Wasp in flight

Wasp, Delta arcuata, in flight
Mud-dauber wasp, Delta arcuata , in flight

This post is by way of an apology to Canon, who made my new telephoto lens. I said a week ago that its image stabilisation was useful but I did underestimate its benefit.
This photo was taken at 1/80 sec, f8.0 and a focal length of 260 mm (nearly full zoom).

The wasp? Delta arcuata, one of our common mud-daubers. Adults stock their nests with caterpillars for their larvae but are vegetarian themselves, feeding on nectar. Many people are frightened of them, but unnecessarily: they can sting but are not at all aggressive.

New telephoto lens

Brown butterfly on poinsettia
Common Eggfly on poinsettia, courtesy of my new telephoto zoom lens

Most of my insect photography so far has been done with my Canon 100mm macro lens, and I love it: it lets me get big, clear images of anything I can get close enough to.

But that last bit can be problematic, of course. Dragonflies and many other insects don’t take kindly to having a person or a camera lens too close to them, and they take off. Sure, I have taken some good shots of skittish subjects – but I have missed many more. The solution, of course, is a telephoto lens which lets the photographer fill the frame with a smaller or more distant subject. After a fair bit of research online and some advice from more experienced photographers I settled on an image-stabilised Canon 70-300mm zoom lens. I got it two days ago and took it for a walk beside Ross River yesterday afternoon.

First impressions are that its image quality, so long as I do everything right, is very nearly as good as my macro lens – great! – and that it does make flighty subjects much easier to capture – terrific! The butterfly above (click on it for a larger image, as usual) exemplifies both points. Dragonflies were far easier, too, and I got some little crabs which would normally have vanished into their holes in the mud before I got close enough.

I also had birds in mind when I went shopping, and you can expect more birds on my blog from now on. I watched a Great Egret fly in and land in the shallows of Ross River far enough away not to be bothered by me but close enough to for some good shots. (25.2.12: they are now here.) Distant landscape subjects are also good: I can’t read a numberplate a kilometre away but I can get perspectives which would otherwise be impossible.

Downsides? None that are too significant. I need to remember to keep shutter speed up – even with the stabilisation, 1/160 sec is often blurred at 300mm, hand-held (on the other hand, the rule of thumb for an unstabilised lens would recommend going down to at least 1/300 sec). I also have to get used to the idea that I may need to step away from the subject to be able to focus on it, since the minimum focus distance is about 1.5 metres. That’s about all, really. My macro lens will still be best for very small, close subjects but the telephoto zoom lens will see a lot of use.