This thread is for the birds! (1 Viewer)

[GeorgeHolland]

Chestnut-backed Chickadee's casting call for "The Abyss" movie.

 

[Sam Posten]

Wewt my bird buddy is now wired for sound.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

From our trip to Colorado. We got back to Michigan last night.

A young bald eagle (hatched in early spring):

Mama:

 

[Scott Merryfield]

A few shots from Huntington Beach State Park in SC. I processed them on my laptop instead of my desktop, so hopefully they look okay. I may need to calibrate the laptop's screen again.

 

[Carlo_M]

Nothing rare or endangered about these, which were shot at Bolsa Chica wetlands in SoCal. But they're significant to me because it's my first real foray into bird shooting. I scored a pretty good Black Friday deal on a 100-500 f/4.5-7.1 IS L lens and was eager to justify (or regret) my purchase.

I even managed to capture a few in-flight, first time for that as well!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled with the performance of the new lens, and I've been googling places to shoot birds and wildlife in SoCal ever since. The fact that I essentially saved $900 off of MSRP+ tax is icing on the cake. Pretty sure they are most, if not all, at or near the end of the focal range (500mm).

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Nothing rare or endangered about these, which were shot at Bolsa Chica wetlands in SoCal. But they're significant to me because it's my first real foray into bird shooting. I scored a pretty good Black Friday deal on a 100-500 f/4.5-7.1 IS L lens and was eager to justify (or regret) my purchase.

I even managed to capture a few in-flight, first time for that as well!

Needless to say, I'm thrilled with the performance of the new lens, and I've been googling places to shoot birds and wildlife in SoCal ever since. The fact that I essentially saved $900 off of MSRP+ tax is icing on the cake. Pretty sure they are most, if not all, at or near the end of the focal range (500mm).

That's a sweet lens, Carlo. It's basically the RF replacement for the EF 100-400mm f/4-5.6 L II that I sold earlier this year. Of all the EF lenses I used to own, that was the toughest one for me to give up.

 

[Carlo_M]

Thanks Scott. Yeah I was a little worried about the 7.1 aperture, but in normal daylight (even going into early dusk, but not into the evening) it didn't serve as a limitation and most of my ISO were well below 1000 even at between 1/500 and 1/1000 shutter speed. Also the lens doesn't go to 7.1 until about 463mm.

Considering I had zero practice with anything above 200mm, I was pleasantly surprised at the results I got. The IBIS+lens IS really bailed me out at the 500mm length. Surprised at how many keepers I had.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Thanks Scott. Yeah I was a little worried about the 7.1 aperture, but in normal daylight (even going into early dusk, but not into the evening) it didn't serve as a limitation and most of my ISO were well below 1000 even at between 1/500 and 1/1000 shutter speed. Also the lens doesn't go to 7.1 until about 463mm.

Considering I had zero practice with anything above 200mm, I was pleasantly surprised at the results I got. The IBIS+lens IS really bailed me out at the 500mm length. Surprised at how many keepers I had.

You should be able to push your ISO much higher with that camera. Between the better sensor and the improvements in noise reduction software, I have pushed shots as far as 25K with the R6 Mark II. I wouldn't think twice about shooting at ISO 6400 anymore. We discuss the newer noise reduction software in this thread, if you are interested. There are also some high ISO shots in the transition to mirrorless thread.

 

[Carlo_M]

You should be able to push your ISO much higher with that camera. Between the better sensor and the improvements in noise reduction software, I have pushed shots as far as 25K with the R6 Mark II. I wouldn't think twice about shooting at ISO 6400 anymore. We discuss the newer noise reduction software in this thread, if you are interested. There are also some high ISO shots in the transition to mirrorless thread.

I agree, I'm not worried about pushing above 6400, even the in-camera jpg conversion does a more-than-decent job de-noising without going to 3rd party software. I shoot RAW+jpg when taking pics for friends so I can just transfer the jpgs immediately to them (most don't have Lightroom/DPP/etc. and don't want to deal with RAW files) because I've been impressed with the in-camera conversion quality. That way they get instant gratification and if I use Lr to do some stylized processing, I'll send that to them later.

Personally I still lean towards acquiring fast glass because I find their autofocus tends to perform significantly better than slower glass, and I still prefer natural in-camera bokeh to software generated results (especially in the case for portraits). I have no doubt future software improvements will get software bokeh to be almost indistinguishable from natural lens bokeh, but it's not quite there yet to my eyes.

I know the 24MP sensor of the R6m2 is the limiting factor here, but I plan to keep this glass for years/decades and so when I get a second body (I'm waiting to see what the final specs are for the R5mk2 in 2024) I anticipate that to be 45MP or higher (one rumor theorized a variable MP sensor at 62/31/15.5 employing pixel binning), and better glass will distinguish itself at the higher resolutions and also retain high image quality after cropping.

Canon has done some great focus breathing mitigation on their best glass for video work, and I'm starting to delve deeply into that as well. The 24-70 2.8 with the latest firmware has a nearly indiscernible amount of focus breathing. And the IBIS+lens IS is near gimbal-like in quality, and if you employ Digital IS it basically is gimbal-like. When the rumored RF 35 1.4 IS USM comes out in 2024 (if Canonrumors is correct) I'll probably pick that up for both video and photography, as well as the 14mm 1.4 since I don't have a wide angle lens at the moment.

For Cyber Monday I just ordered a Smallrig Black Mamba cage with their top and side handle. I have a Rode VideoMic Pro Plus for on-camera run-n-gun filming, and will invest in a lav mic system for whenever I decide to do interview/documentary style shoots. I also bought Smallrig's new updated carbon fiber travel tripod which has a leg that can convert into a monopod (Cyber Monday $119!), because if there's one thing I learned at Bolsa Chica this weekend, it's that any weight relief and added stability for the 100-500 is welcome. Plus that will allow me to shoot stable wildlife/nature videos using the 100-500 at its extreme.

Been learning to color correct and grade CLog 3 (so I don't always have to lean on the LUTs) with my friends' newborn. It's been a blast. When he's grown he's going to have an embarrassing amount of 4K60 videos of his first weeks on earth.

 

[Doug2000]