500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

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Mark K
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500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

:mrgreen: I was thrilled by my A77's performance so I carried the camera mounted with 70-400 stepping into a hot-spot where all can see migrating egrets landing. I could barely believe what I saw, there were already a dozen shooters there. All were having either 1D IV mounted with 500 prime, 600prime but mostly 800/5.6...
I had to leave because my lens was too shining.
My next question is when will our own 500/4 arrive for sale?
What if the price is as expensive as Canon 800/5.6? For that amount of money I can afford to buy a 1D IV and a first generation 600/4 L
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

Does it matter? Canon lenses are as common as migrating egrets. I've been to places where egrets are like seagulls for us. Nice enough birds, but not rare and not worth all that expense just for more pictures of egrets!

For me, what matters about egrets is where you photograph them. An egret in a Barbados sugar cane field or an egret on the banks of the Nile. Better spend your money on travel then on 20% extra lens reach. Anyway, with 24 megapixels, your 400mm was already equal to their 500mm even if they used a 7D. And if they used a 1D MkIV, well, your 400mm was already matching their 800mm f/5.6 in real terms. They could not get a single extra pixel of image detail on a bird at 800mm compared to you at 400mm with your equivalent focal length of 600mm plus your extra pixels plus your extra depth of field and your lower noise.

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Greg Beetham
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Greg Beetham »

Ha ha Canon lenses as common as migrating Egrets, that's a good one! But I'm sort of wondering now how I would be able to tell the difference between an Egret on the bank of the Nile and one on the bank of Ross River in Townsville ha ha. :lol: You have to laugh occasionally David.
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Mark K
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

David, you were right. I went back to the river bank this morning and found all these shooters were occupying there already. Maybe I should go earlier next time.
I actually found this link selling lenscoat for 70-400G
http://www.lenscoat.com/lenscoatsuptmsu ... p-924.html

I also found there was a delay AF delay for my A77, 70-400G everytime I aimed it at a target. The AF did not work all the time. There was also this ghosting thing in bright sunlight..... I should bring my a700 as well.
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

Ghosting? I have not been able to get any ghosting from the A77. For egrets I would definitely use the Zone focus mode with Subject Tracking and AF-C, have the camera set to Hi drive mode (does not affect any other settings but gives you 8fps which is very useful for tiny bursts, like two or three frames). Register an egret using the tracking and see what happens. Or a flock.

David
Mark K
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

Thanks David, I am getting more to my A77 and here is one shot taken this morning
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Birma
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Birma »

Cracking Kingfisher, Mark - what lovely colours :D
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
Mark K
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

Thanks Birma
I went to my Sony dealer after the shooting and how disappointed I was after being turned down from my 300/2.8 request
"Did you know how many days does Sony take to assemble a single 300/2.8? 25 days by 17 people. For this reason consider you were actually paying a little fraction of the 4000UKP listed price and that is why 300/2.8 was removed from the list"
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Birma
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Birma »

Hi Mark - I can imagine that it is very disappointing to be unable to get the kit you want even when you have the funds available. I know the Alpha mount telephoto shooter is pretty much limited to the 70-400 in the Sony brand. What about Tamron and Sigma? I think Sigma do a 500/5.4 in alpha mount.

This site shows a number of outlets that claim to have the Sony 300/2.8 in their catalogue in the UK http://camerapricebuster.co.uk/prod1079.html .
Nex 5, Nex 6 (IR), A7M2, A99 and a bunch of lenses.
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Dr. Harout
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Dr. Harout »

Mark K wrote:Thanks Birma
I went to my Sony dealer after the shooting and how disappointed I was after being turned down from my 300/2.8 request
"Did you know how many days does Sony take to assemble a single 300/2.8? 25 days by 17 people. For this reason consider you were actually paying a little fraction of the 4000UKP listed price and that is why 300/2.8 was removed from the list"
Mark, are you sure he was a Sony dealer? Or was he another brand's "saboteur"? :mrgreen:
It would really surprise me if Sony would stop the production of the 300/2.8 unless they are on the way of producing a new one, something which might work much better and more reliably with newer SLTs with or without mirror (is it really me saying this?)
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David Kilpatrick
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by David Kilpatrick »

I have, a long time ago, seen the 300mm f/2.8 being assembled. It certainly did not pass through that many people though the lens elements, of course, all are pre-made and polished and coated before they reach the assembly line - and the cooling time alone for the larger elements is many days. But that does not involve anything more than one man monitoring the annealing kiln.

Each team in the past was composed of six to eight workers, depending on the item being assembled. They worked round an island-like workstation, with a carousel of component parts and their own parts trays, and each member of the team would do a stage in the assembly or a group subassembly. The units being assembled would not always be the same, there were several Quality Circles (they called the teams this) and not only would staff within the circle swap tasks, the product would be different from week to week - 28-135m one week, 300mm the next, etc. This ensured that no matter what problems arose with supply shortages for one item, or staff leave, the Sakai lens workshop could make any lens in the range at any time because all the teams had the experience to do so.

I think it took our guide less time to explain this than it took to write it here, it was elegant and obvious, and combined with 'just-in-time' stock parts it meant that all you saw was a steady flow of finished lenses appearing from 'nothing' - stuff on trays. Each team had statistics and also quality control checks and it was competitive, with some kind of rewards for the best, maybe just going to the top of the league on a board.

Minolta quality in this very small single-storey workshop was second to none - but I think the story of how it long it took to make 300mm f/2.8 lenses is greatly exaggerated to include semi-automated processes and subassembly finishing, CNC operations, paint finish and baking, etc. That was all done before the parts arrived and we were not given any idea whether any single component was made in the building or came from another, or a third party.

Something I did not see, but learned about much later, was the hand-winding of the galvanic coils for the TTL meters of the SRT-101, 303 etc. Apparently it was done by elderly, highly skilled ladies who could precisely coil the wire so fine you could hardly see it. Eventually there was only one coil-winder left working in Japan, and she also made coils for other antique meters like Westons. When she died, Minolta had just a few coils left for repairs - and once those were used, no SRT meter could be re-coiled. I do not know if the skill had been re-learned, or somehow transferred to a machine, but any instrument you have with magnetic coil needles was once made that way. Those meters are the technological antiques of tomorrow.

David
Mark K
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

Thank you David for the vivid description of lens assembling. I guess my long time dealer was really pissed off by recent Thailand flood than so many customers may have approached him without lenses/cameras to sell.
I contact Sony this morning and they say I can simply place the order, at list price. The list price is simply...expensive
Mark K
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Re: 500/4, 600/4 and 800/5.6

Unread post by Mark K »

I have been wondering if there is any technical specification for the upcoming Sony 500/4...to which only the weight concerns me.
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