Furry raider, or getting to know your camera.

[Grandpa Ron]

We all like photos of cute fuzzy things. But, the reason I posted this was to show what can be done with your old 35mm lenses you pushed in the corner when you bought that new digital. This was taken with a not too expensive 30 year Korean 210mm zoom. Coupled to my Canon Rebel with a Pentax adapter ring. I believe the digital equivalent is a bit over 300mm.

I had used this lens for moon shots but decided to try it on wildlife. The biggest gain, is it really helps you understand all those features your camera has. 1/50th sec. f 5.6 manual set, ISO 200, tripod, manual focus.

Good luck

 

[clarc]

Have you considered a compact zoom? That could possibly help you get more zoom and use it more often due to portability.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

Oh yes I have looked at a lot of photo gear.

However I have a lot of old photo gear from my film days. The fun is wringing out the last bit of usefulness with the gear I have already spent the money on.

I find tinkering with old lenses, telescopes and other adapters, one of the biggest advantages of the manual settings on my DSLR.

 

[TWX]

However I have a lot of old photo gear from my film days. The fun is wringing out the last bit of usefulness with the gear I have already spent the money on.

I had picked up somewhere along the way a Tamron EF 80-210mm f/4.5-5.6 AF lens. Nowhere near as old as what you're shooting with, but definitely a pre-IS lens. Before I got my Tamron 70-300mm with image stabilization I'd taken it to a local municipal airport and was snapping photos of student-pilots doing touch-and-gos and other maneuvers. I was shooting handheld and got this:

210mm f/16 1/2500th second ISO 1600, scaled 50% for posting to the forum

Which when I just crop it, yielded this:

I mean, I can tell the pilot is wearing shorts.

Don't get me wrong, I like my 70-300mm a lot, but if I couldn't have afforded it I probably could have gotten good results with the older 80-210mm.

 

[Grandpa Ron]

The saying goes "Nothing beats good glass".

From years of tinkering with cameras and telescopes I can confirm that. When I used my department store telescope as a 700 mm prime lens, the landscape photos seemed washed out and vignetted. However, when focused on the moon, which is a pretty bright object; the image was nice and bright but then chromatic aberration became an issue.

Which goes back to my first point, jumping off of "auto" opens a world of photographic possibilities. It also teaches you a lot about what your camera can really do.

Of course it helps if you already are an incessant diddler.

 

[Aman bajwa]

Have you considered a compact zoom? That could possibly help you get more zoom and use it more often due to portability. Which when I just crop it, yielded this: