Telephoto in the garden

[Shortsighted]

One of the advantages of a medium telephoto lens when compared to a super telephoto lens, beyond the soft message of the wallet as opposed to the brutal beating that big glass has on supple leather, is that a shorter lens has a closer minimum focus distance.  My Canon 300mm lens has a minimum focus distance of 1.5 meters.  This characteristic of the lens remains constant even when coupled to a teleconverter (TC).  With this in mind I went out the the garden with my 300mm lens coupled to a 2X TC and started shooting subjects at minimum distance.  I set the camera to AUTO ISO so that the camera would choose whatever ISO setting it deemed was necessary, thereby ensuring that there was always adequate light to the sensor.  I also set the exposure compensation 1/3 stop to the right to make certain of that requirement.  I figured that if I press the eyepiece firmly against my face and pushed the very front of the lens hood against me face that I could handle 1/500 sec exposure.  The lens with a 2X TC attached is f8 when wide open.  I increased my Depth-of-field a bit more by choosing f11.  There were no butterflies, just bee flies, black bees and blow flies.  These subjects are very small, less than a centimeter in length.  While not exactly a macro lens, this lens could capture these tiny subjects while standing beyond 1.5 meters away.  I wonder what the minimum focus would be for James Web telescope?  The absolute definition of useless information.



Black Bee



Blow Fly




Bee Fly


Bee Fly on blade

[Shortsighted]

Telephoto in the garden - supplemental ...

I went out back into the garden again with my 300mm lens coupled to a 2X tele-converter because I saw a dragonfly, possibly a skimmer.  Even from a three meters away I still couldn't get the whole insect into the cropped sensor viewfinder, so I went back in and switched to a 1.4X TC.  That combination worked better, but by then the dragonfly was already asking for overtime pay.  I made the switch as fast as I could.  I kept the ISO up over a thousand so that I could use f11 and a slight shift in exposure to the right (brighter).  Every shot was hand-held because my feet, both of them lefties since first issued, were too awkward for the task, and besides, they were already serving a basic function (keeping my shoes warm).  On the other side of the flower bed was another dragonfly, which I assumed to be a female Blue dasher.  I could even just make out the grid pattern of the eye.  Not bad for a non-macro lens.  There was also a pair of skippers chasing each other around.  The shot of the very center of an echinecia bloom was at ISO 5000.


Skipper


12-spotted skimmer


Female Blue dasher


12-spotted skimmer


Very center of Echinecia bloom at ISO 5000

[Charline]

They all look very good!