Rather amazing in that you can see the fine detail of the feathers moving on the duck's head!

Sweet. I am so interested.

The stabilizer has stabilized the head rather than the (absent) body, so while the head is steady, the body end of the neck wobbles in a strange way. It looks like the head has been cut off and the neck is wobbling in the breeze

It's just dancing to the music. Thank heavens it wasn't listening to rap.

Jerry,

A little off topic but do you use any of the GH2 'hacks'? If so which do you prefer?

Geoff

@PeterDuke: I'm pretty sure the neck wobbling is a result of the stabilization in post. As Bob (farss) says, a [I]very stable[/I] tripod is important for this extreme focal length. Turns out I had my Gitzo in the trunk of my car (I just made this test on the spur-of-the-moment whim). Maybe a sequel - tripod mounted??

@diverG: I use the Sanity 5.1 hack. (I had some problems with the higher bitrate hacks at 720 60p) Those may be solved now?? It's been a while since I've experimented.

...Jerry

@jerry Found Sanity5v1 was the only hack that worked with standard SD cards. Had problems with Redshift (no playback in camera & no spanning). A later version due soon may be OK
Moon T5 & T7 plus Drewnet T8 & T9 are OK on 95Mbs cards. Tend to use 1920x1081i 50fps or 1280x720P 50fps. No problems with spanning files and playback in camera but would question my need for huge .mts files

Geoff

Jerry don’t worry about stabilizing the shot, just say you shot this in North Korea and were in a hurry to get the shot. That lens that side will send you to prison. My maximum lens is 300 I’ve always wanted to get something with more zoom maybe one day.

" .... shot at 25mm x 2.0 = 50mm or "standard" for what one's eye sees.

50mm is not "standard" except for full frame 35mm film. A "standard" or "normal" lens has a focal length that is aproximately the diagonal of the film/sensor. Thus a "normal" lens for 35mm is 50mm but for 4 x 5 inch sheet film it is from 135mm to 180mm (photographers use what they have, or what works for them) A "normal" lens for the small sensors in video cams would be considerably less than 50mm.

"50mm is not "standard" except for full frame 35mm film"Hmmm... I thought I was clear on this, I guess not. The Panasonic GH2 is a micro four thirds camera. The "standard" for the micro four thirds is 25mm and that was what the reference shot was captured with. A micro four thirds camera has a 2.0 crop factor. When multiplying the focal length of the lens times the crop factor one gets the 35 mm equivalent. More explicitly:

25mm (actual focal length) x 2.0 (crop factor) = 50mm (35mm equivalent)

...Jerry

"Standards" can change. When I bought my first 35 mm camera in 1956, it had a 50 mm lens, but up until then, the "normal" lens was somewhat longer, 65 mm I think.

Bear in mind that a teleconverter really tests the main lens. My zoom lens for my DSLR (Nikon 18-200) is not all that sharp, and adding a teleconverter is not much better than cropping the image in post. Of course it could be due to my teleconverter as well.

EDIT

The above comment applies to still photos with a high resolution sensor. With videos, which have a much lower resolution, the use of a teleconverter should be much better than cropping.

Jerry,
Discussions of what is "normal" aside (I wouldn't have any idea), if you can get the vibration under control, and not have to fudge as much in Mercalli, I think you've got a winner here!

You are rapidly becoming to avian wildlife videography, what Nick is to underwater, and John is to analog / film restoration, and me, well . . . to musical theater ;?)

Congratulations again!
m

I've been using a 600mm AIS ED for a few years now with a T3i. That setup achieves 2880mm equivalent focal length with the T3i's 3x crop zoom in either 1080-30p or 1080-24p mode.

I now have a new Panasonic G6. It actually has a crop factor of 2.1 and the 2.4x ETC in 1080-60p mode. This gives just over a 3000mm equivalent with the 600mm. It has already proven to be the ultimate tool for wildlife video I've ever come across.

Here's a sample of some north American elk from July 5th.
https://vimeo.com/69864670

There are a couple zoom shots in there with a TM700 and the stabilizer shots are with a GoPro Hero3 Black. All the rest of the shots are with the G6 and either the 600mm or the new 14-42 II kit lens.

This is all quite doable, just needs a monster tripod and fluid head. I shoot with this setup all the time on Gitzo G1325 sticks and a G1380 Fluide head.

Cheers,
Pete

@c3hammer: That's some amazing distance shots. Those elk have too many points to count!

@EveryoneElse: Here's a followup test with the camera mounted on my Gitzo GT4330 / Wimberley Gimbal head. I also borrowed a 2x teleconverter for an 35mm equivalent focal length of 7,800mm!! (Edit: Turns out I made an error and recorded the sequel at 1920x1080 which makes the GH2 ETC crop factor 2.6 vs 3.9 for 1280x720 source. Also, after some Googling, I found out that the micro four thirds sensor crop factor should be 1.9 for a 16:9 framesize vs 2.0 for a 4:3 framesize. The max 35mm equivalent in the following video is therefore 4,940mm). The video has been replaced.



...Jerry

Jerry,

That is absolutely unbelievable! How did you even know that eagle was there?

I'm also amazed that you don't get severe fringing when using a teleconverter. The only one I have is something I bought for my original Nikon F camera, back in 1970, and it totally screwed up the optics, giving me fringing and very strange contrast. I only used a for a few dozen shots over the years.

I guess I finally need to get a modern Nikon DSLR and start playing around with my various lenses.

John

Jerry, that is simply stunning !!! You must have flipped a lid to see there was a bald eagle on that tower.

I've been doing this kind of zoom for a few years now and it never ceases to amazing me how incredible these new cameras are.

Incredible shots, thanks for posting.

Cheers,
Pete

If it was me (and it's not), I would probably go without the 2x tube. Often it's impossible to focus all the way out to infinity with one of those on.

"That is absolutely unbelievable! How did you even know that eagle was there? I'm also amazed that you don't get severe fringing when using a teleconverter."@johnmeyer: Thanks for the nice compliments. I live about 35 miles from the Conowingo Dam, just north of the point were the Susquehanna River becomes the Chesapeake Bay. The locals say this is the largest congregation of Eagles east of the Mississippi. The peak is in November when the people who count say there are 300-400 eagles visible from "the fence". There are also claims that (during November) one can find the greatest collection of high end photo equipment anywhere. Estimates come in at the 1-2 million dollar range. What about the Olympics? The locals argue that that equipment spreads several venues. Is any of this true? I dunno, but it's a good story.

Currently (July), there are nominally 6-10 photographers "on the fence" at any given time and about 2-3 dozen eagles will fly between the electrical towers and the trees behind the fence (sometimes catching fish in the river in between), so we can feel fairly certain that there will be eagles on the towers at any given time.

The "Million Dollar Fence" in November (this is probably the greatest crowding, but the fence is about 1/4 mile long):



Here's a zoomable image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34185009@N02/8194579816/

Re: the fringing and the teleconverter. Yes, I was quite pleased with the lack of problems. Canon makes some pretty good glass (as does Nikon, of course). Here's my setup. I normally shoot stills with a Canon 7D, but mounting the Panny GH2 for video was a fun experiment.

The Holitzer and the Peashooter:



Pardon me for rambling on this subject, but it's something I get a kick out of.

...Jerry

PS: @musicvid: Yeah, at that focal length focusing is extremely difficult. A mere nudge of the focus ring will throw the image out of focus. Furthermore, the act of focusing shakes the camera/lens which adds to the difficulty.

Several decades ago I used a Nikkormat (baby brother to the Nikon F) and a host of Nikon lenses to shoot a lot of Kodachrome 25 slides. Even back then, the lenses were pretty nice. I also bought a official Nikon 2x extender and the results were still remarkably good, as long as the primary lens was stopped down 2 stops from wide-open.

Of course, the tradeoff with a 2x extender is that the f-stop is also doubled. Even so, for some purposes it was worth it.

Years later I bought a Celestron mirror-lens as a spotting scope. With a 4" aperture and a 1000mm focal length it was f10, pretty slow. Never got around to mount my 2x extender on it. But it was a remarkably sharp mirror-lens.

I would love to see the clip in the original post but without stabilization.

"I would love to see the clip in the original post but without stabilization."Heh, it's pretty ugly. Actually, the bean bag is pretty stable. However, it's very difficult to aim the camera as the field of view is so narrow. In other words, I'd aim the camera to get the egret in view, but as soon as I let the camera/lens rest naturally, the bird would go out of frame. The only solution was to hold the camera/lens in position - which made it very shaky. I didn't have the problem with the eagles because the tripod locked into place nicely.



...Jerry

Huh. I'll bet the neck wiggled in the stabilized version because of rolling shuttter.