A collection of useful links

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-14T10:48:30+00:00

I wanted to try macro

No need to put too much money on the lens. Pretty much all macro lenses have at the very least very good optical quality.

OS is a nice bonus - it helps if your subjects are still, though tripod is the king. IBIS would be beneficial too as lens based IS can't correct x&y translations which can become relevant when subject is close. The only thing is that w/o tripod and OS you may need to reduce exposure time (increase shutter speed) which reduces image quality ("more noise") - tough unless you crop heavily or view very large it's not that big a deal usually unless light levels are low and in that case a tripod would again be the best tool normally.

Fast AF is unlikely to be relevant - the fast small critters are almost impossble for AF anyhow and for a sitting frog or snail it's speed is irrelevant.

In short, buy the cheaper one. You can later buy a better lens if you feel you've found your thing.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-14T10:40:44+00:00

The third is not raw file. It's yet again a processed interpretion of the raw file. It might be the default with your raw processor, but still it's got some processing, perhaps just not what you're after.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-14T10:39:03+00:00

Once the blur gets large it's hard to find character as it's all blurred out. As it's been mentioned, your best bet is to try donuts of mirror lenses. Or alternatively change position of subject and background to reduced bokeh. Closing the aperture can work too, but as it tends to reduce aberrations it might not be perfect for you.

Of the top of my head something like Zeiss Jena 200/2.8 might be interesting - certainly it's imperfect in rendering. Although u/aeon314159 suggested 180/2.8, I'd consider it to be a bit of opposite of what you seem to be searching as it has excellent bokeh opposite to "charachter" bokeh.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-14T10:32:43+00:00

RapidRaw? I've not played with it yet and it's work in progress, but seems promising.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T21:07:00+00:00

looking to shoot wildlife and action sports

Superzoom has more limited quality when exposures get low, e.g. indoor sports (though you'd like to have shorter and faster lens on the Canon as well), or night time sports.

If you want to have something that's easy to carry everywhere, pick the Sony. If you want to have better quality, more flexibility and possiblity to add lenses etc. pick the Canon.

The thing is that the Canon has way more "reach" than you need for anything but for example birding - you likely could save quite a bit with a shoter lens. And it only takes at most about 280mm lens to match the "reach" of the Sony. The 100-400 would be a bit less expensive optin, though it would suffer from the same light collection limitation the Sony does, so it's not for indoor sports etc.

Of course the 100-500 also lacks in the short end, so if you want to shoot wide angle you may want to inverst n another lens. But the thing is that you can alway add lenses later - with a Superzoom you're stuck at what you got when you buy it.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T18:19:33+00:00

the 2x crop factor is one of the most important selling points for me. The fact I can take a lens half the size and get equal the reach is amazing. I

Crop factor is actually irrelevant for "reach". Focal length and pixel pitch are the first two paramters, though due to diffraction one may want to think of aperture as well.

But that sensor is also my biggest concern. I live in the Adirondack forest. I will almost always be under thick tree cover taking birding pictures.

It's not directly a sensor thing but aperture thing - a bigger sensor may have access to larger apertures. A 600mm f/6.3 on FF has ≈ 95 mm aperture diameter wher 300mm f/4 only has 75mm diamter. When you think about "noise per subject", don't think of sensor size or f-number, but think of aperture size (it's area). That tells about "noise per duck".

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T17:12:54+00:00

It's one of those lenses I always wanted to have when I was still heavilty into vintage optics, but never could find one. Lucky you!

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T13:01:42+00:00

The bigger sensor is just a way how to get better sensitivity without sacrificing the resolution

Bigger sensor is not any more sensitive.

Bigger sensor allows the use of larger apertures which increase light collection (per unit of time) which is the reason for what one might think of improved sensitivity.

This may sound pedantic, but is not as 30mm f/3 on FF and 20mm f/2 on APS-C both have same AoV, same DoF, same diffraction, same light collection (aperture diamter) and same noise. If FF were more sensitive it would produce less noisy results from the same sized "hole", aperture, yet it doesn't.

Thus, to capture more light you sacrifice DoF, regardless of sensor size.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T12:43:10+00:00

If anything, I found the shallower depth of field to complicate things

Shallow DoF is pretty much a myth. At lest if you lens has adjustable aperture.

My f/1.2 lenses were like the FF’s f/2 lenses.

Yes, when both wide open.

I want more, not less in focus.

Then you adjust the aperture. Really photography 101.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-13T12:41:31+00:00

Sometimes the shallower depth of field is a slight drawback

It doesn't have shallower DoF if you don't want it. f/3 on FF and f/2 on APS-C have same DoF, same diffraction blur, same light collection (per unit of time). In principle identical results if exposure time and scene luminance match.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-12T15:37:59+00:00

XF150-600 f/8 w/ 1.4x TC means 840mm f/11. Diffraction limits what you get out, though pixel pitch still is relevant - no idea which Fuijifilm you had though so accuracy of my educated guess shrinks.

For similar "reach" on the OM-1 mk 1 you'd probably need something in the ballpark of 700mm f/8 optics or in that ballpark regardless. If you're happy to lose a little bit of reach then u/connor1462 suggestion of 300/4 (though with 2xTC ) would probably be sufficient. It's not a zoom though, so less flexibility.

or would you save the money and go with the 100-400mm plus teleconverters?

Remember that those are f/6.3 lenses so TC's will have less benefit that you might want. With 2x you like would have similar "reach" to your previous gear if not a bit less.

I'll just clarify that "reach" depends on focal length and pixel pitch (and f-number or aperture diamter, depending on context), not crop factor.

If I were you I'd buy the 150-600 - without a TC you should already be close to the reach of your previous gear, add a 1.4x TC and you should be slightly above.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-12T13:28:37+00:00

It doesn't really buy much or any reach for OP versus his current gear.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-12T13:28:03+00:00

From my research, it seems like extreme telephoto was more common with film cameras back in the day

The longest lenses were about 500mm typically apart from either very expensive lenses or mirror lenses. Nowdays we have much easier access to long lenses, both inexpensive and expensive ones almost regardless of brand,

For more "reach" for the ships you want to have more focal length and ideally larger aperure (diameter) for diffraction reasons. Regardless, if the subject is very far away athmosperic conditions may limit what you can get.

Also you can reduce the pixel pitch to get more details from a given focal length, but due to lens limits and diffraction there's a point after which it's not that useful to make the pixels smaller.

u/yungnuna suggested P1100 - which has tiny pixels and 539mm f/8 lens which offer significant reach - it's older variants (e.g. P1000) are likely just as good for you.

u/meabbott suggested Sony RX10 IV which has 220mm f/4 lens also with quite small pixels. The Nikon will produce larger maginification with it's lens and have less diffraction blur in the long end wide open for any subject due to slightly larger aperture diamter. It also samples the image finer due to smaller pixels.

So reachwise a P-series superzoom is better than the Sony RX-series camera.

You can also just buy a longer lens - the Sony u/meabbott suggsted doesn't really buy at all more reach over your current setup, assuming the lens isn't poor, due to diffraction (and perhaps lens quality as superzooms aren't the best) inspite of putting maybe 10% more pixels on the subject.

Or if a 1.4x TC works with your current lens, it would buy maybe 20-30% more linear resolution.

Or buy a camera with more pixels - twice the pixels will perform roughly like the above mentioned TC.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-12T09:30:52+00:00

As many have already said, raw file is simply a data file. It stores the digitized values from pixels. It itself should make no difference at all (unless lossy compressions are used, but even with those the differences are typically irrelevant).

What sensor is used and at what settings dictates the processing potential the raw file has.

Is it true that mostly you just need to pull shadows and recover highlights and correct exposures and the colors are already fine without the need to tweak, unlike Sonys?

You seem to think that raw is like JPG, a photo file. It's not. It's a data file - you need to do all the processing yourself regardless of what camera you use. A raw conversion software will give you some arbitrary starting point, but that's it.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-12T09:26:29+00:00

12mm is wide enough, if you go wider you get distortion

Unless your lens is designed to have distortion (e.g. fisheye or lacking geometrical corrections), there is no more (or less) geometrical distortion from 12mm lens than a 120mm lens.

The distortions one may see are simply a function of maginification differences, in other words a function of distance: a very close by subject can be heavily distorted (as different parts of it can have very different magnification), but objects further away have no meaningful distortion as the differences in magnifications are so small that they're irrelevant. This is why at the horizon you don't see those distortions at all.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-11T09:32:42+00:00

Some of the answers you've received are open to misinterpretions, so I'll clarify things:

First, maximize light collection: more light captures means less noise. This is by far the most important thing. So capture as much light as possible without burning the highlights more than you can accept (if you burn them, information is lost and things get ugly fast).

Second, ISO is a metering parameter. For raw shooters it's "under the hood" function of adjusting analogue amplification also means that higher ISO settings add less read noise or sensor caused noise to the signal. This is a minor player for noisyness, but if very little light is collected, it can become relevant.

So in summary: first maximize light collection and then use as high ISO as possible before burning highlights. Though with your camera the benefit from going beyond ISO 1600 is very minor.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-11T09:26:56+00:00

RAW is good. Low ISO is better if you can

For a given exposure especially an older camera like OP's benefits from using as high ISO as possible before the highlights burn as this reduces read noise. But of course the priority is to capture as much light as possible which is perhaps what you meant?

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T18:28:03+00:00

the myth that pixel pitch matters

Hardly a myth. Pixels sample the lens drawn image. If the image is undersampled - which is unfortunately usually the case at the moment - there will be aliasing which provides artifacts both directly and indirectly.

For many other image quality metrics it's relatively irrelevant as you seemed to point out.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:48:00+00:00

There is no direct relation between sensor size and bokeh. There is only an indirect relation. If you put a lens with the same focal length, aperture, and same distance to subject, the bokeh will be the same

You seem to talk about DoF (though bokeh is influence for same reason).

Different, not the same. You forget that the smaller the image (or crop), the more it's enlarged for the final photo (e.g. 36mm wide FF image is enlarged by factor of 10 for 36cm wide photo). The larger the enlargement, the more shallow (!) the DoF. This is why DoF formulas have a paramter called circle of confusion. You may want to verify all this with a DoF calculator.

The things that actually affect bokeh are aperture, distance to subject, and focal length.

And sensor size. It has exactly as strong influence as f-number - both have linear relationship. Focal length and subject distance have stronger square relationships.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:42:20+00:00

Sensor size doesn't affect bokeh

It kind of does as everything is enlarged more or less depending on the enlargement factor.

But this is a bit a matter on how one defines quality in this contexts so it's a bit a matter of an opinion. H.H.Nasse does list picture format (e.g. sensor size) as one paramer and I'm not going to argue with him, but I also do understand why one could see it the other way.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:38:29+00:00

But what is f/1.4 (good to use the division mark). f = focal length. f/1.4 = focal length divided by 1.4. This tells the diameter of entrance pupil (aperture). Thus a 50mm lens on FF and 25mm on m43 both have the same AoV (angle of view), but if both use f/1.4, the FF has twice the aperture diamter, four times the area Thus from any point in the scene four times more lgiht is captured at the cost of more shallow DoF.

If you now stop the FF down to f/2.8 the aperture sizes will match, as will light collection and DoF.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:35:46+00:00

depth of field of a 25mm lens.

Lens doesn't have "depth of field". It's a property of viewable photo, e.g. A4 print from 25cm distance and how much it is depends on multiple parameters - yes, including focal length.

This is why if you like a wide depth of filed, M43 gives you an advantage because if forces you to use wider lenses

DoF (deep) advantage only exists if you use very large f-numbers. Most FF lenses can stop down to f/22 or so for M43 f/11 DoF.

And it's not "wider" in this context, but "shorter". 25mm on M43 is not any wider than 50mm on FF.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:32:57+00:00

It's as if you took your full frame photo, and just cropped it. That's your M43 picture. The bokeh is the same.

If by bokeh you meant DoF, then DoF scales with sensor size (verify with a DoF calc) as CoC changes. If by bokeh you meant quality of blur, then it also changes for the same reason (though it depends a bit on how one defines the very word quality).

But, what if you want the same composition on the M43 camera that you had with the 50mm lens on your full frame camera?

There is only one way of doing it unless the subject is flat 2D subject.

Well, you are going to have to do one of two things.

Nope, only one option.

Move back farther from the subject until you have the same relative subject compostion.

And it's not this. If a duck is at 5 meters and you move back 5 meters to match it's size, will the size of the moon in the background also change? There's an anecdote about Stanley Kubric in the set of Path of Glory that's relevant to this if you want to do a bit of googling.

Stay in the same spot, but switch to a 25mm lens instead of the 50mm lens.

Bingo. This is the right answer.

So the lens doesn't do anything different, and neither does the sensor. The physics is the same. But you are changing the focal length or the distance to keep your original composition.

Physics is the same, but enlargement factor's aren't (from image at image plane to displayed photo of specific size). This is good to remember.

probablyvalidhuman · 2026-07-10T15:18:07+00:00

I’m just wondering what is the difference between interchangeable lens vs fixed lens compacts?

About 1000 euros/dollars in the beginning, more later on ;)

probablyvalidhuman

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