Brian, thanks for an informative post. That helped me a lot. I have a new Canon 50D. Nothing but the next-to-useless-for-birding kit lens, so far, but when the boat comes in...
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I just got Paul Bannick's excellent book "The Owl and The Woodpecker", complete with a fine calls-and-drumming-CD by Martin Stewart, with all of the North American species for both owls and woodpeckers on it. (And the Central American birds, too...)
The photography is practically breath-taking. Bannick is a wizard at it. It's $18 and shipping, in hardback from Amazon.
His choice of gear:
Bodies: Canon DSLR's, including the 20D, 1D Mark II, and 1D Mark III.
Lenses: Most of the shots in the book were made using the Canon 500mm F4, or the Canon 600mm F4...often with a 1.4 multiplier, and for bird shots he also used the Canon 300mm F4 and the 70-200 F2.8 Canon zoom. For the background /habitat photos, he used a Canon F2.8 24-70 zoom. He used a Gitzo 1325 tripod to support his cameras and lenses.
All the shots are of wild birds, and he notes that a few of the shots of fledgling owls were taken as researchers moved the birds about, during the banding process.
It's hard to praise this book too much. I bought it with Frances' Backhouse's "Woodpeckers of North America" (also an excellent book. $17 and shipping, in oversized paperback. If you get 'em both, no shipping fee, at Amazon.) and they compliment each other perfectly. Either or both would make a wonderful gift for anyone with even a passing interest in these two families of birds, and for the serious birder, they will be used and enjoyed as long as the sap is still rising.
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Re: Bannick's equipment...we are, of course, talking some serious cash outlays.
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The 500mm F4 Canon is around $6200, mail-order with USA warranty.
The 600mm F4 is around $8000, again with USA warranty.
It's worth noting that he often used a 1.4 Canon multiplier on the base of his two longest lens, which increased their "reach" appreciably. It changed the 500mm to 700mm, and it increased the 600 to 840mm.
Of course, those are the numbers with the full-receptor cameras like the 1D Mark II and III. The 20D, as with my 50D, ANY number you get at the long end is increased by a factor of 1.6. Which means, for example, that the 500mm Canon functions at the long end, at 800mm, and that the 600 on a small-receptor "D" or EOS body (there's a more accurate name for these, and anyone should feel free to jump in here and help out.
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will go out to 960mm's. Again, you can place a multiplier on the base of the lens, and push them even further.
As with everything there is no free lunch. Using a multiplier makes your lense "slower". That is, you lose a full f-stop with the 1.4, and, I think 2 f-stops with the 2.0X multiplier. There is also an optical penalty in sharpness and contrast, etc., but I read that it's fairly negligible with the 1.4, but that the pros generally shun the 2.0 multiplier.
Judging from Bannick's work, the 1.4 is a useful and desirable addition. This "extender" as Canon calls it, is around $300 mail order, and if your budget is modest like mine, it's probably a good tool to get, early on. You just need to make sure that it's compatible with the lower-cost consumer-grade Canon lenses. Sometimes, it's not. Also, there are cheaper aftermarket extenders that will fit Canon bodies and lenses, but as you might expect, the reviews of them are generally not optimistic. And I understand they may not work well with Canon's autofocus system.
best, Larry Dunnagan
Here's the best lens review site I've found for Canon's stuff, and you can click on "buy" for a comparison of mail-order prices.
http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/
There are also some aftermarket photo equipment reviews.
nikon spotting scope / dig camera combo
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