I manually focused! Gasp, gurgle! Grief with the Panny 100-300

Hen3ry wrote:

After my self-initiated imbroglio trying to photograph the lunar eclipse last night, I decided this morning to spend some concentrated time learning the tripod (it spends 99.9% of its time as a door stop), the G6 in certain modes, and the Panny 100-300 lens.

Gawd, I can't take a trick! After spending half an hour with the G6 manual, I pottered out to he raised road verge to take a few shots of distant objects.

As usual in paradise, it was warm (only about 27 or 28 C -- practically cool by our standards), but there was a lot of cloud and overcast about and the humidity was terrific -- take a deep breath and you could just about drown.

I didn't give these conditions a second thought because they are what I live in, but then I tried photographing the phone tower about a kilometer away. Forget it! Thermals, thermals, thermals!

The same for a long shot of traffic on the road.

Damn!

Yeah, it is always disappointing with really long lenses to see the havoc the atmosphere wroughts ...

Oh well, I did get a shot a couple of hundred meters down the road into a little valley where it wasn't quite as hot (but it was still hot), and then there was the neighbor's washing 50 meters away.

The full frame

100% crop. Irt wqas a bit cooler in the dip in the road but even so, you can see the thermal effects.

The neighbor's washing @ 100%.

I will try to get out tomorrow before breakfast for some really useful 100-300 tests. One thing I will be testing is the 100-300 @ 150 against the 45-150 @ 150. I want to see how they compare at long distances.

The 100-300 does fine close up:

The leaf is aibika, a local green vege with a peppery tastes. You cut off the tall stalks, strip the leaves for eating, trim several small sticks out of the one stalk, then stick them in the ground to regrow!

BUT I have manually focused. Whoa! And I must admit, it only took halfway back to yesterday to get focus that might have been as good as the autofocus. But I do understand now what those manual focusing aids are about. I think.

I hope I can remember long enough so that I am ready for the next eclipse.

Cheers, geoff

I love the 100-300 ... these are hand held shots at the short end and I see nothing to really complain about.

The roller coaster was not moving that fast, but the detail is pretty nice. I opened the shadows pretty severely as they were rather underexposed.

One thing you might consider would be the german tripod collar for this lens ... it really works wonders ...

The web site is visible on the collar's foot ... it's 100 bucks and worth every penny.

And speaking of the moon ... the 100-300 is a bit short, but it can still do some justice to moon shots. Consider manual exposure with self timer release from a tripod. Use the "loony 11" rule for exposures, they work really well.

The collar on this lens also allows the GM1 to work beautifully on a tripod ...