I had never heard of the soligor lenses before Ernie suggested one for you. I glanced at a review and for the price it seems at least worth reading more.
Bird photography is really expensive to do well. I don't really do it much, partly for that reason, but in playing around with it you immediately notice how small they are. A 250mm lens on a 1.6x crop won't even get you a bird bigger than a speck even out on your back lawn. Birders usually use 600mm or more.
Birds are are also fast when flying. "BIF" bird in flight shots therefore also need fast autofocus. I don't know if there is a masochistic subculture of extreme challenge-seeking photographers that do this with manual focus or not. 😉
My bird shots involve luring subjects to my back porch with a bird feeder. Covering my window with newspaper and shooting through a tiny hole I was able to get some nice shots with a 70-200mm lens of birds about 10-12 feet away. Were I to do it again I'd hang a dead branch or two around the feeder to get some shots without my bird feeder in it. Get a nice blue sky background behind a bird on your dead branch and you can tell everyone you tracked the little guy down by his song while on a hike with your $20,000.00 600mm lens. 🙂
Scott
Canon 5d mk 4, Canon 6D, EF 70-200mm L f/2.8 IS mk2; EF 16-35 f/2.8 L mk. III; Sigma 35mm f/1.4 "Art" EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro; EF 85mm f/1.8; EF 1.4x extender mk. 3; EF 24-105 f/4 L; EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS; 3x Phottix Mitros+ speedlites
Why do so many people say "FER-tographer"? Do they take "fertographs"?
