Serious Gear on the Great Saltee

Carrigman

When I was on the Great Saltee last Saturday I felt inadequate when I saw some of the gear that guys had. Take this bloke from Limerick with a Canon 5D and a Canon 400mm f/2.8 lens. The latter costs about €6,500!



I'll never feel guilty about spending money on equipment again.

311

That belly cost about 14K ,I should know I have one

mikeanywhere

WOW - huuuuuge for sure.

He has to be that big (build not weight size) to carry the sodding thing, it aint light thats for sure.

digitalage

Carrigman were there many puiffins on the island?

latchiko

I like the camouflage on the end of the lens - the birds will never see it coming!

City-Exile

Those bags aint cheap either.
Having said all that, there are people on here, who use PowerShot cameras and get brilliant results. I think you work harder with more modest gear and certainly learn more about photography.

Calina

it was probably on the sports shooters forum but I recall a discussion on how it was too easy for a lot of people to spend a whole pile of money on really expensive equipment, leave everything on automatic and because they had a really high profile (I think they were talking about some ex-NFL star) anyway, they didn't have to work too hard at selling pictures that they couldn't take if they had to set stuff up themselves.

On that subject, I know people who have great eyes for photography who found themselves completely lost when they moved from say a Prosumer to a dSLR - they didn't have access to all their toys (in one case the loss of zoom was a killer).

I think people learn to work within the confines of what they have. I think this is no bad thing in a way but then I would say that. I operated on the basis of a 20 year old Oly SLR with a 50mm and a 35-105mm zoom for a very long time. Even now, some of the best photographs I have taken came from it.

Ultimately, if you're interested in photography, no matter what camera you have, you will get photographs out of it. If you're not, you'll need a lot of help to get the photographs.

Valentia

I agree with all of the above. The only thing is that if you are into shooting creatures that are 150 metres away you need the proper gear. Which is why I am amazed he is using a 5D full frame. He would be better off with a 1D Mk II or even a 30D. He would get faster frames/sec and a better crop factor. When I go on hols this year the big lens will be on the 10D for the faraway puffins etc and the 5D will be used for all the other stuff.

Calina

touché. I spent a lot of yesterday in conversation with a kite photographer in Hong Kong on the merits and demerits of my big zoom.

anyways...

Zillah

I'd have pushed him into the sea and taken the lense tbh.

Calina

remind me never to go anywhere dangerous with you.

Paulw

Something along the lines of - It's not about the size of your lens, but how you use it??

I think I've learned a lot more and become a somewhat better photographer after moving from a P&S to an SLR.

Morlar

Paulw wrote:

I think I've learned a lot more and become a somewhat better photographer after moving from a P&S to an SLR.

I think the same applies to anyone who has gone from film to digital.

Calina

but then it's fair to say there is always a steep learning curve when you move to a new way of doing things, for anything, not just photography...

Carrigman

digitalage wrote:

Carrigman were there many puiffins on the island?

Not a lot but there were some. Difficult enough I found to get decent shots of them.