I have a Canon 800mm f/5.6 and take it everywhere with me. The lens weights almost 10lbs so it can be a little difficult hiking with it in the jungle but it’s totally worth it when I get a good shot. 

Here is why I love my 800:

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• Largest Lens That Canon Makes: Thats cool.

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• Fluorite Lens Elements: This lens is really really sharp. I think that it could be the sharpest lens that I have ever used. The reason for this is two fluorite lens elements, one UD element, and one Super-UD-glass element.  This makes for outstanding correction of chromatic aberrations and extreme contrast and sharpness.

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• Magnesium Alloy Construction – I constantly bang my cameras and lenses into trees while walking in the jungle. This lens takes all the punishment and keeps on going. One time I slipped and fell and slammed the lens onto some rocks and it didn't break. It also has weather-resistant gaskets that really come in handy in the rain.

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• Image Stabilization: The lens is image stabilized, providing up to 4 stops of correction for camera shake. Now, even though I shoot from a tripod the image stabilization help steady the image when shooting at extreme high magnifications like when I shoot with a crop sensor (1280mm) or with a 2x Teleconverter (2560mm)

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• Photographing The Rings On Saturn: This lens is so awesome you can take a picture of the rings on Saturn with it. Also, on a clear night you can see the banded clouds on Jupiter and some of its moons.  

Photography Technique: 

A lot of people ask me about the camera settings that I use.  Here is what I do:

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• Aperture Priority: Aperture priority, often abbreviated A or Av (for aperture value) on a camera mode dial, is a setting on some cameras that allows the user to choose a specific aperture value while the camera selects a shutter speed to match, thereby ensuring proper exposure.

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• Aperture - I use the camera in Aperture Priority mode. I set and leave the aperture value. I set the Av to f/5.6 and never move it. I do this because I want to get as much light as possible into the camera. The more light the camera gets the quicker the shutter speed can be. The quicker the shutter speed is, the less chance of a blurry image.

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• ISO - I set and leave the ISO – I normally set the ISO to 800 when I start shooting. In very basic terms, ISO is the level of sensitivity of your camera to available light. The lower the ISO number, the less sensitive it is to the light, while a higher ISO number increases the sensitivity of your camera. I increase the ISO in order to reduce the shutter speed. Again, the quicker the shutter speed is, the less chance of a blurry image.

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• Shutter Speed– When you are shooting in Aperture priority the camera automatically chooses the shutter speed. To make sure that the settings are correct I use something called the reciprocal rule. The basics of this rule states that if you’re hand holding your camera, your shutter speed should not be slower than the reciprocal of your effective focal length in order to avoid “camera shake,” i.e. the blur that results from any slight movement of the camera during the capture of the image. I shoot of a tripod but I use long focal length lenses that are susceptible to any little shake or vibration so I still think that this is a pretty good rule of thumb.

Live View Focusing

We saw this adult harpy eagle in a tree the week before.

I also use something called “Live View Focusing” to get perfect focus and sharp images:

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• Live View and Zoom: I set the lens to manual focus and switch the camera into live view mode. I then zoom into the image and manually focus on the eye or beak of the bird.

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• Focus on the catch light: For super sharp focus I focus on the reflection (sometimes called “Catch light”) in the eye of the bird.

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• Timer Mode: I switch the cameras shutter release mode into two second timer.  This way I won’t be touching the camera when the photo is taken. This reduces camera shake and vibration. You can also use a cable release to take the photo as well. Using this technique can make the images a lot sharper. It’s good to note that this focusing technique can also be used for macro photography. I use it all the time when I’m taking pictures of bugs.

So that's how it’s done folks. I hope that this article and video helped a little bit and gave you some ideas to try out and let me know how you like using the Live View Focusing Technique.  I think that its pretty cool. I’m going to start making more videos and writing more articles so stay tuned. I put some more pictures that I took on the trip below.