[Leica] Telephoto Lenses

[Bud Cook <budcook@ibm.net>]

Someone recently asked Doug Herr about telephoto lenses for
photographing animals.  This got me to thinking about my experiences
over the years.

After giving it some thought, I'm surprised to find that a great many of
the wildlife photographs that I value the most were taken with
relatively short lenses and most often taken with an M Leica rather than
with Nikon F's or Leicaflexes.

Perhaps these are simply the photographs that bring back the most
pleasant memories.

I remember a charging black bear in Yellowstone where all the people
around me scrambled to get to safety by piling into the open door of a
motor home.  I held my ground with my trusty M2 and Rigid Summicron and
the bear stopped in time to allow me to take his picture.

I remember a camping trip with my family on Mt. Mitchell in North
Carolina where my son had set out some freshly made pudding to cool.  A
chipmunk (called a boomer in NC) began to eat the pudding much to my
young son's dismay.  I captured the little bandit in a close-up with an
M3 and 90 mm Elmarit.  His little tongue and teeth are sharply captured
on Kodachrome.

High up in the mountains of Colorado I found a pair of ravens perched on
a ledge overlooking a valley far below.  The ravens posed for my 135 mm
Hector with the valley in the background.

Passing from British Columbia to Alberta we spotted a black bear cub
alongside the road.  After carefully checking that the little tike's
mother was out of the neighborhood, I photographed the cub trying to
hide behind a 3" sapling with a 90 mm Elmar.

Outside Jasper, Alberta we found a herd of elk in a meadow.  The light
was fading fast but I wanted to photograph the elk calves romping wildly
in exuberance after being kept under tight rein by their mothers all
day.  A new 180 mm APO Summicron would have been perfect but I used what
I had and it came out great.... 90 mm Summicron-R at f/2.0.

I've taken photos of bear and other mammals with long telephoto lenses
but they don't seem as important to me as those that allowed me to get
up close and personal.

I won't continue to bore everyone but I wanted to point out that
successfully photographing wild animals is sometimes simply a matter of
getting close and that you don't always need specialized equipment to
bring back a trophy.

Bud