Canon 300D (6MP) with 1200mm lens

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Chris123456

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Chris Pocock
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Hi, I'm looking to get into taking pictures of birds.
I've been offered a 800'1200mm lens for my wifes aging Canon 300D.
Would this be work ok?
What sort of magnification would it give?
My only other camera is a iPhone 13!

Thanks,
Chris
 
Hi and welcome to TP

It might help if you gave the exact make & model of the lens in question especially as where you say "a 800'1200mm lens" does not make a lot of sense!

The reason for me asking is that:-
The make will give an indication of the quality
The exact description will tell us, for example is it a 1200mm 'standard' lens or a 'mirror lens.
Plus the description hopefully will clue us in at to whether it is manual focus or auto focus....and if as I suspect it is a manual focus lens needing a T-mount to attach to the 300D....is is more likely to be a source of frustration than joy when photographing birds.

So, more context is needed before we get into how suitable and possible alternate suggestions???

PS the 300D is one heck of very old body ~ I used to have the 350D and it was very in its day ;)

PPS if other suggestions are logical, perhaps say what budget you have for a lens?
 
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I suspect this is one of these fixed aperture manual focus lenses.

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Some time ago I bought a Minolta film camera that came with one of these , it was manual focus, aperture fixed at f11 ( from memory) and it was unusable except on a tripod in bright sunlight.
It was not even much use as a doorstop, you will probably get better photos from your iPhone 13 , particularly if you buy a gimbal for less money than the lens

 
Chris123456 said:
Hi, I'm looking to get into taking pictures of birds.
I've been offered a 800'1200mm lens for my wifes aging Canon 300D.
Would this be work ok?
What sort of magnification would it give?
My only other camera is a iPhone 13!

Thanks,
Chris
Click to expand...
The simple answer Chris is yeh it may work but will be completely manual focus and image quality will be carp. It will more as like be advertised similar to this.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294357659494?hash=item4489156f66:g:B-QAAOSwASxhJhUc
 
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Chris123456 said:
Yes, it was this.
I won't bother then, thanks!

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Click to expand...
I would not touch that with the proverbial bargepole.

IMO though limited in reach, to start you off with wildlife/bird photography. See if you can get a Canon 70-300 zoom. I had one in the early Canon DSLR days and it was a good of limited lens. Or perhaps a Canon 400mm L

How much would you be happy to spend on a lens ???
 
@Chris123456, I should have asked earlier, what sort of budget do you have to work with? There are a lot of those cheap types available and you really would be wasting money. If you are just happy taking pictures of birds in the garden or out and about then you could consider an older mid range zoom. The first image was with a canon 70-200 and the second shot with a kit lens 55-250. Both on the older 7DMki. I have no idea about the 300D but as pointed out it is getting on a bit. Only you know what your financial circumstances are so it would be stupid to suggest getting anything if it`s out of budget, There should be plenty of used deals out there that you could go for which will keep you interested and learning at the same time. MPB for example has a 55-250mm for £85, at 250mm that will more than do you for most birds if you go to any reserves. Ask anyone uisng a 500mm or 600mm and they will in most cases say they could do with more focal length, the name of the game in a lot of situations though is to get as close to the subject as you can.


5445074752_3a28498012_o.jpg



8035796761_698dc580c0_o.jpg
 
If it helps at all...

The 300D was my first DSLR and the first lens I had for it was a Sigma 28-300mm. It's not a great lens by modern standards but it did make a good day out and holiday lens, They can be found on evil bay for not a lot of money.
 
Those 800-1200 type of lenses are cheap and nasty, probably better as a spotting scope than a lens. If your wife's 300d only has the standard 18-55mm lens, then a good companion is a 70-300. Plenty on the market from Tamron, Sigma and Canon from < £ 100 upwards. If a 300mm lens isn't long enough, then Sigma did a range of longer lenses at sensible prices - the 150-500 which was superceded by the 160-600. Many birders like the Canon 400 f5.6 prime lens but maybe thats something to aspire to.

Whilst now a very old camera, the 300D will produce good images, although comparatively small by modern camera standards.
 
6MP is pushing it for a good A3 print to pass around but might be enough for a wall hanger.
 
Yup. 3072 x 2048 in my CS5 gives 43.4 x 28.9cm at 180 pix/inch which seems OK for me printing and wall mounting and perfectly adequate for anything like normal viewing or even closer viewing. The only issues will be if we compare that sort of resolution to newer cameras and start looking very closely.

A holiday snap.

wmyhFoW.jpg


100% from that.

oYq6ulF.jpg


This was with a Sigma 28-300mm lens which isn't the best lens you could mount on a camera but it was a nice day out and holiday lens :D
 
andrewc said:
Yes, but little leeway to crop an image and still print at A3
Click to expand...

Maybe but in those days I had an up to 300mm zoom lens on APS-C so cropping wasn't something I did a lot of plus this is soon after I moved from 35mm film which I never cropped as I didn't develop and print my own pictures. In my film days I expected the framing I had when I pressed the button to be the final framing and the final image and I carried that on into digital. It's only relatively recently that I started cropping anything.

Reading this thread had me looking at my 300D pictures and the overwhelming majority are whole images. I can see someone being into bird photography cropping but how many crops get printed to A3? After over 50 years of taking pictures I still don't have more than a few A3's. Maybe we're just being a little spoilt these days.

Anyway. This is I suppose a little academic as few people are going to be using 300D's and printing to A3 these days, but it is possible and all that's really questionable is the resolution and what we each see as being acceptable.
 
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