Just how impossible/heavy/awkward is the A 400mm f2.8?
I don't find it to be too terrible, but it is not lightweight. If you are going through zoos it should be quite easy to carry - the terrain is usually pretty tame.
It has not been that big of a problem to carry it around. I leave the camera and teleconverter attached, drop the whole thing into a Domke long lens bag along withthe flash, cable, and bracket. The Domke goes into an old army surplus backpack, along with the other stuff I lug around (usually the digital, spare batteries, a couple of water bottles, maybe lunch, sometimes a general purpose zoom for documentary shots, rarely a second SLR.)
All loaded up the backpack might weigh 20 lb max, usually less. I use a Bogen 3036 tripod (26.5 lbs) and a 3049 ball head (3.5 lbs.) I just affix a nylon laptop strap to the tripod, strap the legs together, and sling it over a shoulder by the strap. With everything packed up the weight is not bad and you can get through thick brush and stuff without major problems.
Once I get to the location, I set up the camera on the tripod and just carry the whole thing around. I wear the nearly empty backpack. Instead of padding the tripod, I put more padding on the shoulder strap on the backpack so I can rest the rig there without the knobs and screws gouging into me.
I try to stick to trails, so the going is never too bad. I did a lot of shooting lately in an area where there were lots of ground hugging vines - wild raspberries and blueberries - and it was a PITA to drop the tripod in them and pull it back out, but it was manageable.
Optically, the 400mm is really outstanding. The only problem I have with it is that the bokeh sometimes is odd - this is made much worse by 2x converters. It seems that as you move the focus in closer, the images first "splits" into two and then those two blur out. So some out of focus elements can wind up in the image looking weird. On the flip side, you can sometimes get a really nice "painterly" effect to it - http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/birds/0204b49.htm . I shot a lot with this lens in the last month, and was please that the bokeh effects very seldom popped up. Here is one example where they did - http://www.markcassino.com/galleries/birds/b0009.htm - but dozens of other shots showed no issues.
The lens with the 1.4x-L teleconverter seems to show no degradation. Very very little with the 1.7x AF adapter. When I test it with a 2x-L I see very slight loss of contrast and softening of the image, which becomes almost negligible with the lens at f 5.6. But in practice, I have a hard time getting good shots with the 2x-L. It seems that 800mm is getting beyond my ability to hold it still enough with the ball head setup.
If you plan to use it at 400mm, you might want to look at a 400 f5.6. Much much smaller. Better close focusing (the A*400 focuses down to ~4 meters.) For birds alone you might want to look at a 600mm for the additional reach. I bought 400 thinking that with teleconverters it would be the most versatile solution. I keep hoping to do a project with whitetail deer (which are incredibly common here) where a 400 f2.8 would be ideal - but so far have not gotten my arms around that.
Will a Bogen 3221 tripod be adequate for it?
The lens weighs 6000 grams or about 13.25 pounds. From the specs on the tripod, you'd be pushing it's limit on the lens alone. Add a heavy head, camera and flash, you'd probably be over spec by a few lbs.
The 400's have really dropped in price quite a bit - about half of what I paid for mine a few years ago. While a 680 f4.5 is not the ideal for small birds (that's the effective focal length with the 1.7x adapter) I've found it be workable. I'm eager to use this with the *ist-D.
- MCC
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Mark Cassino
Kalamazoo, MI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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Photos:
http://www.markcassino.com
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