And even more Small Birds Part 3

[bigdawg]

I shot over 500 photos and these are just a few. Still hand held from my rocking chair on a Good Friday off from work finally!!















forum.mflenses.com/userpix/20124

[daveh]

Ditto to what I said in parts 1 & 2.

[olroy2044]

Terrific series, Dawg. I used to be able to shoot handheld down to a 15th of a second. Now I'm lucky to get away with 1/60!! Roy

[mickeyobe]

Keep them coming.

Mickey

[grenouille]

Great shots, thanks for sharing,

Hye

[bigdawg]

Apr 7, 2012 8:35:51 GMT -5 daveh said:

Ditto to what I said in parts 1 & 2.

Thanks again.

[bigdawg]

Apr 7, 2012 8:53:18 GMT -5 olroy2044 said:

Terrific series, Dawg. I used to be able to shoot handheld down to a 15th of a second. Now I'm lucky to get away with 1/60!! Roy

I can still hold 1/15th but sitting.

[bigdawg]

Apr 7, 2012 10:48:07 GMT -5 mickeyobe said:

Keep them coming.

Mickey

I will.

[bigdawg]

Apr 7, 2012 11:56:44 GMT -5 grenouille said:

Great shots, thanks for sharing,

Hye

You are welcome Hye.

[daveh]

The trouble with small birds is that they are........well.......they are small and they tend to fly off if you get too close, unlike many insects which seem happy to let you take that macro photograph.

I haven't, as it stands, really got the magnification power to take them other than on the feeders, about twelve feet away. My lenses only go up to 300mm (480 on the Canon). I did buy (cheap) a 500mm mirror lens. While that 'makes things closer' it is quite soft and the Canon lens cropped gives better results.

The answer might be a remote control. There is one for the Canon from Hong Kong which, if the camera is on live view, allows you to see on the remote screen what's in shot.

The Bigma as an every day lens? (I think perhaps on one of the other two threads.) The thought occurred to me to carry two round and do a little weight training when there's nothing to photograph! ;D

It certainly is a nice lens though. I want one.

[bigdawg]

Apr 8, 2012 0:45:54 GMT -5 daveh said:

The trouble with small birds is that they are........well.......they are small and they tend to fly off if you get too close, unlike many insects which seem happy to let you take that macro photograph.

I haven't, as it stands, really got the magnification power to take them other than on the feeders, about twelve feet away. My lenses only go up to 300mm (480 on the Canon). I did buy (cheap) a 500mm mirror lens. While that 'makes things closer' it is quite soft and the Canon lens cropped gives better results.

The answer might be a remote control. There is one for the Canon from Hong Kong which, if the camera is on live view, allows you to see on the remote screen what's in shot.

The Bigma as an every day lens? (I think perhaps on one of the other two threads.) The thought occurred to me to carry two round and do a little weight training when there's nothing to photograph! ;D

It certainly is a nice lens though. I want one.

The small birds are not only small but they do not stay still for even a second or two. You have to use a fast enough shutter speed to capture their image without motion blur ruining the photo.

I decided several years before to develop my hand held long lens technique by putting my feeders at between 20 and 30 feet distance from my front porch perch. They...the feeders...are directly below the limbs of several trees and the limbs are either at eye level to my perch or slightly above it at a distance of between 20-40 feet. This then is why I use the Bigma at 500mm focal length,,,or 750mm with the Pentax crop factor. This is not an easy thing to shoot these as the depth of field is very shallow using the long lens and spot on focus is needed but hard to get at these distances with small fast creatures on limbs that usually are swaying in the breeze. You can use a 300mm lens but as with the Bigma you need good light to get the shutter speed up and allow a small enough aperture to get adequate depth of field for the good focus. As I said not easy. It actually took me those several years to get decent taking these photos. I'm not done yet even though advancing age wants to take away my balance and steadiness of hand. I persevere.

Here are some photos with the K7 and a 300mm Carl Zeiss Jenna F/4 red MC lens fro 30-35 feet. Cropped of course.

[bigdawg]

And another.

[bigdawg]

The degree of success with the 300mm as opposed to the 500mm focal length and the manual focus as opposed to the auto focus will be much diminished. Out of 300 photos you can expect about 50 percent with the 500mm auto focus but only about 25 percent with the 300mm manual focus. Just the way it works out. That percentage will be higher with a shorter distance.

[daveh]

A few more small birds.

The local countryside rangers had a pond-dipping morning today, down at the Wirral Country Park. In the centre there is a bird hide. I only had the 18-200 lens attached, but the bird feeders are fairly close.

bluetit:


greenfinch








chaffinch


Taken just after midday: drizzle, cloudy, but not too dark. ISO 500-800, f 5.6-6.3, 1/250-1/320. Although set at 200mm focal length it is being reported as 179mm (which ties in with what I calculated when judged against against the Canon 70-200 lens).