“A NEW EPOCH FOR SPORT AND NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY”

Canon’s HD stabilisation lenses win the approval of top nature photographer Arne Nævra

I have been a nature photographer for many years and have, naturally enough, been dependent on using lenses with very long focal length.

The constantly returning problem with working with them was, however, that they are incredibly sensitive to vibration, either from wind or from movement by the cameraman.

I enrolled in the ”long zoom club” in the autumn of last year. Not just that; I invested in a 40x HD lens from Canon — with a built-in optical stabiliser. This lens has been in active use on a Sony Digibeta camera for a new major nature series for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. It has been especially put to work hard when filming polar bears on the exposed Wrangel Island in the Russian Arctic Ocean, where two of the programmes were filmed.

Canon stops the shakes!

All of the usual minor vibrations caused by my touch are virtually eliminated.

Speaking for myself, I cannot really describe this as anything else than a quiet revolution. I often work at the greatest focal length (400mm), quite often with the 2x extender in place, giving 800 mm. Absolutely no problem.

This heavy equipment must, of course, always be mounted on a tripod. Since I always try to keep the total weight to be carried (usually in a back pack) down, I try to stay with a relatively light tripod (a Sachtler video 18 head, which is really too slight for this work). This makes sensitivity to touch and wind even more critical. I would imagine that for sports photography in the field, where small tripods are used, these lenses would be just as valuable as for the animal photographer.

There are also some small disadvantages with the stabilisation lenses. There is a delay in all movement that, among other things, means that the object will take a bit of time stopping when you stop panning. But you can easily avoid this by only activating the vertical stabiliser before filming.

Sports and nature photographers who work with stills claim that the launch of the stabiliser lenses has introduced a new epoch, and those of us working with nature films now have to agree.