I need to buy a long lens - 400mm plus, to use on my Panasonic G1 for birdwatching. No autofocus lenses are available and since I very happily use the shorter Leica and Voigtlander lenses I wondered whether a Leica Telyt might be a good investemnt. Advice please?
Does the G1 acquire and track moving objects fast enough for bird photography, particularly when using a long lens? I don't know the camera, but I see that it uses a version of LiveView, and I just wondered whether this would be up to the job. If you do go down this route, I think you'll need a fairly sturdy tripod - I assume that the optical stabilisation doesn't extend to "foreign" lenses.
Malcolm Stewart
Jaguar Mk VII
No - we are talking purely manual operation. The only lenses the G1 can use with AF outside its own limited kit lenses are a couple of Olympus lenses (and possibly Sigma) and AF is very slow on these.
It just has to be treated as a manual focus digital camera which can accept almost any lens, albeit with a x2 crop factor.
I have been using it with a Tamron SP 350mm f5.6 but want something longer and better.
No IS and tripod essential.
The 400mm Telyt lens uses a trombone focusing method, as I presume you know. I expect this wouldn't be a problem using the regular viewfinder on the G1. How it would work with the fold-out screen is another thing.
The lens is an f/6.8 so you'd be losing 2/3rds of a stop. As for image quality, from what I know it's very good, and can still hold up well. A well known figure in Leica circles in Douglas Herr, who continues to use the old Telyt lenses with his DMR set-up. See some of his work at www.wildlightphoto.com/.
Tim BSRIPN
If I had all the money I've spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink
I'm planning to use a 560mm f6.8 Telyt on a G-1 . I used to have the Leitz 560mm f5,6 version but it was too heavy to cart around when walking long distances. The 560mm lens will be the equivalent of 1120mm on the 4/3 format. I have a Manfrotto ART 393 long lens support to help support the lens - it worked very well with the f5.6 version when used with film cameras http://images.google.com/images?client=s...=4&ct=title
Cheers
dunk
dunk,
I will be very interested to hear how you get on.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
