Out with the R glass setup this morning under mostly good light—except under canopy—it seems that my somewhat resurrected pursuit has a new angle to it: obsession with details.
With a few critter friends who have been patient enough to perch contentedly while I gather multiple frames, I’ve had a wonderful opportunity to experiement with EV, shutter speed, ISO, and distance to see which combinations, subject to my skills, produce the most pleasing details. This aspect was missing from probably my last two years of critter-chasing most likely because concern for weight had me using glass with lower contrast.
The SL2’s sensor, depending on distance and subject color, can preserve details at ISO 10,000—or obliterate them at ISO 1600—assuming the lens/combo can capture those details. If there’s one thing I’ve observed time and again over the years, older lenses with fewer elements have more native contrast than the many-element newer ones. Fewer elements doesn’t always translate to more details, as I learned with the 350mm f/4.8 Telyt-R; but it does give the sensor the best chance of creating a pleasing image; and doing so with optics more than with software corrections.
Which reminds me: the TC-1411 arrived today. Which means, weather permitting, I’ll get to see how it works on the 100-400mm tomorrow. And with twenty-nine elements in twenty groups, expectations are rather on the low side.
