This is my advice for those seriously interested in shooting birds
/ wildlife and also my own choices in big glass.
It is possible to get fantastic results even from a 200mm if you
are shooting from a blind, have lots of free time and enough
patience. I have a lots of great bird shots taken at 200mm when I
first got addicted to birds, but 200mm reach soon gets very
limiting.
If your time is somewhat valuable and you want to go "hunting" by
foot, car or boat you will need all the hi-quality reach you can
afford to increase the percentage of keepers. Big glass will give
you more and better results in less time than anything else.
The ultimate solution available today for such "hunting" and also
for birds in flight, is in my opinion the 500 4 L IS on a 10D or
preferably the new 1D MKII. It takes you to hi-quality 700mm, is
relatively light weight and in my opinion easily handholdable. It
is absolutely superb at 500mm, very good with 1.4x at 700mm, good
with 2x at 1000mm and usable at 1500 with the Kenko 3x. And as the
only lens I know that has absolutely 100% performance wide open it
handles extenders very good, on par with the 300 / 400 2.8. But
remeber that a 2x will degrade even the best lens to the level of a
china produced Samyang.
When shooting from a blind or from my car (when used as a blind) I
prefer a zoom as a prime gets very restricting when you can't move
or change position. For this the new Sigma 300-800 is absolutely
fantastic as you can arrange the blind to cover different size
birds in a relatively large area. On top of the zoom you get
outstanding optical performance. Out of my 10D it gets me picture
quality equal to the 500 prime from 300 to 600 and equal to the
prime +1,4x up to 800. Adding a 1.4x and stopping down from f8 to
f11 gives good results all the way to 1120mm, and it will beat
up-rezzing even with a 2x at 1600mm f16.
For action shots and easier to approach birds / wildlife I prefer
the Sigma 120-300 2.8 which I consider the best fast telezoom on
the market today. Outstanding optical performance and together with
a 1.4x and 2x it is also a very good starting point for anyone
interested in birds wildlife. I have lots of great results from it
with and without the 1.4x.
I have posted lots of results from the Sigma zooms earlier, but
here is an example of how good it gets from the 500 at 500 without
an extender.
Jan
