Nikon 1200-1700mm "The Tuna" Helps French Photogs Capture Hostage Situation from a Safe Distance

[Turborama]

Le Monde journalist Maxime Goldbaum tweeted the above photograph this morning as a hostage situation involving Charlie Hebdo suspects unfolded in Dammartin-en-Goële, France. It seems that the Nikon 1200-1700mm is a tool in Reuters’ arsenal that’s used to keep photojournalists at a safe distance.

Here’s a zoomed and cropped look at the lens mounted to what appears to be a Canon DSLR:



The Nikkor 1200-1700mm f/5.6-8 is a pretty rare beast. It measures 3 feet long, weighs 36 pounds, and cost $60,000 when it was released back in 1993.



Nicknamed “the tuna,” the lens was originally designed to capture closeup photos of baseball players in Japan from the photographers area. Here’s a comparison of what a 50mm lens sees versus what the “tuna” sees at 1700mm:



http://petapixel.com/2015/01/09/nikon-1200-1700mm-helps-french-photogs-capture-hostage-situation-safe-distance/

[NV Whino]

1. I think I can skip that one

I couldn't lift it.

[Major Nikon]

2. Kinda strange that it would be mounted to a Canon body

Must have been modified for the Canon mount.

[Fumesucker]

7. Nikon lens are easy to use on a Canon, a $10 adapter will do it

I have a Nikon 50mm f1.8 on a 350D right now, in about ten minutes I'll be going out and pointing it at the stars.

Canons have a smaller flange distance than a Nikon so even with an adapter you get infinity focus, doesn't work the other way around.

You have to use full manual or shutter priority of course and do your own focusing but if you are prepared to do that they work fine.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

3. You wouldn't need a telescope if you had that lens! It IS a telescope. n/t

[Major Nikon]

4. That is true

However, telescopes are designed a bit differently than photographic lenses. They are designed to deal with extra-terrestrial aberrations, rather than terrestrial ones. They are also designed to focus more efficiently closer to infinity. Camera lenses actually make pretty poor telescopes and vice versa.

[Fumesucker]

8. Depends a lot on the lens..

The Nikon 180mm f2.8 lens for instance is very popular with astrophotographers, it's reasonably sharp wide open and pinpoint edge to edge if you close it down a stop to f4.0.

And here is a cutting edge professional telescope used for scientific research that uses 10 X 400mm f2.8 Canon lenses to give an effective 400mm f1.0 aperture. It's used to look for ultra low surface brightness objects like dwarf galaxies and has found some.

http://dunlap.utoronto.ca/instrumentation/dragonfly/

Dragonfly is designed to reveal the faint structure by greatly reducing scattered light and internal reflections within its optics. It achieves this using ten, commercially available Canon 400mm lenses with unprecedented nano-fabricated coatings with sub-wavelength structure on optical glasses.

Also, Dragonfly images a galaxy through multiple lenses simultaneously—akin to a dragonfly’s compound eye—enabling further removal of unwanted light. The result is an image in which extremely faint galaxy structure is visible.

The array began imaging targets in 2013 from its home at the New Mexico Skies hosting facility. Images have shown Dragonfly is at least ten times more efficient than its nearest rival and will be able to detect faint structures predicted by current merger models.

[Major Nikon]

9. Some lenses have less chromatic aberration (purple fringing)

I have the Nikon 180/2.8, but even if the CA is relatively low, you still have the problem that photography lenses are not optimized to focus at infinity. The Nikon 70-200/2.8 is also an excellent lens and I've gotten some good moon shots with it on a tele-extender, but good focus is still quite difficult.

Nikon actually made an adapter that has an eyepiece which attaches to any F-mount lens and transform it to a telescope. They are no longer made and are rare and expensive on the used market.

[groundloop]

5. Is that REALLY a Canon camera?

It's pretty hard to tell exactly what camera that is, just because it has a Canon strap doesn't necessarily make it a Canon body. IMO it just doesn't make sense - while I happen to use Canon stuff I don't think Canon bodies have any real advantage over Nikon bodies (and if you can afford a $60,000 lens you can certainly afford a top of the line Nikon body).

[jmowreader]

6. At one time, Canon focused a lot faster than Nikon

There are adapters to allow Nikon glass on Canon EF bodies...but they eliminate the body's ability to control the diaphragm and the focusing system. It's doubtful someone with access to a $60,000 lens would want to use it that way.

[Major Nikon]

10. Nikon was about 10 years behind Canon with internal focusing lenses

[jmowreader]

11. Canon never put the AF motor in the body

They couldn't figure out how to get their God-awful lens mount to allow autofocus, so instead they threw that shit in the dustbin of history and created a really good mount, in which ALL the lenses had focusing motors in the lens barrels.

Nikon didn't have that problem.