses such as my 24-120, or 18-200mm, because I like lightweight lenses if I have any distance to walk. Those two lenses offer lots of focal length choices that will allow me to include only whatever I want in a picture.

I thought about these comments earlier this week as I sold my 80-400mm lens.  My discussion with the new owner was mostly about the lens’ functions; its ability to produce sharp images, and how the vibration reduction mode easily allows handholding.  What we hadn’t talked about was what he intended to photograph with his new lens. I assumed he was into wildlife photography, but as we stood in my shop talking he mentioned that he would be going on a bit of a hike this next weekend and hoped it wasn’t going to be too cold. I mentioned that the cold weather might be good because it kept the bighorn sheep down in the valley west of the city. It was then that he said, “ I am mostly into scenics”.

Many photographers are of the opinion that scenic photography is about the landscape and needs to be as much of panorama as possible, and for that purpose, select wide-angle lenses as they trudge into the wilderness. They aren’t so much interested in what elements make up the scene they capture as to what the overall view is.  However, there are those photographers like the fellow who bought my 80-400mm lens that have discovered how to build exciting scenics with telephoto lenses.

A wide-angle lens has a curved front surface allowing for a wider view. The distance between the foreground and background subjects will seem extended, and objects closer to the lens will look much bigger in relation to those in the background. Whereas, with a long-focal-length lens like the 400mm all the elements will be compressed, depth of field reduced, and in the final image no one subject in the photograph gains significance over another.

Maybe it’s the compressed effect that makes scenic photographs made with telephoto lenses sometimes stand out, and I think the photograph is more dependent on how things front to back are placed. There seems to be more subject selection, or in artistic terms, a more specific visual discussion.

I don’t believe that every scenic photograph needs to be a wide landscape. I do, however, believe that successful scenic photographs need to say something and follow the rules of composition.

Using 300mm or 400mm telephoto lenses almost demands that a photographer slows down, and thinks about what one sees through the viewfinder as the image is composed. I am not saying that one can’t do that with a wide-angle lens, only that it is harder with a tight, cropped, limiting, and enlarged view from a long-focal-length telephoto lens.

If we think that the majority of successful scenic images are those that were photographed from the most interesting view, or where one sets the camera for the most pleasing perspective, why not try the longest focal length lens available, and take the time to move the viewfinder around to fill the frame while maintaining all the rules of composition?

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