When the opportunity arose to take Brendan's monster lens home over night I didn't have to be asked twice. The lens in question is the gargantuan Sigma 120-300 f/2.8L which I believe is the fastest zoom lens that extended to 300mm (for the fellow photography nerds out there!).
This is how is looked when attached to my Canon 5D2 (photo taken on iphone)
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| From Sigma Super Tele |
To make it even more impressive I attached a 2x tele-converter which gave it an effective focal length of 240-600 with a fastest aperture of f/5.6. I attempted to attach a 1.4x extender as well but was devastated to discover this wasn't possible. Not to worry, as it was I had twice the length at my disposal than ever before, so with a certain amount of self consciousness I headed to the familiar surroundings of London's Southbank to try and see them in a different light, so to speak.
I've always loved a classic 3 card monty scam so I was thrilled to see one operating not 100m to the West of the Tate Modern. This was one of the poorer ones I'd encountered though as the dealer's mate posing as an unrelated bystander and winning money was so clearly the brother of the dealer it was almost comical. These two Bulgarians (I'm guessing) stood out like a couple of sore thumbs, and I'm pretty sure everyone else knew if too as they were still plying their trade in the same spot 30 minutes later, presumably still looking for their first mark. Anyway, I digress - as much as I wanted to take photos of the Bulgarians I used my better judgement and concluded it probably wasn't the best idea to photograph shady characters engaging in illicit activities with thousands of pounds of camera and lens around my neck (although I did have a brief fantasy about using my monopod as some sort of weapon if push came to shove.)
So, here's a list of things this lens is good for.
1) Shooting people on a bridge from down below
2) Shooting photos of people on a giant ferris wheel (take, the London Eye for instance) from down below
3) Shooting a bus going over a bridge from down below
Are you sensing a theme here?
I soon realised I'd have to provide a more diverse portfolio to keep the blog faithful happy so I decided to go for some people shots. It's the kind of lens that is perfect for getting candids of strangers, but you also run the risk of looking like a bit of a perv pointing it at groups of people. Fortunately I didn't care what people thought, I knew my heart was pure and my intentions were good, officer.
And to cap things off here's a few other randoms from the evening.
Which do you prefer of these last 2? I'm still undecided.
Tip Of The Week
Oooooohh yeah, that's right, the famous T.O.T.W is BACK! Although I'm thinking of renaming it to Tip Of The Arbitrary Period Of Time (T.O.T.A.P.O.T). So, I had a really great tip about memory card management all lined up, but have decided to wait until next week (or should I say next arbitrary period of time - which may actually be a week...) as I need to include a few photos of various things that I need to take and would involve me getting off the couch at this moment. So, the pretty lame tip this time round is to try shooting something you've never shot before, OR, try shooting something you've shot a lot of in a different way. I've taken literally thousands of shots of the Southbank over the years but with the help of some new equipment I was able to get some new angles and ideas. If you like shooting landscapes try taking the camera to the next sports game you go to, if you like shooting family events and flowers in your backyard try taking it to the streets for some gritty street photography, if you like using your 18-200 lens all the time try and get your hands on a 50mm prime and see how that floats your boat. If you've been shooting and editing a lot of weddings over the last month try and borrow the world's biggest lens* and take it round town for an afternoon.
*Okay, so it's not the world's biggest lens, but it's pretty big. This one would have to come close though.
