Production Log: 2-9-2019 Stepping Stone Falls

2-9-2019 Stepping Stone Falls.

            Today was the second shoot at stepping stone falls. This shoot involved three divisions of LCD-Productions. Live to Tape, Project Aerospace and LCD-Productions itself. The LCD-Production project started off filming on a 35mm a DSLR however the goal was to use only vintage manual lenses. The first shoot went well there were some quality problems with the 28mm Vintage lens. Most of the good footage was from the 200mm 3.5 f lens. Today’s shoot involved more modern lenses.

            This second shoot’s goal was to film more video and take test shots with a new lens. This lens is a 500mm f8 lens. I’ve been wanting to get a hold of this lens since I was 12 which was 16 years ago. Back then in cost $300 USD which is a lot for a 12-year-old and I forgot about it for a while. However, I received a gift card for Amazon and I found this lens for $80 USD. Having learned a lot more about photography I knew that this would be a very low visual quality lens. A good 400mm or a 600mm lens would cost between $6,000 – $12,000. So I knew what I was getting into.

            I took the test shots and 500mm takes a lot of getting use too. The longest lens I use regularly is a 70mm -300mm and sometimes with 1.5 Tele converter making it a 450mm with an image stabilizer. 500mm with no image stabilizer is really difficult to use. In addition, the largest f-stop is f 8. Which only works in bright outdoor light. Really sunny or light clouds.

            When I arrived at the park I used the lens with a Circular polarizer and the lens was attached to a t-mount onto my heavy duty tripod. My tripod was designed for construction equipment and I altered it to hold photography gear. This Tripod can extend stably to 7 feet and for this shoot I used it at around 5’9” - 6’ feet.

            The Day was a bright winter day. Winter light is a lot weaker and less dense and less powerful then summer sunlight. At a f 8 and with a circular polarizer I had to take photographs at an ISO 400 a shutter 1/80 and 1/100. The images came out okay but it was extremely difficult to focus through the eye piece because the view finder and lens light was very dark. I ended up having to use the Live-view which is using the LCD monitor on the camera and digitally zoom in 10x to fine focus then take the photo.

            Using the manual focus which is the only option is also difficult because the lens is so sensitive that the smallest small twist of the focus ring will throw the focus 4-6 feet meaning that your subject has to be perfectly in focus or it will be majorly out of focus. So out of focus you can tell from a small thumbnail.

            Eventually I had to give up with the circular polarizer. It made the light too dark and the low shutter speed lead to a lot of motion blur. Just breathing on the camera would shake the lens an extreme amount. With the circular polarizer removed I was able to shoot at an ISO of 100 and 200, which is Ideal and a shutter speed of 1/160 and 1/300 depending on the subject. Also without the polarizer I was able to take photos through the eye piece and focusing was more reliable and accurate then with Live view because I could brace the camera which reduced the lens shake and stopped the lens shifting out of focus.

            This lens was an $80 lens. To be honest you have to have a lot of experience in photography and using tele-photo lenses and patience. There is no condition where you can use this lens hand held and you have to use a T-mount to attach to a tripod. If you attach your camera to the tripod then the lens to the camera it will crack your camera in half, it is a heavy lens. But all in all I’m glad I got this lens. Like I said I had a gift card so it was essentially free. It is worth $80 and fun to play with and it is more of a toy lens (not in build quality but in image quality) I would say this lens is worth $150 as long as you know that a real lens of this kind would cost $12,000 and be significantly better image quality and have and extremely higher ease of use. I would recommend using this lens just for fun, not professionally it is very hit or miss even with wild life photography.

Link to the Photos below:

The Relaxing ASMR series from Live to Tape. Story Time will take you on a journey through scenic landscapes while listening to Stories from around the world

Create Project is the behind the scenes Live Streams of all the work by LCD-Production, which includes Photations

Photations MK IV (Season 4)   is a Indie Film Series from Photations. Featuring documentaries and Nature films with Photography from around the world

America Series One. A Journey through the American landscape with incredible photography