Feathered Friday With A Smaller Camera
Welcome to another FeatheredFriday, hosted by me, @keithboone.
I know a lot of people are using cell-phone cameras and point-and-shoot-cameras and that's cool. My wife got a new cell phone yesterday that has an awesome camera in it. This week I'm trying out a micro four thirds camera that should, in theory, blow any cell phone away - it has a much larger sensor, but how will it hold up to birding? I normally shoot birds with my Nikon D750 and 150-600mm and I have never really tested the Olympus for birds. Here's the gear I used today: Olympus E-M5MarkII with 40-150mm f/4-5.6 lens. The lens is equivalent to a 80-300 full-frame. I'll put a picture of the camera at the end of the post. This is not really a camera review, but I'll talk a little about how it worked for me. All photos in this post were taken today, by me, with the camera I just described.
If you love photographing birds as much as I do, I just know you have some great photos of your own to share. To participate in #FeatheredFriday and receive an upvote & resteem, please follow these simple steps:
- Make your own post and use the tag #featheredfriday
- Comment below with a link to your post - This will get you a lot of extra exposure from the other participants. If you don't do this, I may accidentally miss your post because Feathered Friday is starting to get busy.
- Consider using the #birding tag in order to connect to a wider community of bird fans.
Here are my photos taken today in Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, BC
Male Indian Peafowl, (Pavo cristatus) ~ a Peacock.
First of all the good news... If the light is good and I can get close enough and have time to focus properly I think the images are pretty good.
The Peacocks are strutting around today in the park. Check out the length of this guy's tail.
Here's a photo taken by my wife Cathy of a Peahen. I've never seen one spread her tailfeathers, this is a first for me! Cathy borrowed my 17mm prime lens while I was using her zoom lens. Look how she got down low to make this shot. It makes a big difference.
Olympus E-M10 Mark III,1/1000s f/4.0 ISO1250 17mm
Let's see some other stationary birds...
Northwestern Crow (Corvus caurinus)
Male Mallard Duck, (Anas platyrhynchos)
Canada goose (Branta canadensis)
Male and Female American Wigeon Ducks, (Mareca americana)
So I'm pretty happy with those but what I really like is birds in-flight. Here I didn't do as well...
In general I had a hard time finding and following flying birds in the EVF. I find the optical viewfinder on my DSLR much easier to see through on a bright sunny day.
Each of the photos below is out of focus - if you click on an image to view it full-screen I think you'll see that right away. This probably more about the very inexpensive lens used than the camera body, but I found it slow to focus on a moving target. My shutter speed was anywhere from 1/1000 up to 1/4000 for these shots and I should have been able to capture sharp images. The real problem is I'm clicking the shutter before the camera has a good focus-lock. So that's poor technique, but I would have nailed these shots with the DSLR. Perhaps I can learn to do it with this camera too. It sure is a lot lighter than my Nikon!
Male and Female American Wigeon Ducks, (Mareca americana) This is the best of the in-flight shots.
Great Blue Heron, (Ardea herodias)
Before I show you my camera, check out the Cherry Blossoms! Yay, Spring is coming!
...and here is the camera used today: Olympus E-M5MarkII with 40-150mm f/4-5.6 lens. It's tiny and light and I love it... but I will stick with my huge Nikon camera for birds next week.
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Your birds are always amazing....it doesn't seem to matter much which camera you are using. The peacoks are amazing, but of course I love the crow best! Here is my #featheredfriday post.https://steemit.com/featheredfriday/@melinda010100/feathered-friday-crow-in-the-snow-9255f2865416b
Wow, what an awesome black and white image! I'm off to see the rest of your post now :-)
Thank you! Can't wait to see all this week's entries!
We've got a lot of good ones coming in!
I shoot a micro 4/3. It is a cheapie Panasonic g7. It is small and light and did I mention cheap lol. I just need to get better glass. All I got is 40mm, so 80.
Panasonic makes some great lenses. All my lenses are bought used... I tried out a Panasonic lens at a second-hand store the other day. I don't remember the full details but it was small and light and zoomed out to 175mm, so 350 equiv. It seemed very sharp to me.
Oh interesting. Do you go to a local store? I have had good luck buying loads of used phones from B and H. They have meticulous grading of them. I have thought of maybe going that route for a lens.
Thank you, @pixresteemer!
Incredible shots taken with Cathy's camera @keithboone You've given us so much to enjoy and appreciate in this blog my friend especially the magnificent plumage of that peacock and peahen. Have a fabulous weekend!!!! (U & R )
I managed to get a post in which pleases me as I have had a lot on lately and didn't think Id make it. Here it is:
https://steemit.com/esteem/@trudeehunter/feathered-friday-superb-fairy-wrens
I'm always happy to see your post! This is gorgeous!
Thanks so much Keith. 💐
The first shot of the peacock? Stunning. Absolutely. You make it look so easy and yet, well, it is not! Not by a long shot!
I love his hat, his expression and oh, my!!! His tail is gorgeous! What a pretty boy he is. The rest of your shots are awesome, but, when you put him first, I can hardly make myself scroll down.
I finally joined and it's not because I don't love it, but, it is the same day as my challenge and I am not so talented to be able to do two in one day... usually.
!tip
Here is my link: https://busy.org/@dswigle/feathered-friday
Hi Denise! Glad you liked the Peacock, isn't he cute? He knows it too... I'm happy you made a post and I'm excited to go check it out! Heading there now! :-)
He really is a looker! My brother raises them and he has one white one, but, I am really in love with blues. Their colors are so vibrant!
Hehe! Hold the excitement. You know I am not a birder, but, we are working on it. ;)
You're doing great you have the skills! When you have a minute, check back and see the update I made to the post - Cathy gave me a photo she took today of a Peahen spreading her feathers.
Wow! I have never seen a peahen spread her feathers either!! Of course, a little bit of twitterpatting - spring and all. She might be trying really hard to get someones attention.
Cathy did an awesome job! Their feather seem thicker than the peacocks or is that just an illusion?
I agree the feathers look thicker than on the male.
My entry for featheredfriday, Congratulations @keithboone for your new camera and thank you to share your nice photos.
https://steemit.com/featheredfriday/@maxili63/feathered-friday-flamenco-resting-on-one-leg
That's an awesome bird! Thank you for posting, have a wonderful weekend!
Great shots Keith, I know few that have gone over to these types of camera's, but I'm sticking with my Nikon until they have matured that technology and the price comes down :).
My entry for this week is some more from Skomer island
https://steemit.com/featheredfriday/@stevejhuggett/feathered-friday-more-from-skomer-island-steve-j-huggett
Thank you Steve! There are pro lenses available for the Olympus that would improve the performance but they are expensive. I'm interested in the Nikon Z6 or Z7 as I could use my full collection of Nikon Lenses with them. I'm heading over to your post now! Have a great weekend!
Have a great weekend too :)
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Peafowl really look like chickens wearing a lot of makeup. I guess peacocks are like the male version of Vegas show girls.
I actually prefer the nice shiny head of mallard - humble and handsome.
That's funny - chickens in makeup! I think I agree with you about the Mallard! Thank very much :-)
That is one heck of a camera you have, the big one I mean. I am still learning and getting better I think, coming up on one year with my Nikon, still a long way to go on the learning curve. I just today, finally figured out the jpeg/raw thing and down loaded the first 3 raw images to play with. none on this post though - - https://steemit.com/featheredfriday/@bashadow/featheredfriday-small-visitor-looking-for-a-handout - - -
But I continue to learn.
Haha, yes it's big but the reality is it's way better than the little Olympus in terms of image quality. Which Nikon camera do you have? Raw files are far better than jpegs when you want to make significant changes to the photo in the shadows and highlights. Thanks for posting, I'm heading over to your page now.
The Nikon D7500, with a few beginner level lenses(cheap), to play with.
That's an awesome camera! We used to have a Nikon 7100 but Cathy started to find it too heavy.
I am really liking it, lots of lens choice and well I have hardly learned half the menu items, like the raw setting. But getting there.
Make sure you understand - the RAW files all need processing. They will always need a bump in clarity, sharpness, contrast, saturation etc. This is all baked-in when you shoot jpegs, but the raw files are completely unprocessed and they are rather flat looking until you work on them a bit.
Yeah, fortunately I have a free cripple ware program that works with raw files, but the camera does both a raw and a jpeg to download which I thought was pretty cool, one already to play with normally, and one where I can easily fix the exposure level.