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
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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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