Our trip to Yellowstone National Park to see the wolves was a photographic disaster! So far, we know what NOT to do, but we are still learning what to do.
Our first mistake was renting lenses that were not big enough. We rented 400mm Canon L lenses, and not a single photograph came out sharp. We thought maybe they just weren't good lenses but that turns out not to be the likely culprit.
On the drive home, I decided to give my contact for school at Kenmore Camera a call to pick his brain, Michael Wewer, and he immediately pinpointed our biggest mistake. As landscape photographers, we are not accustomed to using long lenses, nor do we know the basic rules of thumb. Michael said that your shutter speed has to be greater than your lens. In other words, since the lenses we were using were 400mm, our shutter speed should have been at least 1/400 of a second. We were using 1/350.
The next problem was our tripods. John was using a cheap one that had a tremendous amount of movement for such a heavy lens, and I was using my good tripod, but the ball mount was not enough to hold the lens steady either. Mistake number three. Even the slightest movement of the camera, like when you press the shutter release, is enough to cause camera shake even though we were shooting at what we considered a high shutter speed.
We also saw a lot of people using spotting scopes with cell phone mounted at the eyepiece to photograph the wolves. They certainly were getting great magnification with the scopes compared to our 400mm lens.
In Coeur d'Alene we started in researching spotting scopes and lenses and then once we got home we shifted our attention to cameras. Maybe it was time for new cameras, as ours are ten years and 16 years old.
Our research led us to a trip into Kenmore Camera today. We learned a lot from Michael. He was able to tell us the pros and cons of the various options, and we ended up for now with two new camera bodies and new tripod mounts. John has a landscape lens on order, and I also bought a 24-105mm zoom lens for my new camera. Meanwhile, we are on a waitlist for a used tripod mount that will steady a 600mm lens. We will be renting a Sigma 150-600mm lens in January to photography the eagles of the Skagit River to see if we like the lens. If we do, we'll buy one. John's camera is a Sony a7R II, which is an amazing landscape camera with 42 megapixels. It will also suffice for the wolves, but we may run into trouble getting the ISO high enough to compensate for the fast shutter speed when using the 150-600mm lens with a 1.4x converter (which means you have to push the shutter even higher). To balance out John's camera, I bought the Sony a7S, which only has 20 megapixels but has the capability to shoot at a super high ISO (409,000 squared) and is great in low light without noise. It will be great for the wolves. We also got a lens converter so we can use the Sigma 150-600mm lens as well as the Canon lenses we already own.
Meanwhile, we ordered from B & H a Zeiss Conquest Gavia spotting scope, a step up adapter, and a camera adapter so we can use the scope with John's Lumix GH3. We didn't know we'd have new Sonys when we placed the order, so if we like it, we'll get setup to use my Sony on the scope, which will definitely be necessary because the scopes don't let in enough light at such high magnification for photography.
Next comes trying out some of the new equipment! I'll post again when we've had a chance to use our new equipment.
Update: we bought a Sigma 150-600mm Contemporary lens, the Zeiss scope, and adapters for both a Lumix G9 and the Sony AS7 cameras and a 50mm lens. We bought a new Wimberly mount for the Sigma lens and a used one from Adorama for the scope.
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