42 13 April 2019 I http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk I subscribe 0330 333 1113
Testbench IN THE FIEld
There hadn’t been time to give the lens
much of a test before leaving the UK.
Sitting on the deck of my safari tent, I started
to get to grips with it. A rock agama lizard
scurried up a boulder, watching me with its
beady eye. With a luminous orange head, a
face resembling Admiral Ackbar and a bright
blue body, it’s a creature that looks as though it
belongs to another world, certainly deserving
of a close-up. I studied my images immediately
afterwards; the colours were vivid, the
sharpness fantastic, including scales running
from its neck to tail-tip, like a minute mosaic.
‘Ruaha comes from the old Hehe word
Ruvaha, which means “the old river that never
gets dry”,’ guide Theo Myinga told me, as we
drove out to Kariakoo, a forest clearing. ‘Ruaha
is the most unique national park in Tanzania,
for the isolation and feeling you are in the
middle of the animals and nature. It’s not
touched by many people or vehicles, making
the many species of animals feel relaxed.’
I rested the lens on a beanbag on the safari
vehicle’s dashboard and flexed its muscles on
impala, warthogs, black-backed jackals and a
couple of tawny eagles, and later, around the
Ruaha river, on hippos, crocodiles and
elephants. A new piece of kit can provide
inspiration. Getting to grips with the lens’s
capabilities, I started to think of new
compositions and creative ways to use it, hoping
to push my limits, as well as that of the lens.
From Jongomero, we drove north into the
heart of the national park. ‘Ruaha is very
diverse in terrain and wildlife,’ explained
guide Tony Zephania. ‘You can see how the
shape of the landscape keeps changing. There’s
much more open woodland here, which is good
for game and being able to see the wildlife.’
Time after time, the lens came into its own. I
photographed vervet monkeys climbing down
lala palm trees and infants hitching rides on the
backs of their mothers, dik-diks (tiny antelope)
scurrying through the undergrowth, and rock
hyraxes basking in the sun. Without the
600mm reach, I’m not sure the results would
have technically matched what I’d had in mind,
with subjects too far off to be crisp or to
manage a decent composition. But the images
I produced were sharp, vibrant and incredibly
satisfying. The ultra-low dispersion (UD) glass
also helped me to capture clean shots free of
flare, aberrations and distortion.Sensational sharpness
The lens’s in-built Ultra Sonic Motor (USM)
is fast and quiet; even when animals or birds
were close to the vehicle, I didn’t scare them
away with loud beeps or clicks. I enjoyed
picking out details of the animals that came
near – skin textures, faces, the patterns on a
Maasai giraffe’s belly or a leopard’s coat. I took
‘portraits’ of elephants, where each crack in
the skin, each fleck of dry mud, each whisker
and eyelash was sharp and clear.
The lens’s 4-stop image-stabilisation unit
has three modes for tracking moving subjects.
I used shutter speeds as low as 1/640sec
without any evident blurring. But for most of
the trip, because I was photographing from a
vehicle that wasn’t always still and I was using a
heavy, hard-to-keep-still lens on moving
targets, I kept shutter speeds high – usually
above 1/4,000sec, often higher, depending on
the light. I tend to stick to f-numbers around
9-14 with wildlife, for balanced pictures, but
even when I pushed up into the 20s, sharpness
remained good across the whole frame.‘Without the 600mm reach, I’m not sure the results
would have technically matched what I’d had in mind’
Solo lioness watching
for signs of prey
Sony A7 III, Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II
USM, 1/5000sec at f/11, ISO 8000
Red-headed rock agama
climbing a tree trunk
Canon EOS 5D Mark III, Canon EF
600mm f/4L IS II USM, 1/640sec
at f/7.1, ISO 5000