Distant slope

[Rudi Venter]

While hiking in the "Monk's Cowl" area of the Drakensberg mountain range in South Africa recently the shades of color on a distant slope caught my eye. I was at around 8000' altitude with the slope across a valley, at least 4 miles distant at around 9000'

After taking a few wide angle shots I decided to try a longer lens, the photo was taken using a Canon 1DS mk3 with a Canon 600mm f4 L IS lens at f4, ISO 800 and 1/100 sec handheld. It was overcast with quite low light. The image is also cropped quite a bit.

I am still sometimes amazed at the sharpness long primes can produce even when handheld at slow shutter speeds, IS(and VR) rules!

Thanks for looking!
Rudi

 

[Hamish Gill]

thats an impressive display of long lens technique matey!
how did the wide shots look ... id be interested to see what part of the view you had this was ...

 

[Paul Lange]

They say that IS can give you up to 4 stops if you have a steady hand I think. This bares out by the look of it. 600mm theory says you should shoot at at around 1/640. You shot at 1/100 so well within that. Thinking about it IS gives an incredible amount of shake resistance.

 

[Rudi Venter]

Thanks Hamish!

Yes, Paul, I think 4 stops is quite doable with modern IS/VR, these days I would not easily buy a lens longer than 100mm without IS/VR, but then again I hate carrying a tripod around on my hikes!

Here is the same mountain, from about the same position, shot at 24mm on a FF body. The slope in my first post can be seen just below the high peak on the left side of the image.

Thanks for looking!
Rudi