Mike Powell

Yesterday I spent several hours completely out of my comfort zone photographically as I used unfamiliar equipment in a way that stretched my skills and knowledge. This image is one of the few that I produced that I liked. I am pretty sure that this is a grackle, probably a Common Grackle (Quiscalus quiscula).  It was taken at the bird feeder at a local wildlife park—not exactly a natural habitat.

Common Grackle

I was shooting with a friend’s Nikon D300 camera rather than my Canon Rebel XT. The size, weight, and feel of the camera was different and the buttons and dials were a mystery to me. It was like trying to speak in an unfamiliar foreign language. I kept having to ask my photography mentor Cindy Dyer to translate my Canon language into Nikon language as I sought to change the ISO or use exposure compensation.

More significantly, though, I was using a large, heavy 500mm Mamiya telephoto lens. Yes, I was using a lens designed for a medium format camera with an adapter for the Nikon.

The lens was really cool, so much so that it is featured (at least temporarily) in the long skinny banner of my blog.  However, it was hard to use effectively because everything was manual and took a lot of time to set up. My eyes have been so attuned to looking at subjects close up that it was hard to adjust to the new reality of a minimum focusing distance of 30 feet. It was equally startling to see a lens marking for 500 feet, which preceded the marking for infinity. Focusing was manual and I longed for the split prism viewfinder of my old SLR as I tried to figure out if things were in focus. I had to guess at aperture settings and make adjustments as I went along, checking and rechecking my images. As I stopped down the lens, the viewfinder got progressively darker, meaning I had to focus with a wide open aperture and then manually switch to the desired aperture setting. Interestingly enough, the lens had aperture settings beyond F22 up to F45.

We were testing the lens because one of Cindy’s friends is trying to sell it to her. When she asked me what I thought at the end of our little shoot, I responded that I needed at least one more session before I could come to a conclusion. We started out late in the morning and there were few birds visible in the sun and the heat. I think that I need to be able to try to capture some images of birds to determine in this lens would be of any use at all. With a little more practice, estimating exposures and getting clear images would probably get easier for me. In addition, it may be possible to input information on the lens into her D300 and enable metering and focus confirmation, if I read correctly the information in the user’s manual (yes, I am one of those guys who actually reads instruction manuals). If the camera displayed the correct aperture, it would make things a lot easier and I would be able to focus on focusing. I also learned that her Nikon has Live View, a feature that I am not sure she has used. That might also help with my difficulty in focusing.

So, stay tuned and perhaps you will see me do battle once again with a heavyweight Mamiya lens.

© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.