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Jaded62
31-12-2023, 9:55am
Hi all,

I have an upcoming trip to Port Campbell (VIC) and surrounds. My sense is that a lot of the pics I see online of this area are taken with relatively long lenses and look to be taken from various lookouts.

My gear is a 5Ds, EF 16-35mm f4L IS USM and a EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM.

The 24-105 is a great lens but not long and it won't take either of Canon's extenders.

So the question is, is a long lens desirable for the location and if so, what?

Bonus question is what 3rd party lens are comparable to Canon's L series?

Cheers,

Mark

ameerat42
31-12-2023, 11:40am
Hi, Mark
Specifically for that location, I only went through once, so the rest is "general".

Yes, long lenses are suitable for some landscape photography. They're good for isolating scene
detail that you can't always easily get to, AND... to give a scene a particular perspective that a
closer position would not yield.

In various trips, the latest major one being about 2016, I took along my 50-500mm. I cannot
locate any pics from then in a short time, but I took shots using it in Central Oz, at Watarrka
NP (Kings Canyon) and around Kata Tjuta (The Olgas). I used it less around Uluru, but again
along the roads.

Your bonus Q is a bit hard to answer. For shorter FL primes I'd say Sigma Art lenses. I'm sure
Tamron would have equivalents, but I'm not up on them. But it sounds you'd want longer than
most of Sigma's Art lens lineup (max 135mm prime, or 50-100 zoom for Canon).

What FL or zoom range are you looking for? Certainly, the Canon L lenses are dearer than many
other brand FL equivalents.

Jaded62
31-12-2023, 2:56pm
Thanks ameerat.

Re the Canon lens options;
An EF 100-400 f4.5 L (but at 1.4kg weighs more than I want to lug around)
A used EF 70-300mm f/4 L
An EF 70-200 f4 L with an extender. This may be the more flexible option but with the extender come close to the weight of the 100-400.

ameerat42
31-12-2023, 3:05pm
Yes, that 100-400 is a lens with reputation, but you're right about its weight.

Maybe try out the 70-300 to see if it will give you the sort of thing you're after,
until you can figure out something in a lighter equivalent.

The Sigma 150-600 Sports lens is also quite heavy, from reports. I'm used to my
50-500 (Contemporary equivalent), so I can't compare it for weight vs the Canon
100-400. Again for the Sigma Contemp, FWIW, there are a couple of people on AP
who swear it's as good as the Sports version but lighter (and apparently not weather
sealed). To me, though, if I were doing landscapery, the 150mm start would be
rather long. Since 2012, I've enjoyed my 50-500 (though rarely in recent times).

ameerat42
31-12-2023, 3:06pm
PS: I hope somebody can chime in about Tamron lenses.

Tannin
31-12-2023, 10:16pm
I have owned both of the the Canon 100-400s and also the 70-300L.




* 70-300L About $1500 used, can't find one new.
http://tannin.net.au/browse.php?first=1&fallback_third=1&second=14
PRO: A very sweet little lens, surprising how much smaller and lighter it is than the 100-400s. A joy to use. Very sharp, handles well.
CON: Too short! Not much use at all for birding, of limited value for wildlife, and although the 70mm end is sometimes handy, I still prefer having the significant extra reach of a 100-400. Good IS and AF but not quite as good as the 100-400 Mark II. In particular, lacks IS Mode 3, which turbo-charges your ability to shoot sharp pictures in poor light.

http://tannin.net.au/upload/19/190507_073941.jpg




* 100-400L Mark II.
http://tannin.net.au/browse.php?first=1&fallback_third=1&second=18 About $3500 new, $2200 used.
PRO: Arguably the best EF telephoto zoom Canon has ever made (or any other company for that matter). Handles well, top-class Mode 3 IS, fast focus, optically superior to any other lens in its class. (Only the big white primes beat it, and they are $15k and heavy as lead.) Although notionally shorter than the third party "600mm" zooms (the Sigmas for example), its optics are superior and it delivers a sharper picture even after cropping to equivalent fields of view. Plus its smaller, lighter, and has vastly superior handling. Best in class, daylight second.
CON: price, weight (which really isn't a big problem).

http://tannin.net.au/upload/17/171106_142854-rv.jpg





* 100-400L Mark I.
http://tannin.net.au/browse.php?first=1&fallback_third=1&second=17 Might be $750 used but I'm guessing.
PRO: quality optics at a fantastic price. A very old design now but still a better than just decent performer. Like all these lenses (and especially the other 100-400) offers you the ability to reach out into the landscape and pluck exactly what you want from it. It's a great photographic rule: decide what it is you like about the scene, show that and leave everything else out. Rugged and reliable (well, so are all the other L Series lenses).
CON: the least optically impressive of the three (but still more than good enough for almost any task); very old but perfectly functional IS system; you don't get bragging rights (do we care?).

http://tannin.net.au/upload/12/120416_070335r.jpg


I like third-party lenses. I own and happily use a Tamron 85/1.8 and an ancient but still delightful Tokina 10-17 fish. In the telephoto zoom arena, however, none of them can hold a candle to the Canon lenses. You can get cheaper and inferior; not much cheaper, slightly inferior, and much, much heavier and clumsier; or much cheaper and barely worth having. In particular, the various "something-600mm" zooms are heavy, clumsy, and inferior in almost all respects. They look great on paper but in the real world the 100-400 II creams them every time.

Your best choice? The 100-400 II is THE best lens in this class at any price or with any brand. The 100-400 Mark I, if you can find one, will do pretty much everything any of the others do, and do it very nearly as well, and cost you three fifths of five eighths. And the 70-300 is a real sweetie. Among these three there is no wrong answer.

ameerat42
01-01-2024, 5:56am
That's a thorough post, Tannin. I like the examples in the landscapes.

Again, they did not show in the post, but they do in your links...:th3:

Jaded62
01-01-2024, 7:22am
Thanks Tony. Your detailed post is very much appreciated.

Tannin
01-01-2024, 9:48am
That's a thorough post, Tannin. I like the examples in the landscapes.

Again, they did not show in the post, but they do in your links...:th3:

Do you have an odd browser or security configuration? Is an over-aggressive anti-virus program blocking referrers perhaps? This is very odd!

(Double-checking by visiting this page is a different browser - one which has never been to my site or AP before and doesn't know any passwords - I can see pictures.)

ameerat42
01-01-2024, 10:09am
^ I think you are right...:eek:

I can see the images using Chrome and Edge, but not with Firefox or its stablemate Pale Moon :confused013

The msg is about having a "browser configuration error" and to "check settings" :rolleyes:

Well, I guess that's the case... [DO UNTIL problem solved: check settings /ENDDO]

ameerat42
01-01-2024, 11:32am
(Using Chrome for now to show the pics.)

Thanks for the pics in this post. The last one in particular illustrates my earlier thoughts on
perspective.

Tannin
01-01-2024, 1:15pm
^ Ahh, yes. It is a browser misconfiguration. But it's not your fault!

First some background (you may already know this stuff, so bear with me here).

It is standard practice for web resource requests to provide a URI and a with it a referer. Your browser, when it asks for something (such as an image) says to the website "this is the name and address of the thing I would like you to send me" (the URI) and it also says "and here is the name of the place which sent me" (the referer).

So when you load this page and your browser gets to the first image I posted, it sees that the image lives on my website (not AusPhoto) and it sends a message to my web server (a) asking for it by name, and (b) saying which website is asking for it (auspgotography.net.au in this case).

My webserver (a) looks to see if the image exists, and (b) looks to see if the website asking for it has permission to access it. If the file exists and your request is a legitimate one, it sends the image and your browser displays it on this page.

This is worldwide industry standard practice and has been for many years. But why does my web server check for permissions? Couldn't it just hand the image out to anyone who asks?

No. It is an essential security measure.

Suppose someone wants to steal a picture and display it on a popular high-traffic website? He could download or screen shot the image, upload it to his own server (if he has one) and display it from there. That's illegal but easy enough to do, and there is nothing I can do to stop it short of taking legal action. But in reality, I'd probably never even know it had happened, and in truth I wouldn't really care too much about it. Stuff happens. Meanwhile, every time someone opens the page where he displayed the image, their browser asks his webserver to send the picture, which it does.

But what if he does it the easy way? Simply types something like <img>http://mywebsite.au/mypicture.jpg</img>? Now it is MY website that serving up the picture to his readers. This is called HOTLINKING or BANDWIDTH THEFT and it can be very serious. If he has put my picture on a high-traffic site it can blow my monthly bandwidth allowance out of the water in minutes. At that point, my hosting company automatically shuts my entire site down, and also any other services on the same account (such as my email and any other sites I have). They have to do that to protect their other sites from the bandwidth hog.

This is why any properly configured web server checks the "referer" (yes, that weird spelling is correct - someone decades ago got it wrong the first time and now we can't change it without breaking stuff) to see whether the resource request is coming from a trusted site. What is a trusted site in this context? Obviously itself (for example the abc.net.au server will happily hand out images if the requesting site is also abc.net.au), but also any other site the administrator put on his or her "safe list".

So when AusPhotography asks for a picture from my server, your web browser sends a message saying "send me Tannin's picture such-and-such, I'm from ausphotography.net.au", and my server sees that AusPhotography is on the list so it sends the picture.

This is all standard practice. I've used my own example but it is similar for pretty much every web administrator of every site. (But note that some of the really huge Internet companies - the likes of Facebook and Google - use their own proprietary methods instead of referer checking. Their methods are undisclosed.)

Could someone fake a referer and trick my server into sending the picture anyway? Sure, it's not that hard to do. But who would bother? And even if they did, that is only one user - to do any real harm (such as shut a server down) a hotlink has to involve thousands of users. So checking the referer is good enough for almost all practical purposes, and all web browsers since 1996 (28 years ago!) respect it.

Now we get to the problem. The idiots in charge of Firefox decided to break the rules. Pale Moon, Sea Monkey and Waterfox (all Firefox forks) now have the same problem. Every other browser (Opera, Vivaldi, Chrome, Brave, Safari, even Microsoft Edge, plus whatever other ones I haven't thought of) continues to work just fine. Simply, it is a Firefox problem. It only happens to the (roughly) 5% of all Internet users who use Firefox or one of its relatives. The (roughly) 95% using non-Firefox browsers are fine.

Now you could fix it by getting rid of Firefox, but it's a good browser. I like it and use it myself (though not for Aus Photography) and also use Pale Moon every day, and sometimes Sea Monkey and Waterfox for particular sites.

Or you could fix it by going into about:config and changing some settings, but that would only fix it for you. Every other Firefox user would still have the problem. We can't fix their browsers!

I reckon there might be a workaround. I'm going to try using a secure connection link to an image. That is totally unnecessary as there is nothing remotely private, confidential, or in any way security-related anywhere on my site (other than my administrative & management interface, which we are not interested in here) and rather annoying to have to do just because Firefox (5% of the Internet) thinks it can break a long-established rule honoured by the other 95%, but that's the way it is. The Firefox developers have form so far as deciding to do their own thing and to hell with the rest of the world - that's pretty much why that once-time world-leading and dominant browser is down to single-digit market share these days.

If you see a picture below (another landscape with the 100-400 II, as it happens) then my workaround for the error in Firefox works. Wish me luck!

https://tannin.net.au/upload/13/130224_120025_1d4x.jpg

ameerat42
01-01-2024, 1:36pm
Ta for the explification*, only some of which I was aware of (the Firefox et. al. proclivity not being part of it).

Indeed! I can now see the this image, so luck is on your/my/our side.

I eagerly await developments (because, as you know, "further" here would largely be a redundancy).

* Pseudo-expression to suit the situation :p

Jaded62
01-01-2024, 1:47pm
You sure? EXIF says 24mm.





If you see a picture below (another landscape with the 100-400 II, as it happens) then my workaround for the error in Firefox works. Wish me luck!

https://tannin.net.au/upload/13/130224_120025_1d4x.jpg

Tannin
01-01-2024, 4:10pm
^ Quite right! Slip of the brain. It was a Canon 1D IV & 24-105/4 @24mm 200 ISO f/8 1/100th.

Here is a 100-400 II picture :)

https://tannin.net.au/upload/19/190507_133929.jpg

(Canon 5D IV, 100-400 II @164mm 100 ISO f/9 1/160th)

Tannin
02-01-2024, 4:20pm
^ Perfect!

canguro
04-01-2024, 7:45pm
Thank you Tony, for this majestic effort in revealing the esoteric elements in operation behind the seemingly simple action of viewing an image (or whatever) in a browser page. Given my disinclination to dive into Firefox's bowels and play with config settings, I'll probably install a second browser.

Cheers, Grant

jamesmartin
13-01-2024, 9:04am
If you havent needed anything longer then your 105mm in the past then not sure youll really need one for Port Campbell area. Ive done the great ocean rd two or three times & found my 21mm just fine for the seascapes, rainforest & waterfalls of the area. not saying a longer lens wouldnt be handy & lately i have been making a effort to use my Canon 70-300mm f/4L lens more for landscapes. If you did get a longer one would be interesting to see the amount of pics you took with the wide vs longer lenses. The redwoods, otways is a spot worth visiting for some cool photos. Theres some turnoffs around the twelve apostle area that are not signposted but lead to some different lookouts that arent crowded thats worth checking out too.

Boo53
13-01-2024, 10:03pm
PS: I hope somebody can chime in about Tamron lenses.

I owned a Tamron 70-200 f8 with my Sony A mount gear (now given to daughter) and replaced it with a 70-180 f2.8 e-mount. Lovely sharp lenses, both of them. The A mount had a bit of weight to it but the e-mount is quite light

A friend has a 150-500 for his canon, uses it for birding, a swears by it.

- - - Updated - - -


Hi all,

I have an upcoming trip to Port Campbell (VIC) and surrounds. My sense is that a lot of the pics I see online of this area are taken with relatively long lenses and look to be taken from various lookouts.

My gear is a 5Ds, EF 16-35mm f4L IS USM and a EF 24-105mm f4L IS USM.

The 24-105 is a great lens but not long and it won't take either of Canon's extenders.

So the question is, is a long lens desirable for the location and if so, what?

Bonus question is what 3rd party lens are comparable to Canon's L series?

Cheers,

Mark

It's about 12 months since I was last down there so memory might be a bit off, but I can't really remember any shot that I'd wished I'd put anything longer than the 24-70 on for. Most of my shots would have been with the 16-35.

James suggested having a look at the Redwoods near Beech Forest. If you head that way Hopetoun Falls and Beauchamp falls are each with 5 km of there and with all the recent rain would be flowing wonderfully.