Zoom lens to replace my 250 STM Zoom

Folks i think it has finaly dawned on me, that i could in honesty do with a longer lens than the 250mm i have. Even though the 55-250 STM zoom i own is a Fantastic lens with Impecable Trustworthy focusing, and Stella IQ throuh all its f stops, and on a good day when i nail the focus and the conditions are perfect, i can easily crop the image to nealy my laptops resolution of 1400mp long side.

The problem i have and i feel it is very relevant is for me to pick up a second hand zoom going to idealy 400mm, and to match the IQ and AF capability of my 250 STM would be very expensive and out of my reach, i have looked at the mk1 version of the 100-400 but at a trending price of about £600 even that is out of my league by about 50%, even selling my 250 STM would not make up much headroom.

Doeas anyone have any ideas that doeas not include moving closer to what i shoot, or changing my hobby

Regards

Pagman

Heya,

Well, there are a few options. I know prices are different across the pond unfortunately. You can get a lot more lens in the USA or in Japan for example, compared to what you're paying where you are.

You could hunt for a few 400mm and 500mm flavors. Look for a Sigma 500mm. They are commonly inexpensive, and right at your budget basically. That will double your magnification giving you twice as many pixels, to allow for large crops like you do, but with twice the detail. A Sigma 150-500 should clock in at an obtainable price on the used market. It'll be plenty good at F8 for what you're doing.

Another thing you can do, is a terrestrial based spotting scope (telescope) using a t-adapter and mounting your dSLR to it. You can get serious reach on one of these. Sure, it's manual focus, but really with what you shoot at that distance, that's not too bad. Autofocus is pretty weak anyways on small objects at massive distance as it pretty much parks your lens at infinity focus anyways, so it's not like it takes much AF to achieve what you're doing. I'd look at a 60 to 90mm refractor basically.

Very best,

The 100-400L is a good option as are some of the sigma and tamron in the same class. But you should see about renting them because if you continue to shoot as you have they are likely to make little difference.

Unfortunately, the 250 is the longest "affordable" zoom lens. The 150-600 Tamron is probably the best bang for the buck if you want to go longer, I don't know UK's prices, but if the 100-400 mk I used is out of your price range, then the tamron probably is too.

If you can deal with a prime there's a fantastic 400mm 5.6 in the for sale section for a very good price.

Dont suppose i could throw a convertor on my 250 STM somehow could i, even if i had to bodge it somehow, or would some kind of lens adapt ring make the link with lens/convertor/body if the small end of the lens protrudes in to far?

P.

Pagman wrote in post #17860863
Dont suppose i could throw a convertor on my 250 STM somehow could i, even if i had to bodge it somehow, or would some kind of lens adapt ring make the link with lens/convertor/body if the small end of the lens protrudes in to far?

P.

No. EF-S and TCs are a no-go.

maverick75 wrote in post #17860861
If you can deal with a prime there's a fantastic 400mm 5.6 in the for sale section for a very good price.

A prime may be a possibility if the price is right and has IS and AF.


P.

JeffreyG wrote in post #17860865
No. EF-S and TCs are a no-go.

Are there no conversion rings or adaptors available to go between them?


P.

Pagman wrote in post #17860870
Are there no conversion rings or adaptors available to go between them?

P.

The new Kenko HD teleconverters will fit on Efs lenses, I have one, you can use it with the 55-250 STM and it's only just OK,autofocus is a bit hit or miss depending on light, better to get a Sigma 120-400 or 150-500 S/H if you can.
https://www.parkcamera​s.com …Omun6S3sMoCFUNm​Gwod5E0GXg

A used 150-500 is likely the only thing that will check the boxes of more reach, AF, and IS in the area of your price range. I would recommend heavily against trying to pair a converter with the 55-250. I had a 1.4 with my 70-300L and the auto focus was slow and hunt in all all but the most ideal conditions. I also found the IQ of a 50% crop at 300mm to be better than the converter at 300mm.

I was going to ask about the difference between using a convertor and cropping, as my only experience of something similar was when using a bridge camera with an extra zoom setting - basicaly a digital extender, but even then i found that using normal software cropping was better and more controlable.


P.

There isn't a lens that is going to be better than what you have now. Checking UK Ebay the Sigma 150-500 OS seems to be going at something between £400 and £500 as a new lens on buy it now. Second hand lenses seem to have starting bids in the £300 to £400 range. Anything less that the 150-500 isn't actually going to be any better than what you have now. Even the Sigma 120-400, which is from the then high end EX series is the same sort of price on Ebay in the UK as the 150-500.

The problem is that at 30000 feet a 200' wingspan is only 2.4 Minutes of arc. Checking the figures for the 150-600 S, mounted on the Sigma SD body (IIRC a 1.5× crop sensor like the Nikons) has a field of view of 4.5 degrees. That 2.4 MoA is only 1/12th of the field of view. I expect that is the diagonal FoV, it wasn't specified) and even if that is converted to the field for the short edge (if my math is correct) you are still looking at 1/6 of the available FoV at 600mm for a 200 foot wide subject. That will give you approx 575 pixels on the subject. The 500mm should give you about 480 while you should be getting about 240 pixels from your 250mm lens, which seems about right from what I have seen you post, assuming you are not resizing your images on export and they are 100% crops. The thing is that a 400mm lens is only going to get you about 140 more pixels on the subject. Even an 800mm lens is not going to get you above 800 pixels on a 200 foot subject at 30000 feet, although it is 3.2× better than the 250mm lens.

If you are dealing with aircraft that are at airways altitudes then you are always going to be struggling to take good photos, even in perfect conditions, and even with the very best possible equipment. With the 7D it is actually quite easy to compare the magnification through the viewfinder with that from a pair of binos or a spotting scope. The 7D has a magnification of 1× when fitted with a 50mm lens focused at infinity, and I would expect that 30000 feet or five and a half miles plus would qualify as infinity. So your 250mm lens would offer 5× magnification in the viewfinder while a 500mm would be 10× magnification. At 10000 yards I would expect to be able to just make out detail that was in the order of 50" in diameter using a Zeiss/Leica quality 20× scope in perfect conditions, that would require a 1000mm lens of the same sort of quality on your camera.

Realistically, given your budget, I would not expect to routinely get outstanding quality images of airways traffic. What you will get with some regularity are images that will identify the aircraft you spotted. Even with an unlimited budget you are not going to regularly get images that are going to be outstanding on a regular basis. From what I recall of most of those who post this type of shot of airliners they are located within about 100 miles of a major hub airport. Given that it is probable that most of their really good shots are of aircraft at much lower altitudes. Bring them down to ten to fifteen thousand feet and not only are they going to be angularly twice as big or more, but they will also have half of the atmospheric disturbance too.

Alan

There are a few people on here that scored the Sigma 150-600 C for $700 US. Might want to keep an eye out there.

Thanks for that Alan, my spotting pics are more of a light hearted project and just something to go with my number crunching - registration collecting hobby, i know i am not going to get even half decent pics at that distance/atmosphere etc and thats ok, its interesting to challenge myself to edit stuff and see what i can achieve, what i have been doing with some sucsess, is to be very hard on the pics i keep and only expect to get a reasonable shot when the air quality is at its best away from a built up town as i live, after rain and in the winter when there is less moister or heat haze.

I have also been experimenting with the lens corrections pannel in LR4 and using the Scale slider, to help isolate the sky and zoom into a plane in the picture, this i have been told is similar to using the crop tool but without swapping pixal for digital pixal, i am using this along with a smaller amount of normal cropping meaning instead of cropping to my laptop resolution of nearly 1400mp, i am trying to keep it to about 1650mp keeping a bit in reserve so to speak. The biggest issue i am having to work quite hard on is keeping the image noise at bay at this kind of crop, as even with a properly exposed shot and at 100Iso and applying a workable amount of noise control, and a fair amount of masking, then even with using the masked brush and applying 100 on the de noise slider just on the sky, its still showing some noise in the sky.

Its all interesting stuff and a great challenge without to much seriousness, as its just about my hobby and not for any competitions etc

Regards

Pagman