500mm lens

peggysgirl · August 16, 2014

I recently purchased a Nikon D5000and immediately bought a 500mm F8.0 telescopic lens because of the wildlife we have. I can't get it to take a picture correct. I don't know much about digital photography, but its either too dark or when I let the light in, too blurry. Can someone tell me exactly what to set it at?

Richard · August 17, 2014

Hi there, and welcome to Dgrin

.

It would help if you could post a couple of pics with EXIF data. It sounds like you are not getting the exposure right. There's no single answer to the settings question, as it depends entirely on the available light. I don't know what controls are available to you, but check your manual and try setting the camera to shutter priority and set it at 1/1000 sec to start. F/8 is fairly narrow, so unless you are shooting in bright light, you may have to increase the ISO to 800 or more to get the speed you need. Any long telephoto lens requires some practice to control, especially if you are hand-holding the camera--a tripod or monopod will help reduce camera shake, which can blur shots even when the exposure is correct. Bryan Peterson's book Understanding Exposure is a great source of instruction. Highly recommended.

time2smile · August 17, 2014

Welcome,
What Richard said is great advise.

If you bought the mirrored 500, it tough to get a keeper with that lens. I would try, set camera to A, I would use F11, iso to 800 and if the SS goes below 500 the pic will probable be blurry due to hand shake. Also the D5000 goes not have a focus motor so you are limited in the lens that will auto focus.
I've heard great things about the Tamron 150-600 for wildlife.
Good Luck....

peggysgirl · August 17, 2014

time2smile wrote: »

Welcome,
What Richard said is great advise.

If you bought the mirrored 500, it tough to get a keeper with that lens. I would try, set camera to A, I would use F11, iso to 800 and if the SS goes below 500 the pic will probable be blurry due to hand shake. Also the D5000 goes not have a focus motor so you are limited in the lens that will auto focus.
I've heard great things about the Tamron 150-600 for wildlife.
Good Luck....

thanks for the advice, unfortunately, the lens can only work in manual position, it is not recognized in the auto mode, so everything has to be manually adjusted

puzzledpaul · August 17, 2014

From what I've read about using mirror lenses (no direct / practical experience) I'd suggest you're going to have a difficult time - especially when dealing with wildlife as a subject, unless you're going to stick to (relatively) static shots / portraits etc

There are, of course, some darned good examples of w/life shots taken with manual focus lenses - mainly non-mirror ... but you're going to need a lot of practice, methinks.

From what little I know about mirror lenses, one of the disadvantages is that you can't change the aperture anyway?

Having to use manual (exposure) mode isn't necessarily a problem - some people (including me) use it on a regular basis, even tho' I use gear which will AF ... having no other focussing option other than manual is a different ball game tho, imo.

Certainly try some sort of support, if you can.

Best of luck

pp

Mitchell · August 18, 2014

What could go wrong? You have a new camera that you are learning to use. You have now coupled it with one of the longest, slowest and softest lenses ever made which requires that you shoot in manual mode and has no autofocus. On top of that, you are trying to shoot wildlife!!

perroneford · August 20, 2014

Such is the way of the world. New user purchases equipment for a shoot that would challenge most experienced professionals.

Personally, I'd replace that 500/F8 with a reasonable lens like a 300/F4 and maybe a teleconverter.

Nothing about this scenario is good. Marginal body, marginal lens, inexperienced shooter, likely poor light, likely no tripod or inadequate support.

Mitchell wrote: »

What could go wrong? You have a new camera that you are learning to use. You have now coupled it with one of the longest, slowest and softest lenses ever made which requires that you shoot in manual mode and has no autofocus. On top of that, you are trying to shoot wildlife!!

ziggy53 · August 20, 2014

Ken Rockwell has some valuable information specific to the Nikon D5000 and focus settings.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/d5000/af-settings.htm

The D5000 does have a focus confirmation capability, useful for manual focus lenses. Use the page above to guide you in setting the camera to "M" focus mode. Now your camera should be able to tell you when the lens is reasonably well focused.

Tracking moving wildlife will be difficult, so perched and motionless wildlife are probably the most practical subjects. Use food lures to help get your quarry into position, if practical.

Yes, the cheap mirror/reflex/catadioptric lack contrast, both global contrast and micro contrast. Global contrast can be fixed fairly well in post-processing, but micro-contrast is sharpness and you can only partially regain some lost sharpness using extreme sharpening techniques in post-processing. I have found the "High-Pass" sharpening method in Photoshop best for these lenses:

[thread=2064]Extreme Sharpening[/thread]

Feathers and fur are extremely difficult to get sharp unless you have sufficient lens resolution to define those fine edges. For a Nikon body I do agree that a Nikkor AF-G super-telephoto of around 300mm to 500mm is probably best for moving wildlife using a Nikon D5000 body.

BTW, a very good choice in a lightweight, manual focus, mirror/reflex/catadioptric lens, is an old Tamron 500mm, f8 SP (55BB) with the appropriate Tamron Adaptall mount. There are still problems with "donut" bokeh, and it's still an all manual lens (albeit a true f8 aperture), but the cost is reasonable and image quality versus cost is very good.

Tamron 500mm, f8 SP (55BB)

Full resolution file link:
http://ziggy53.smugmug.com/Photography/Lens-tests/500mm-testsbest/i-KgpN5Mq/1/O/IMG_0090T500M_best.jpg

Vivitar 500mm, f8 (really more like an f11) mirror lens:

Full resolution file link:
http://ziggy53.smugmug.com/Photography/Lens-tests/500mm-testsbest/i-tkR898Z/1/O/IMG_0093V500M_best.jpg

500mm lens

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