Wildlife Photography

[Pathfinder]

I always use my cell phone, can't you tell??

The eagle was a M4/3 shot, who would have thought that, eh?

The sheep were with a 7D

 

[fowldarr]

 

[graynomad]

The eagle was a M4/3 shot, who would have thought that, eh?

I got very close to swapping to a M3/4 system, I still may one day but hate to ditch all my good Canon gear.

 

[photo_i]

Storks and squatters

 

[graynomad]

Ha ha, I've seen that with eagle nests, the little bird are quite safe squatting underneath the big nest.

 

[photo_i]

Ha ha, I've seen that with eagle nests, the little bird are quite safe squatting underneath the big nest.

That will be a bit different, given that eagle can eat little squatters.

 

[john101477]

I got very close to swapping to a M3/4 system, I still may one day but hate to ditch all my good Canon gear.

Never! lol
Actually, I am pretty impressed with what I am hearing from Sony right now. Be nice to see a cpl other manufacturers jump on board with some good mirrorless tech. Nikon's announcements were fairly sad so far. 2 updates after less than a year of the products on the market. A 58mm that seems a bit far fetched at $1700... Lame
At least Canon's 70D has some new tech in them.

 

[graynomad]

Yes the mirrorless stuff is starting to look good. I had a look at a mate's Oly a few months ago and the electronic viewfinder is almost good enough. I think m4/3 is still short of really good long zooms which is a problem for me and the contrast focusing is not up to scratch, although I believe they are starting to bring out hybrid contrast/phase systems that are ok. Still a long way short of an EOS1 body in that regard though.

As you probably know once you have a lot of gear it gets pretty expensive to swap.

 

[Pathfinder]

The 100-300 ( 200-600 equivalent in 35mm ) Lumix zoom lens is pretty good. I think the weakness of the M4/3 systems for me was the AF did not match my 1 series Canon bodies. My GH3 was fine for big cats laying around while shooting from a Land Cruiser, but not really for birds in flight. A friend says the new Oly OM-D E1 will grab birds in flight; if true, that is quite significant.

The decision by Panasonic and Olympus, to incorporate lens error correction into the camera bodies themselves, means that the Lumix 100-300 zoom is pretty decent, small, light, and for $600 is very inexpensive compared to a Canon L 600mm lens. No lens corrections needed in Lightroom or Photoshop, since they are already corrected in software inside the camera body.

I shot this with an OM-D E-5 with the Lumix 100-300 -

 

[esh]

Pretty lame shot compared to what normally gets on this thread, but yesterday early morning I did a little cat and mouse with bald eagles up and down the northern Oregon coastline. They were quite amusing waddling about the sand.

northern Oregon coast

 

[graynomad]

Actually I think that's a nice shot, I've never seen an eagle going for a surf before.

Re m4/3, I downloaded the official demo shots from a site, 2-5MB each and they were not what I would consider sharp. I also started a thread on the "Cambridge in colour" forum and a lot of people posted examples, IIRC none of them were sharp as well, even at web size in many cases.

Here's an example if you want to download a 4.5MB file

http://www.robgray.com/temp/m43_squirrel.jpg

Lovely shot but not even close to being pin sharp.

That cheetah shot certainly looks sharp at that res though, and as a nature photographer you have to love the 2x factor for all your lenses (although I already use 1.3x crop factor bodies for wildlife).

 

[photo_i]

Hawk's flying technique

 

[graynomad]

From what I can see that bird is a dead ringer for our Whistling Kite.

 

[mtnbike28]

Actually I think that's a nice shot, I've never seen an eagle going for a surf before.

I agree!

 

[Pathfinder]

Eagles surf the Mississippi River every spring

Near Burlington, Iowa