some ducks on a pond! C&C please

[JKnobelock]

so i wanted to play with the 600mm thats been sitting around the house... here are the results... this was my first time shooting any sort of animals.

2.

3.

4.

5.

 

[irish23]

The first two are a little blurry in the background in a weird way. But i really like the 3rd one.

 

[JKnobelock]

yea, im not really sure why its blurred that way, only post production was exposure and contrast. so it was how the camera took it.

 

[Samanax]

The white balance seems off in some of these. And the bokeh is looks really awful. What lens is that?

#5 would have looked better in landscape orientation.

I like #2 best.

 

[Jeff Canes]

so i wanted to play with the 600mm thats been sitting around the house...--

I’m assuming this is a low to medium grade lens

The first two are a little blurry in the background in a weird way---

that’s very common in long low to medium grade lens

And the second duck in #1 dose not help.

 

[TheSon]

And the bokeh is looks really awful.

Now I'm confused. Don't # 1 and 5 show good examples of bokeh? The washed out soft and silky circles... Or am I missing something?

 

[JKnobelock]

the lens is a sigma 600mm mirror f/8... my dad bought it a while ago, with the intent of bird photography, and never really used it much, go figure.

 

[KylePeterson]

on #1 the second duck behind really messes with what I'm seeing.

 

[gsgary]

Now I'm confused. Don't # 1 and 5 show good examples of bokeh? The washed out soft and silky circles... Or am I missing something?

No very bad bokeh

 

[gsgary]

Sorry don't like the look of that lens

 

[puyjapin]

i wonder if u would hve got better results with your sigma 300 and zoomed in on the laptop.

 

[Overread]

i wonder if u would hve got better results with your sigma 300 and zoomed in on the laptop.

from my experiences with the 70-300mm I would say not.

As for the shots the rings in the background are a feature of mirror lenses, so there is really nothing you can do to lessen or remove that effect (that I know of). However I have known a photographer to lessen the impact on their shots of it by delibratly shooting in lowkey by underexposing the shot intentionally and then using a flash (with a better beamer for more range) to light up the main subject, whilst the background ends up in darkness - thus the hoops are hidden.

Blurryness can be limited by using a few methods - firstly shoot as fast as you can - if your using the method described above that will likley be the fastest flash sync speed of your camera. Also shooting from a tripod can really help as well - espcailly with such a long lens (remember without flash your shutter speed wants to be at least 1/600 or faster - so at f8 that means you need good lighting to shoot in1!)

 

[puyjapin]

1/600th to freeze the action? ive just got my vr 300mm. would i work on at least 1.600th to freeze?

 

[Overread]

1/600sec should freeze the handshake from a lens of 600mm in length (based on the rule of thumb that minimum shutter speed should be 1/lens focal length)
Certainly 1/600sec should have a good change to freeze motion in a shot without too much trouble- but with all motion shots its very tricky to say that a certain speed will freeze all action - mostly the rule is to shoot as fast as you can without compramising your image quality too far (ie don't boost your ISO to high values as whilst you'll get the speed you will also get your shot filled with noise).
Flash also helps to freeze motion in a shot at slower speeds - though of course flash has its limits, range is one (Which is why I suggest the better beamer which gives you a bit more range from a flash),

 

[puyjapin]

so the vr is really better for slower shutter speeds with still subjects where the light it lower or for blurring the motion