Backyard Bird Photography - Up close and personal...

[matthewo]

Trying out the D7100 again, and wow, it just stomps all over the d800 for most of my wildlife work. I feel its breathing new life into the 500mm f4, these were all with the 1.7x converter for FX equivalent of 1275mm at around 15-20 feet. some are small crops, while some are almost full frame.

enjoy, I did...


1) Red bellied woodpecker.

2) Carolina Wren - eating my home made suet

3) Dark Eyed Junco

4) Dark Eyed Junco portrait. excuse me I think you have something on your beak

5) Downy Woodpecker

6) Mourning Dove

7)Cardinal

 

[shefjr]

I'm guessing you also used a flash with the better Beamer?
Rethinking the better Beamer because at 15-20 feet you probably didn't need it.

 

[KmH]

Sweet!

 

[BillM]

Absolutely beautiful !!!!!!

Other than the cardinal that is the same selection that I was watching out my window today. But much too cold to open the window and take any pictures

 

[coastalconn]

Not that I told you so, but I told you so excellent shots!

 

[Derrel]

Pretty hard to argue with results like these. Good depth of field considering the mondo lens length and distance.

 

[matthewo]

no better beamer, just a sb600 manually controlled from around 1/8-1/16th power on a bracket.

it was pretty dark today. I admit I moved the catch light slightly in these photos so it didn't look like it was directly in the center of the eye. I guess I don't feel to bad about that edit, other then that I just made small adjustments in color and exposure and contrast, as well as some noise reduction.

 

[matthewo]

Pretty hard to argue with results like these. Good depth of field considering the mondo lens length and distance.

thanks, its always something I want more of, but to tell the truth at distance like this it wouldn't matter if I maxed out to f22, DOF still is so shallow. I ran F9 for the teleconverter and lens, but still shutter speed was 200-250th second, and iso was 500-800. I was having issues with these small birds moving their head and making for unsharp photos, actually the first photo was not totally sharp due to the bird moving, but it came out looking ok at websized, and basically full frame.

 

[matthewo]

the biggest thing I cannot believe though is the d7100 is just quicker and more accurate at focusing. its very clear it focuses better then the d800 with and without the telecoverter. this is one of the most important things to me. I shoot a lot of birds that I need to grab focus fast, be it shooting BIF, or fast moving birds that jump around, going from far focus to near focus, as well as grabbing the lens from the passenger seat and pointing it out the window and acquiring focus from who know where it was set at before. thing is it just does all of this noticeably better then the d800. I am starting to wonder if there is something wrong with the d800. I have had to do a ton of AF fine tune with the d800 just to get it close to right, and the d7100 is more accurate without it. it maybe time to send the d800 in, it does have the soft left focus issue.