Marsh Birds

[ronwoodcraft]

Marsh wren, and Sora.....Not sure what the little brown speckled one is.

Just a reminder, please click on the images two or three times to view full size.

 

[tamrock]

Amazing clarity & focus. How far away were you from those birds.

 

[ronwoodcraft]

Amazing clarity & focus. How far away were you from those birds.

Thanks Grant, I think somewhere between 15 and 25 feet. The 400mm lens I use wont focus if subject is closer than about 12 ft. All of these have been cropped from the original image. I have a 22 megapixal camera, and to my simple way of thinking, I can crop half of the image away and still have moor usable info left in the image than my first 6 megapixal Canon Rebel.

These were taken this morning while on another mission. Light was still pretty good, but may go back soon earlier in the morning.

 

[tamrock]

Thanks Grant, I think somewhere between 15 and 25 feet. The 400mm lens I use wont focus if subject is closer than about 12 ft. All of these have been cropped from the original image. I have a 22 megapixal camera, and to my simple way of thinking, I can crop half of the image away and still have moor usable info left in the image than my first 6 megapixal Canon Rebel.

These were taken this morning while on another mission. Light was still pretty good, but may go back soon earlier in the morning.

zoom'n in I can maybe figure out what that last bird pictured, has in his beak. Looks like a bug of some kind ? You sure know how to put that camera to its full potential. That's got to be fun.

 

[old digger]

Awesome pictures! Love the blue hue in the Marsh Hen.

 

[BosnMate]

Does mega mean million? My camera has 16.9 million pixels, with 16.2 being effective, and I can see the difference in the sharpness of focus between your pictures and mine. I have a 300
mm lens, and bought a doubler for it, which so far I haven't been able to get to work all that well. I was pretty naive when I bought it, figuring it would make my lens a 600 mm, which I still
suppose it does, but it also doubles the effort to use it. For one thing a tripod is a must, and the lens is so heavy a cheap tripod doesn't do the job. So far I haven't tried to take and bird
pictures with it. It's not something that you can use to do snapshots, photos would have to be planned ahead of time and everything set up in a blind. I enjoyed your pictures, real
National Geographic stuff.

 

[ronwoodcraft]

Does mega mean million? My camera has 16.9 million pixels, with 16.2 being effective, and I can see the difference in the sharpness of focus between your pictures and mine. I have a 300
mm lens, and bought a doubler for it, which so far I haven't been able to get to work all that well. I was pretty naive when I bought it, figuring it would make my lens a 600 mm, which I still
suppose it does, but it also doubles the effort to use it. For one thing a tripod is a must, and the lens is so heavy a cheap tripod doesn't do the job. So far I haven't tried to take and bird
pictures with it. It's not something that you can use to do snapshots, photos would have to be planned ahead of time and everything set up in a blind. I enjoyed your pictures, real
National Geographic stuff.

Thanks Bosnmate, Not sure what mega means. My last camera had 12 and the one I use now has 22. Not much difference in image quality, but I can crop away a large portion from the images I use now, and still have a decent picture.
I have a 1.4 teleconverter that I don't use anymore. I've had it for a long time and used it a lot. It works good for more range, but is very slow to focus and requires more light.
Have you tried using the manual mode on your camera? To avoid blur from camera shake, with a 300mm lens you need at least 1/600 shutter speed, and at 600mm at least 1/1200. Shutter speed, aperture, and ISO are all inter related. You can start by setting your cameras ISO at 400, and aperture wide open ( smallest F number ). Now focus on something with decent lighting conditions. You should have a graph in your viewfinder where you can move the wheel that adjusts your shutter speed to the middle of the graph, and check what your shutter speed is. It will probably be a lot faster, but if it's not at least 1/600 with your 300mm lens, then the only thing you can do is boost ISO.( The higher ISO will give your pics more noise. )
Hope this makes since. It sounds complicated, but with some practice it will begin to become second nature, and in the end Lighting conditions makes all the difference.

 

[ronwoodcraft]

Does mega mean million? My camera has 16.9 million pixels, with 16.2 being effective, and I can see the difference in the sharpness of focus between your pictures and mine. I have a 300
mm lens, and bought a doubler for it, which so far I haven't been able to get to work all that well. I was pretty naive when I bought it, figuring it would make my lens a 600 mm, which I still
suppose it does, but it also doubles the effort to use it. For one thing a tripod is a must, and the lens is so heavy a cheap tripod doesn't do the job. So far I haven't tried to take and bird
pictures with it. It's not something that you can use to do snapshots, photos would have to be planned ahead of time and everything set up in a blind. I enjoyed your pictures, real
National Geographic stuff.

Another way that may be easier is to use your cameras shutter speed priority mode. Don't know what Nikon calls it, but for some reason Canon calls it TV mode. You just set what shutter speed you want, and the camera automatically chooses the aperture and ISO for you.

 

[ronwoodcraft]

zoom'n in I can maybe figure out what that last bird pictured, has in his beak. Looks like a bug of some kind ? You sure know how to put that camera to its full potential. That's got to be fun.

Thanks again, Here's a bigger crop of the same picture to show the bug.