Bird Photography

[hidden wyvern]

Here’s coal for Christmas

Lots flying by

[wide flint]

Yeah I guess it's better to not expect anything since you'll more than likely get absolutely nothing

[drifting silo]

I got a kingfisher today

And not only that i managed to capture it regurgitating

I spotted the long tailed tit several times but only managed to snag 1 decent photo

Very pretty birb

[bright vapor]

What tripod head do you use?

[wide flint]

Not really sure tbh. It's my dad's tripod that he normally uses for his telescope. I think it's a fluid head.

[wide flint]

[dark ermine]

You owe bird tax, where's the shot?!

I'm pretending I don't want a kingfisher anymore so I can't be disappointed

[carmine fox]

nothing like a few tits on christmas ay

[gilded yarrow]

Yep lmao

Got this pic there, insanely edited but its my only decent kingfisher pic

and that was with my canon 250d and an ancient tamron 70-300

[drifting silo]

There were so many blue/coal tits that most of the photographers simply were no longer bothered to take any photos

Only interested in the local celebrity

The kingfisher

[drifting silo]

I‘ll have it transferred from my cam tonite

[wide flint]

Long tailed tits are such nice creatures

Love how they just always come flying in as a whole gang that is super loud

[wide flint]

Its a great pic for that kit honestly

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah definitely, so dumb that I still dont have a good pic with my sony setup tho

[carmine fox]

what's the minimum shutter you guys trust for perched songbirds? heavy overcast today but windy so I imagine they'll be pretty low in the trees today

I was out yesterday and i had to sacrifice a decent amount of quality to higher iso for shutter which I'd prefer to avoid

[wide flint]

I'll go about 1/400 or 1/320, but also depends on how high my iso is with those shutter speeds

[gilded yarrow]

Like 1/400th

[hidden wyvern]

i do minimum 1/500 with the 500 f/4 since its an older is variation and heavy lens, prob good to match fl at the very least, although ive done 1/30 or something with the 100-500 zoom lens which is much lighter

[wide flint]

Yeah also depends on the image stabilization. With the Z8 im able to get razor sharp shots at 1/8 bc it is so stable

But most birds won't sit still for so long anyways

[carmine fox]

look at the girth on this lil guy

idk why it's the signature nikon green
I PROMISE my white balance is on point

[wheat hare]

your lcd colors may be off

Dunno if your model has them but some have monitor color balance settings

[carmine fox]

my phone is being strange with the screen apparently
looks white on lcd

[drifting silo]

1/320 is usually the lowest id go

At least handheld

I think i did 1/200 „handheld“ but i had smth to support my arm with

IS is good these days

[carmine fox]

yeah I tried to stay above 1/1000
cut my losses around mid afternoon tho just a bit too dark

vr is good for about 3 stops which seems to work well enough for me

[drifting silo]

Yeah i think i got the kingfisher photo guys

I swear these guys r either moving very fast or just staying still for several minutes

800 shots from the day and i think half of it is just the kingfisher

[drifting silo]

as promised

not the final photo yet, just a quick edit. Not exactly satisfied with how the edit turned out for now

[dusty fog]

Awesome

[wide flint]

That's a cool moment to have captured, never seen a Kingfisher do that before

[wide flint]

Half an hour in today and already had my first fly by. Hopefully it comes back and just lands on my stick.

[wide flint]

Im gonna cry

It landed right next to me, then flew to my branch. I turned my camera on but for some reason the focus was not on the branch anymore and it was gone again before I managed to get it in focus

[mint warren]

he blue

Also Plovers

[drifting silo]

Me but with the long tailed tit lol

I was just recording the nice scenery with my phone and 2 of em landed right next to me

Of course when I was actually ready with my camera none of them showed up

[wide flint]

Yeah only time today it landed on the branch and I fucked it up

Still so angry with myself

But good to know it will actually land on the branch. Just a matter of time and patience now

[spring vault]

y'all better prepare urselves I got some fire bird pics in texas

gonna take forever to edit em all

[carmine fox]

how does this crop look guys
I tried to get the mallard as straight as possible and tried to offset the more exposed right hand side of him with some more water on the left to balance the image a tad

don't bother zooming in this is from my phone

[spring vault]

might be me it doesn't look level idk

[wide flint]

Sadly it is super foggy, so quality is less then ideal. Still so happy i got it

Fuck yeah!!!!

[drifting silo]

Thats a very nice and clean background

And assuming u didnt zoom in on the photo id say thats a really good distance to the kingfisher

I generally have to crop in to 3-4mp with my kingfisher shots

[wide flint]

The branch is about 12-15m away i'd guess

Nah it was zoomed in, this is unzoomed

[gilded yarrow]

Damn, and without a hide too

The kingfishers just hate me istg

[wide flint]

Yeah, I was in relatively good cover between trees and reed tho, not completely out in the open at least

It sat down like 1,5m next to me a few times as well, just stared right into it's eyes

[drifting silo]

Ah ok understandable thats my typical kingfisher photo too

Meanwhile i have a collection of robin closeups

[drifting silo]

Yeah so far i never had to use a hide either

[wide flint]

Yeah it would be fine to crop in from that distance but the fog really did me dirty, quality is shit

[drifting silo]

I feel like u just have to wait at the right spots

[wide flint]

Will have to keep trying till I get some decent conditions

[drifting silo]

@gilded yarrow if u live anywhere close to Mülheim an der Ruhr. The Eisvogelbrücke is quite a reliable spot for kingfishers. Ive gotten all of my kingfisher photos there

There are 3 bridges if I remember correctly in the area, just constantly rotate through the bridges and hopefully u see smth

[gilded yarrow]

Sadly not, usually I live close to Hannover and rn I'm visiting my dad near Cologne

[gilded yarrow]

The thing is there are kingfishers at the spots i go to they just dont like me

[dark ermine]

If it makes y'all feel better about your luck, my family member saw a bald eagle this week. they sent me the pic, it was right down the street from my house.

[drifting silo]

Theres this one guy in #🦀・creatures just absolutely shredding with the kingfisher photos 😭

Javier

[drifting silo]

Ive honestly never even seen a wild eagle

Or an owl

[wide flint]

Yeah he's going ham

Gonna ask what his secret is

[gilded yarrow]

@ancient tinsel tell us

[ancient tinsel]

thank you!

[ancient tinsel]

what you wanna know? @wide flint@gilded yarrow

[gilded yarrow]

How you get those sick pics lmao

Kingfisher etc

[ancient tinsel]

i use a 600mm lense and i get really close

i use many walking technices that hunters use for example walking in zick zacks

[gilded yarrow]

I have a 600mm too, spent 20 hours without a single photo

[ancient tinsel]

I take a lot of photos of them and most are to far away

[gilded yarrow]

You dont stay stationary?

[ancient tinsel]

no i dont

[gilded yarrow]

Damn

Crazy

[ancient tinsel]

i walk across a river where i know they live until i find one

then i try to predict where he is flying to and which spots have most fish

then i try to be faster then him and stay in position

[gilded yarrow]

Where do you live? Here in germany its super hard to find chill spots without a lot of people

[ancient tinsel]

germany xD

[gilded yarrow]

Noch ein deutscher hahahah

[ancient tinsel]

von wo genau @gilded yarrow

[gilded yarrow]

Eigentlich Hannover, momentan bin ich aber bei meinem Vater in Köln

[barren yoke]

Heyo

[ancient tinsel]

probier mal ebird aus zum scouten

[gilded yarrow]

Das Ding ist ich hab nichtmal ein Problem die zu finden, aber selbst mit Hide und neuem Stock/ansitz für die Eisvögel hab ich absolut kein Glück haha

[ancient tinsel]

welöche Uhrzeit gehst du raus für sowas?

[gilded yarrow]

Unterschiedlich, meist gegen mittag/nachmittag weil ich morgens selten Zeit hab

[ancient tinsel]

da hst dus

[gilded yarrow]

Macht das echt so nen großen Unterschied? Also gehts du nur direkt am Morgen raus?

[ancient tinsel]

ich hab noch nie länger als 2 uhr gemacht bin spätestens immer dann weg

die fressen den ganzen morgen und chillen am nachmittag

[gilded yarrow]

Mal gucken vielleicht geh ich nächste Woche mal direkt morgens raus, zumindest wenn das Wetter mal wieder gut ist

[drifting silo]

Kann bestätigen, nach 15:00 oder so sind die nicht mehr so aktiv. Die meisten Vögel sind sowieso auch schon weg

Im Sommer ist es aber noch schlimmer lol. Früh morgens oder einfach gar keine Fotos aus meiner Erfahrung. Wahrscheinlich weil‘s zu heiß ist

[bright vapor]

[gilded yarrow]

Und im Sommer muss man dann auch noch um 4 aufstehen damit es noch nicht komplett hell ist Jetzt reicht ja 6 oder je nachdem sogar 7

[spring vault]

[drifting silo]

@gilded yarrow @ancient tinsel leute ich glaub wir sollen auf englisch reden sonst werden wir bald vom server entfernt

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah true lmao

back to english

[wide flint]

It was pretty easy to follow

Just go out early in the morning is the conclusion

[gilded yarrow]

Yep

[spring vault]

I get all my best bird pics right around sunrise but I refuse to wake up that early except when I'm forced to

[gilded yarrow]

lmao same, I think I need to start getting up earlier tho, maybe that would finally get me a kingfisher pic

[drifting silo]

My best bird pics are usually when im about to give up and call it a day and some Opa calls me to show me a cool bird he spotted

Then the session gets extended by another hour

Honestly i must have really shitty eyesight if a grandpa can spot birds better than me

[spring vault]

I like birding w my sister cos she sees everything

[carmine fox]

my brother isn't old enough to stay silent for the periods required

I keep hoping I bump in to a relatively attractive 20 something birder whilst I'm out
we can only hope for hallmark movie love 😔🤞

[spring vault]

I want to one of my local bird club meetups and it was entirely retirees but I got pics of a new bird so that was nice

[carmine fox]

many such cases

[analog kindle]

Man I want a z8 so bad

[wide flint]

It's worth it

Just sell a kidney

[wide flint]

Day 4. Even more foggy than yesterday. Put up a branch only like 4m from me to minimize fog between me and the kingfisher

[wide flint]

It came by again. Image quality is still kinda sad bc of the fog, but better result than yesterday at least.

[ancient tinsel]

i think with some editing this photo would turn out better tbh

[drifting silo]

Yeah, did u run ai denoise on the photo already?

It looks usable to me, just the noise and especially the color noise on the bird makes it look bad imo

[wide flint]

I already did quite some editing, but I honestly suck at it, so suggestions on what to do are welcome :)

[wide flint]

I did, but just ran it through topaz to clean up the bird itself and ur right, it looks a bit better

[ancient tinsel]

could you send me the raw file?

i would edit it a little

[dark ermine]

same! no idea what i'm going to do about owls. have you ever tried to get one?

[wide flint]

yeah sure, here you go :)

[ancient tinsel]

where are you from? from germany right?

[drifting silo]

No but im living in germany atm for my bachelors

[ancient tinsel]

in germany its very easy to find wild eagles

[ancient tinsel]

i just made it really fast so i the quality is not the best on the edges of the bird

if you have any questions about it let me know

[wide flint]

That looks great mate, great to see the potential of it with some good editing.

Will really have to invest in lightroom soon, I'm using darktable rn and it's fine, but masking is pretty much impossible on there.

[ancient tinsel]

yes Lightroom makes it really easy

[dark ermine]

the LR share / remix feature that allows users to edit each other's photos and review the edit process is really neat too. would be REALLY neat to get a group of birders on it, learn from diff techniques
ex https://lightroom.adobe.com/learn/discover/02f34618-81a3-4c2f-9ed0-18778a34f5a1 (not mine)

[drifting silo]

How/where do u look for them?

[ancient tinsel]

they are lirerally on every field

[drifting silo]

They are ??

I must be damn blind

[ancient tinsel]

yes

they look like crows sometimes

where in germany do you live?

[drifting silo]

Naww i thought they were all just crows or pigeons

[drifting silo]

Aachen, i move around the nrw area for my photos

[ancient tinsel]

at least in bavaria there are a lot

but you can check on ebird

[drifting silo]

Forgot to reply to this 😅
I mean I‘d love to photograph owls but i‘m pretty clueless on how to start finding them to begin with lol

Before I got my tele I was literally just a zoo photographer

Heck that profile photo of mine is from my zoo era

[spring vault]

ive only seen a couple owls

mostly thru local bird discord notifs

if you find a tree with a buncha bird poo at the bottom it might be an owl's fav perch

that's how I found one but the tree stopped being a fav perch the next year

[gilded yarrow]

What kinda eagles are you talking about lol

[ancient tinsel]

buzzard

(Mäusebussard) in german

[gilded yarrow]

Ahh you mean raptors not eagles I think

Greifvögel

Nicht Adler

[ancient tinsel]

mäusebussarde sind adler sportsfreund @gilded yarrow

[wise trench]

this is so real

[gilded yarrow]

Wäre mir neu, und im englischen sowieso nicht

[ancient tinsel]

hab grad nochmal nachgeschaut. in Vielen Quellen steht dass sie adler sind aber sie sind tatsächlich keine. mb

[dark ermine]

yeah same, doing a life list and idk, feels wrong to include the birds i've seen at a zoo. then again, not sure i'll ever make it to africa to see a secretarybird 😅

[gilded yarrow]

mockingbird still there

[gilded yarrow]

He was so close that I wasnt able to focus with my 200-600 lmao

[spring vault]

he's mocking u

[gilded yarrow]

fucking branch

Very noticeable?

[spring vault]

ur good

[spring vault]

trying to un nuke blown out highlights with fake bokeh balls

[spring vault]

cookin rn

[dark ermine]

no birds today, just this lil chonker

[inner abyss]

thats a fat fuckin skwerl

[mint warren]

Someones been leaving cashews out

[spring vault]

https://www.instagram.com/p/DEM6opCOreA/?img_index=4&igsh=b255M29icGlnNmox

gkew.photos

2 years ago yesterday, I witnessed one of the craziest moments of my photography journey so far. What I thought was a Snowy Owl attack on a mink, turned out to be a mink attack on a Snowy! The Snowy was just chilling on a boat dock until the mink jumped on its back! The Snowy was able to get liftoff and the mink fell back to the ice below. The...

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[wide flint]

That's a crazy moment to have caught on camera

[wide flint]

Tried to lean more into the gloomy vibe off the fog and went for a wider crop, think this works quite well

[wise trench]

that’s 🔥, how do you create that morning fog type of look?

[spring vault]

negative dehaze masks

[spring vault]

i'm still not super happy with it the bird looks 2d still but im also outta ideas

[wise trench]

ah alright. weird question but do you have any photos I could practice on 😭

[spring vault]

heres my raw

includes the edits if u open in lr or ps

can just reset them

[wise trench]

thank you, I do have lr so I will check it out

[wise trench]

alright, i gave it a shot. thanks a ton for giving me the raw

this is a amazing photo to edit tbh

[spring vault]

nice ty

[carmine fox]

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1J8-AsbY2dqcmu5VMCOKnS-5LktsvrSyC

dubious quality
master the art of denoising

[wise trench]

lmao tbh not bad idea

im tryna practice mornign edits rn tho

before after

its adobe community so i cant help the quality

[carmine fox]

the sterile whites take away from the character imo
otherwise pretty cool

[wise trench]

character?

[carmine fox]

you lose some of the color from the feet, and the general environment

[wise trench]

idk how to describe this but im jsut tryign to make it as winter foggy as possible

thats not rlly how i would normally edit it tbh

[carmine fox]

I'm not quite familiar but I would imagine you need more background contrast
you can't really elicit that "foggy" look from a completely bokeh'd background

[wise trench]

the feet lost color cause the masking sucked but i could fix it if it was my own photo

[wise trench]

ye lol not a great pic to practice on

but the bg is nice imo

[wise trench]

like this photo is perfect for it

but its not like i can find photos like that very easily

[carmine fox]

I haven't really gotten creative with masking but it seems I might have to
some cool effects you can do, this was just done with lrm, I want to explore more in lrc

[wise trench]

masking is so overpowered

[carmine fox]

also I need to feather the branch

[wise trench]

i promise you need to learn it

[carmine fox]

I use it mainly for creating seperation via exposure from background to get more visual pop

[wise trench]

yea thats how most ppl use it i think

[gilded yarrow]

Way too far away but still sick to see one just looking out of my window lol

[dark ermine]

https://lightroom.adobe.com/learn/discover/e74edc9a-32c1-4ad9-b54e-9ee0d96095fc been vibing on this matte look for a min

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah looks pretty sick

Might need to try something like that too

[analog kindle]

Where are you located again...?

Nice shot!

[spring vault]

im in MI this pic is from texas though. I was there last week

[analog kindle]

Dang nice

[scarlet tulip]

that's well shot

[spring vault]

thats a cool background

[scarlet tulip]

got lucky with a very reflective river as a background, i put a linear gradient mask behind the bird/branch and pulled the shadows down

brought back enough of the branches to be interesting

[wise trench]

what is the theoretical best wildlife setup? like no budget in the picture

[spring vault]

https://youtu.be/Bk1XmxaGrGA

good vid

best gear setup is own every lens from one of the big three camera companies and have a crew of ppl to carry them around for you

[wise trench]

fair enough

[carmine fox]

depends on what you're doing and what brand you prefer

[wheat hare]

damn I love Morten

[carmine fox]

the salt guys?

wait that's Morton

oh
the video

[dark minnow]

Edited some pictures from earlier this year.

[mint warren]

I finally find a good spot for firetails but light sucks ass

Feels bad man

Not the spot there's just bad overcast today

[mint warren]

Did what I could with the overcast conditions

last one it'd gotten a little lighter but my target species had gone away

[hidden wyvern]

Little

[analog kindle]

That 500 f4 lens I got a few months back has a major issue 😔😑
It's with Nikon rn, hopefully they will get it back to me soon though

[gilded yarrow]

Oh noo what happened

[analog kindle]

@gilded yarrow Its something with the AF system, it was missing shots by just a little bit, so I thought it could be the IS or maybe the AF, but judging by the price I think the AF motor might be shot... 😩
I originally noticed it because of the AF being super hectic, and the shots that were 'sharp' My way cheaper 200-500 was miles better, unless you stopped down to like f8 then it improved

Anyways, they better give that thing back to me in new condition or idk what Im going to do 😂

[gilded yarrow]

Ahh fuck that sucks

[gilded yarrow]

Lmaoo

[analog kindle]

yep its been an expensive few days lol

[wide flint]

Was posted up in my grandmas garden again today. Boring day with only blue and great tits. Untill at the end of the day a crested tit and 2 common firecrests came by.

Super happy with the crested tit, first time seeing it and getting it in front of my lens. Pretty hard species to get since they mostly stay high up in the trees.

[dark ermine]

sounds like the blue and great tits are as common there as the northern cardinal is here. easy to lose interest when there's 20+ on the daily

[wide flint]

Yeah pretty much, depends on your area tho. They can be fun to try and get some flight shots of, but I was already maxing out my iso at 1/1600th today, just too little light sadly

[green meadow]

Lately it has been mostly blue and great tits for me too. I have probably too many pictures of them but still I photograph those again and again. It is kind of my motto that it is always possible to take even better picture. So that's why I keep on trying. I also have noticed that what I have learned while photographing common birds has helped when I encounter some more "interesting" subjects.

[wide flint]

Yeah it definitely was some good practice. Slowly starting to get my muscle memory in tune with the Z8. It also showed this night so hopefully i'll get my first ever bird shots in the snow today

[spring vault]

https://www.mlive.com/environment/2025/01/extremely-rare-yellow-northern-cardinal-identified-at-michigan-backyard-birdfeeder.html?outputType=amp

[hidden wyvern]

Pikachu

[dark ermine]

yeahhh facing 1600 today, rainy. I know it's too much to ask but I would kill for a couple of sun shower days

[wide flint]

I had to shoot 1/50 with iso 5000 today 💀😭

It was snowy conditions tho, couldn't not go out and shoot. Will most likely be the last snow this year

[wise trench]

i dont normally like doing this but im blaming it on my gear lmao

1/1000 at 500m, iso 6400, f6.3, super dark before hand, and its this blurry

It’s definitely in focus, this was the sharpest of a bunch of ~30

[scarlet tulip]

Got the unedited file?

[wise trench]

Sure

[scarlet tulip]

Just a screenshot serves

[wise trench]

idk if i shouldve pushed my iso more

its raelly dark but this was at like 3pm so idk

[scarlet tulip]

If needed then yes

Push ISO to get correct exposure

[wise trench]

5dm4 @ 12800 lol

dk how thats gonna go

[scarlet tulip]

Full send

I’ve had Z stuff up to 18k on live birds and been fine

[wise trench]

yuh

[scarlet tulip]

Like 18k

[wise trench]

do you have topaz?

[scarlet tulip]

That’s Lr

[wise trench]

yuh jsut askiung tho

[scarlet tulip]

DxO works too, never touched Topaz

I have seen results from the latter that do not impress me

[wise trench]

fair enough

low light performance gonna be much better on most z cameras tho

[scarlet tulip]

You’re still better off exposing properly

Less noise in the shadows

More detail

[wise trench]

I have blurry photos with or without high iso and proper exposure lmao

[dark ermine]

still early but lookin' like might have finally got a valid shot of a brown-headed nuthatch, little guys are fast

[carmine fox]

who is this diva

[spring vault]

willet

[wide flint]

These branches are just out to get me atp

[scarlet tulip]

The tree god knows your intent and laughs

[wide flint]

Next time i'll just take some pruning shears with me and make sure not one branch will be obstructed

[green meadow]

I drove about 150 km to see the little grebe, but it decided to keep its distance. I heard that yesterday it was really close. It had also caught and eaten fish, almost as if to show off its skills.

At least local velvet scooter came bit closer after four days of trying.

first try and result was this

and on the fourth visit I got this one.

[scarlet tulip]

I’ve always found scoters to be very skittish, nice job getting in closer

Do you get mergansers up in Finland?

[wide flint]

Damn are little grebes rare in Finland? They're a pretty common species here in the Netherlands

[green meadow]

yes we have Common mergansers and Red-breasted mergansers.

[green meadow]

Yes they are. This was first time that I saw one. Estimation is that we have about 20-50 nesting pairs here. 😄

[green meadow]

I agree. I got closer by moving only when it dived.

[scarlet tulip]

That’s smart strategy

I’ll have to try it, they can spot movement too easily otherwise

[dark minnow]

Got my first picture of a hairy (i think, could be downy) woodpecker today, this guy came out of nowhere and landed on a tree right in front of me

Also got this one

[gilded yarrow]

what the fuck.

my kingfisher spot leads under a railroad bridge

And when I get on the train to the nearest City i drive over that bridge

I decided, lets take a video and see if I can catch a kingfisher

And i actually saw one

Definitely a kingfisher, no other bird is that fast and flies that close to the water

[dark ermine]

What's funny is my first and only sighting of a kingfisher so far was from a train trestle a few weeks ago!

I'm thinking they frequent because those areas go mainly undisturbed

Just gotta risk playing chicken with a train to try and get one lol

[hidden wyvern]

this weekend ill be looking for a purple sandpiper, might be interesting

ground birds always are

[scarlet tulip]

What sort of environment do you target for those?

[hidden wyvern]

just beaches really if you mean the sandpipers

like, natural, no people beaches full of rocks

[wide flint]

Damn that's pretty cool, I always have the idea that Finland is pretty close to here. But the differences in species and habitat keep surprising me sometimes.

[primal aspen]

like a mini dipper

[drifting silo]

For that kind of shot u could lower the SS

I wouldve gone with 1/500 or 1/400 if i just wanted non-flight photos

1/200 if ur feeling cocky sniper mode activated

[gilded yarrow]

I highly doubt that there'll be any birds here today but we'll see

[gilded yarrow]

0 birds, the whole forest looked amazing tho

[drifting silo]

The royal council

[drifting silo]

Dang i wish my city had a forest

[gilded yarrow]

Meh its not a great forest tbh, 99% man made

Still has some nice places

[wide flint]

Sadly no snow here today, luckily we already had some last weekend

[wise trench]

My hands way too shaky for that bro 😭

[hidden wyvern]

went for a certain duck, got mallard but in flight

weird, dark day

not really sure why i picked the 100-500 vs the 500 f/4 i had both of but goes to show it can clean up decent enough, bit of motion blur though

[carmine fox]

cool!
very sharp

[drifting silo]

I tried LR‘s ai blur thing hence the slightly fucked up background

Solution: stop faking the bokeh, get a 600 f4

[hidden wyvern]

put a back on preorder too with that thing lol

i find fake blur always noticiable but at least its like, some branch in the background i wouldnt look at anyway

prob gonna look fine to majority of people on facebook/instagram too, but there is a fun element to having real control over the aperture, why im liking the 500 f/4 so much

[hidden wyvern]

i got my extender in time for the sandpipers, dont think id need it as they should be close enough at 500mm but ill see what i can do with it as well, might be sunny so thatd be perfect to try out

will see how bad using a 2x is, not for everyone on any lens from what i understand, but if its a tool i can utilize enough to value it then ill keep it, not even so sure it matters how old or new the lens would be but rather how taxing the addition of a 2x converter is in general. some lenses do it better of course, but they all kind of perform worse with it

depends how much worse one can handle, ill either be talking about how good it is forever or how i dont recommend it, will see

[magic crown]

before :

after :

[scarlet tulip]

Corm

That’s a nice poppy edit

[wise trench]

Nice, i dont love thissss much vignetting but its not bad here

[magic crown]

Thanks guys i've also cooked those

[gilded yarrow]

Daaamn

I need to try photographing the kingfisher again, need to take all my gear through the forest to a small river 5km away from my home tho

Extremely annoying when not having a car

[spring vault]

get an ebike

[scarlet tulip]

Nice to have cormorants to shoot

[magic crown]

that neck shake

he's like : WHAT'S THERE ?!

[hidden wyvern]

unprocessed (left) vs processed (right), just a generic closer image but figure its a decent idea of sharpness its capable of

noisy too but its not like super soft, unless you zoom in

base lens is sharper for sure

not a no yet, but, feels like a nerf, will see how the further away sandpipers turn out (i couldnt do this at 500mm unless i had a boat)

[hidden wyvern]

for something practically impossible at any other range, it does give a decent image, 1000mm f/10 + crop off shore, feels like my old sigma 150-600 lol

gonna try getting a close up maybe tomorrow

got this too with my zoom, pretty happy with it

[wise trench]

how much better is the image quality on your newer telephotos then the sigma?

[hidden wyvern]

id say theyre better in most aspects really, speed, af, sharpness, similar aperture i guess vs my zoom but the other lens is f/4 at 500mm

sigma -> teleprime -> 100-500

think they all get the image though

[wise trench]

that teleprime one is awesome, such smooth elements

[hidden wyvern]

yeah its pretty fun with the f/4, really blurs things

[hidden wyvern]

1000mm f/10, now i could do this without the tc most likely with this type of bird but, i have no complaints sharpness wise, just would naturally be sharper without irregardless

this is uncropped as well so goes to show how close up it can get, now my 100-500 could do this anyways, but maybe for somehting not as simple a subject this would be great, like a heron closeup

[scarlet tulip]

Seems to render the feathers well

With a good TC I’ve noticed that the issue is less rendering and more a lack of contrast

[hidden wyvern]

I’ll be trying it the small birds next I think, af speed is slow to say the least although most likely the lens at this point

[waxen coyote]

Can I ask you what gear did you use and how far were you from the kingfisher?

[drifting silo]

A7iii + 200-600 g
No idea how far exactly im bad at estimating distance. Far enough for the resulting crop to be 3MP from 24MP these kingfishers are never close enough

But its definitely an improvement from my previous attempts so I guess I managed to get a tad bit closer this time

[waxen coyote]

What was the aperture?

[waxen coyote]

Bro that pic is sick as fuck

[drifting silo]

f6.3 i believe? The lens goes from 5.6-6.3 so its def 6.3 at 600mm

[drifting silo]

Thank

[drifting silo]

Oh but @waxen coyote the raw actually had a messy and rather ugly background which was quite distracting. So this photo did undergo some cleaning. Lr denoise, a few twigs removed, then lastly (in the final version of the photo) I used photoshop for blurring the background more

Background looks even cleaner after photoshop

I am really bad at ps so the best i can do for now is just blurring backgrounds

The raw for reference

[gilded yarrow]

Damn

[green meadow]

All three are taken from almost the same distance also ISO is approximately the same, but each one was taken with a different lens. I cropped pictures and made some minor lightroom adjustments so that they match as well as possible. Lens options are 600mm f6.3 pf, 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 (@400mm) and 300mm f2.8. Can you tell or guess which one is which?

[drifting silo]

How were you able to swap the lenses quickly 😅 or did you have several bodies ready with each lens? All 3 look good and almost identical to my eyes, but I‘m going to guess that the last one is 300 2.8?

[scarlet tulip]

Last one is the 300, middle is the 100-400?

[green meadow]

To be clear these are not taken at the same day. So there is some differences between lighting. All are taken larges aperture possible. I was quite surprised too how similar they are.

[green meadow]

Well done...that is correct. 👌

[drifting silo]

Nice

I was just looking at that oof foot in the last shot

And it just looks very crisp

[green meadow]

It thought that noise level will give 300 mm away. I think it is much more visible because I had to crop it the most.

I made impulse buy and bought old f-mount 300mm f2.8 VR (first version). Have to say that it is surprisingly good. It is after all about 20 years old lens.

I wanted to test it for low light action shots. My first impressions were really promising.

[scarlet tulip]

That’s some nice close shooting

You’d probably have good results with a 1.4x converter on that lens if you wanted more reach, the 300s do well with those

[waxen coyote]

Holy shit! How? Like how?! I have the same lenses (I guess) but my pics are pretty bad even at close range. Btw, I suggest you not to shoot at minimum aperture cuz the pics will look a little worse than shooting like in f/9-f/11 (for your camera I guess)

[waxen coyote]

Is this the raw pic? Wow! You did a great editing!

Btw @drifting silo I tried to use a dentiste too but the pic won’t be as good as yours. Look at this example. The bird was really close but the pic isn’t as detailed as yours ( I was like 5-6 meters) from the subject

[spring vault]

200-600 is plenty sharp enough for 24mp wide open

[drifting silo]

I agree

[drifting silo]

The image quality might improve slightly but imo u also lose a lot by doing that like the iso, ss, dof. So far wide open has been absolutely fine for me.

[drifting silo]

Im not sure what a dentiste is, but it looks to me like the photo has some banding? And maybe some kind of color cast. It could be a lot of things: the weather, the light, the editing, etc

When i got my lens i just tested it on a textured object, base iso and proper exposure. Then zoom in on the textures to see if its sharp

If its sharp in a controlled environment then theres nothing wrong with the lens, its just less predictable when dealing with actual shooting environments (e.g. fog, overcast weather)

[gilded yarrow]

You really dont need to stop down the 200-600, pretty sure its the sharpest telezoom

Wide open, around 3m away from the bird

[drifting silo]

Yes, in good lighting and close distance it is very sharp. Renders feathers nicely. So bad photos are really not the lens‘s fault I think.

[magic crown]

idk what the best the very darken version or the light darken version

but compared to the raw image it's wild

[hidden wyvern]

100-400s generally should be actually, (then there’s the weird 200-400s) but either way these should be good wide open

Only one I can think maybe is the 150-600 (at 600mm) or ancient versions of these lenses needing to be stopped down

[hidden wyvern]

Good lighting, less noise to weaken detail, closer framing, less shadows, etc can help make it look sharper but I think in your case it’s the weather, comes off as a cloudy day

Recently got this on a similar day but took some editing and closer distances, probably 4-7ft away

Good thing if it’s cloudy is that you won’t get harsh sun, just a lack of it, so you may run into shadowy birds, but nothing tweaking settings can’t help

[hidden wyvern]

upon closer look im also noticing artifacts of some kind (maybe banding like someone above mentioned from editing or exposure) whites on this bird's face are blueish on my color corrected screen, the source being a line on its face that should be a dark grey, maybe share the raw if you can, could be an editing thing.

from experience something like topaz photo ai can cause this with its ways of editing , or just general editing

[waxen coyote]

Banding?

[waxen coyote]

It was actually almost dark, but yes, it was a cloudy day too. Btw, please @ me every time you respond to my messages cuz I might not see some answers

[wide flint]

So a spectacled eider was discovered on the island my dad lives earlier this week. First time ever being photographed in Europe and also the first time it's ever spotted anywhere near mainland Europe. Really hoping it's still there this weekend so I can twitch it.

[hidden wyvern]

im guessing the image resulted in something dark as well before editing, issue if that is the case is adding in these artifacts by brightining it and adding colour (if its not there to start with)

only way around that is getting a brighter image somehow to start off with, like lowering shutter speed, increasing iso, etc, sometimes ill do down to 1/100 with my zoom lens

something like this would have no detail if i were brightening it but the sihiloutte i think works, if it were a still bird id prob lower shutter speed but its the fastest bird i can think of finding around here

[spring vault]

omg they're jousting

[hidden wyvern]

all birds seem to fight over food lol^

[gilded yarrow]

Theres such a crazy amount of birds at the feeders rn but the light is exceptionally bad

like iso 25600 bad

[green meadow]

All those 😵 Really impressive selection. 👌 I'm little bit jealous specially about black woodpecker, nuthatch and buzzard.

[magic crown]

same i have like 10 birds at the same feeder

[gilded yarrow]

Black Woodpecker & buzzard werent at the feeders, still relatively close tho

Also the hooded crow was just a normal one merlin just thought it wasnt for some reason haha

There was a spotted one tho lol

[magic crown]

I'm lucky I have a floor so I can take pictures and film them at the same level as them

so i can have shots like that

[lean epoch]

Is it a good shot?

The quality is trash cuz i increased the ISO 😭

It was a cloudy day and the sun was already setting

[hidden wyvern]

pov french fry in an aligator pond

also found a weird duck

[dark ermine]

i love this duck

[gilded yarrow]

Goldeneye I think

[hidden wyvern]

yeah, actually green on the top but dark out today

[drifting silo]

I spotted those once and never again since lol

Cool ducks

if I remember correctly they had this funny mating dance

Hehe

Thats actually what got me to notice them initially. I thought there was smth wrong with em lol

If you rotate 90° ccw it actually looks pretty wonky

[hidden wyvern]

they kept doing something similar when iwas looking at them

odd bird, but i like them

supposedly theres wood ducks too around, gonnna try to chase them if i can find them

all these different types of ducks are showing up lately in winter

... supposedly a coot has been spotted too which has been on my radar as well as the wood duck

just lifer birds all over the place pretty much, although i think ill try to get a "lifer photo" of them if i can, as cold as it is, still motivated to go out, purple sandpiper wasnt enough, although my earlier shot of the pileated woodpecker is good enough for me. Need to do this with a woodduck or something next, but if a saw-whet owl was spotted here instead of misidentified... that would prob be a memorable photo for a very long time

[gilded yarrow]

Theres no coots where you live??

[hidden wyvern]

theyre not too common

usually i think i see one but its actually a loon

[wide flint]

Damn, coots are pretty much all we see around here

Got some cool pics of a coot in the fog, will edit them in a min

[magic crown]

Today i've counted more of 16 birds

And they killing my feeders

Time to set the camera

[drifting silo]

Same

Theres this one area i go to where its just coots and great crested grebes all year round

[green meadow]

Today, a few bullfinches came to delight me.

[magic crown]

The bird of the day is the European Goldfinch
Unfortunately in France it is threatened with extinction and the government is asking to install dedicated feeders for their survival

[scarlet tulip]

Is that the breeding plumage? They’re so bright

[green meadow]

Males are quite bright all year round. Probably there is some alteration depending how worn or fresh feather are. 🤔

[scarlet tulip]

I don’t think our finches ever get this bright

Goldfinches can, I suppose

But nothing that orange outside of maybe the grosbeaks

[spring vault]

Orioles r pretty vibrant

[wide flint]

Bullfinches are so beautiful

[magic crown]

it looks like a canary

[wide flint]

Ironically enough the name for bullfinch in Dutch directly translated means goldfinch

[hidden wyvern]

the bill of the european one from juletek actually reminds me more of a evening grosbeak, which is also a similar size, more of a "large finch"

opens up a lot of "large finches" to compare it to going by that, lots of colorful ones

not so much orange but there is a nice little red finch too i think called a purple finch

[hidden wyvern]

hoping to find a wood duck potentially tomorrow, got an area in mind but its about an hr drive

worth it if i do though (potentially another chance at the weird golden eye too, but closer)

[spring vault]

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1198333040448000104/1329605324327354488/DSC05445-Enhanced-NR.png?ex=678ced34&is=678b9bb4&hm=1316947cf0db5cf682c97b79463ca4bdd482a4cc0a8b8f349c9f7dcde2a9dac0&

forgot to put this here too

I like how the chain of bokeh balls line up with its head

[analog kindle]

got this merg last morning
Haven't been out in a while

[magic crown]

damn awesome shot bro and you cooked so well on the colors

[hidden wyvern]

I’m unsure but I think I found both a loon and more goldeneyes

Will see when I’m home

[hidden wyvern]

first image is todays and second is from my previous trip here, looks like the park has both barrow and common goldeneyes (hard to tell apart)

[hidden wyvern]

lifer of the week although the guys above are lifers too

winter plumage common loon

no wonder theyre hard to find, so many mallards, so many ducks that arent quite ducks^, many cormorants, geese, then theres this little diving bird that has a completely different look one season vs the other, but they have red eyes

its something ill prob revist in the summer for the more colorful variant too, hopefully, with access to ground level shots

[mint warren]

Luv loons

[gilded yarrow]

Even more birds at & around the feeders today, think I got a few nice pics

Still no real in flight pics tho

New Lifer too, didnt see it but heard a bullfinch

[gilded yarrow]

Trash background sadly

[wide flint]

Also slightly missed focus on the head :(

Could've been very nice tho, the backlighting is really good when it comes through the wings like that

[gilded yarrow]

yup

Super hard to get the focus on the head without eye af

Oooh sparrowhawk infront of my window

Like 80m away tho lmao

Beautiful bird

[wide flint]

Yup I feel you. I'm still so mad that ever since I got my Z8 it has just been super grey and foggy weather, haven't really been able to get ay in flight shots and use my bird eye focus that way

[gilded yarrow]

Maybe I'll upgrade to an a7iv just for bird eye af lmao

[wide flint]

Niiicee, sparrowhawks are so cool

[gilded yarrow]

And flippy screen, I actually miss that

Yeah, I got 1 good pic of one while I was looking for that kingfisher haha you might remember

[wide flint]

imo it's a worthwhile investment. The mirrorless camera's that are on the market now will definetly stay relevant for the coming years. Since the improvements in technology have gotten so far now that there won't be any super huge leaps forward like we've had in the last 10 years

[wide flint]

ahhaha yeah I do, I myself haven't got any pictures of sparrowhawks. Don't really live near any woods where you commonly see them

[gilded yarrow]

Yup, and I can probably sell my a7iii without real loss since I got it for only 1.2k completely new including a 50mm f1.8 which I already sold for 120€

Could probably sell it for 1.1k or 1.2k like new and get an a7iv for like 1.8k

[wide flint]

Yeah probably a little less, the a7iii goes for 1k on mpb rn. But would indeed not be a huge amount of money to upgrade

And you'll also get more MP with a7iv right?

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah pretty sure its 33 vs 24 or something

[wide flint]

yeah ur correct, higher MP is so nice

I love how much I can crop in with the Z8

Shots that were absolutely shit on my a6400 are still quite saveable on the Z8

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah especially since 33 is in the middle between something like an a7rv which is bad at high iso and 24 where I sometimes wish for a bit more in some Situation

A7iv would be amazing

Man I only had the a7iii for a year But that bird eye af, 33mp and flippy screen would be so sick

I think I'll definitely upgrade this year

[wide flint]

Not much wrong with upgrading that soon. I also upgraded from my a6400 after only 14 months

[spring vault]

higher megapixels makes up for poorer per pixel iso performance

after denoise it'll have higher detailed pics than your 33mp

[gilded yarrow]

Oh wtf, a7iv only has 6 fps in non compressed raw

[spring vault]

gotta use craw on a7 cams

[gilded yarrow]

Burst rate doesnt drop with my cam

Its the same with craw and normal raw

[spring vault]

well u get over double the buffer at least

[wide flint]

Yeah the burst rates on sony cams are really kinda sad

Except the A1 and A9 lines ofc

[spring vault]

Sony doesn't want a7 to compete with those lol

cripple hammer

[wide flint]

I mean other brands have cheaper high burst rate cams and seem to be doing just fine

[gilded yarrow]

If only I'd have the money for an a9iii or a1ii

[spring vault]

ppl don't switch brands often if a7iv did 20fps then fewer Sony ppl would buy a1

unacceptable!!

[gilded yarrow]

Thats really the only reason I'd think about keeping my a7iii instead of getting an a7iv or a7riv

a7cii would be great if it'd atleast have a Joystick and 2 card slots

[spring vault]

wait for a7v

might be cool

[gilded yarrow]

And probably crazy expensive

Probably atleast 2.8k

[spring vault]

z6iii was $2.5k

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah we'll see, if the a7v gets officially announced and it has like 40mp and 20 fps uncompressed raw I'll buy it, otherwise I'll probably go with the a7iv

[hidden wyvern]

interesting birding day today but was at least fun

might be a bit hazey

think i got somehting i like but its darker looking

[hidden wyvern]

Camo bird

[gilded yarrow]

This isnt fair lmao, watching a video and that dude is living in the middle of nowhere right next to a forest with like 50 birds at his feeders

I need a place like that too

Bro has an a1ii with a 300 2.8 too

A place like that literally doesnt exist where I live

maybe like 300km away or something

Crazy

[gilded yarrow]

Why does the bokeh look funny

[scarlet tulip]

funny in what way?

teleconverters can mess with defocus, so can fresnel lenses

this is a fresnel lens with a converter, so it'll look worse than it might

[gilded yarrow]

Those rings around the bokeh balls

[scarlet tulip]

afaik that's a property of fresnel lenses when used in telephotos

[gilded yarrow]

Ahh okay

[scarlet tulip]

one of their disadvantages

[hidden wyvern]

I remember something similar with the 800 f/11

Don’t mind it much but looks a bit odd vs other lenses

[green meadow]

Where is this place? Looks lot like Norway, Sweden or Finland.

Found it seems to be in Sweden. Nice video btw. More of vibing than hard technical jargon.

Exceptionally well placed stick. 😂

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah it was pretty nice to watch

[green meadow]

It is not always like that, this is taken also with pf lens. Maybe size and brightness of those out of focus highlights might affect too. 🤔 But I think that bokeh on your photo looks more interesting that it bothers me. This would be a really nice picture if the bird were sharper.

[wide flint]

Yeah, love Olle his videos tho

Honestly having a property like that somewhere in Sweden or Norway is my retirement dream

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah same

Thinking about asking the owner of the forest near me if I can put up a feeding Station with my tent near it somewhere at the edge of the forest

Not sure if its possible or worth it especially since its already getting warmer again tho

But that would be so sick

[wide flint]

Definitely worth a shot. It will be cold enough to feed for probably at least 2 months

Im thinking about building a diy wildlife pond in my moms backyard. It's big enough, but it's kinda in the middle of just fields so not sure if there would be that much birds visiting

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah true

And even in the summer it might be nice if the birds know theres a place with food

[wide flint]

Yeah exactly. Even in summer you can feed occasionally. Just not too much and too often.

Can even set up some kinda water bath, which will definitely help in the summer

[gilded yarrow]

Yeaa not sure about that since the spot which I think would be best light wise etc is 3km away from my home and I dont have a car lmao, not trying to carry like 10l of water there every day or something

[wide flint]

I mean a small water bath for birds is only like 3L

And it will also just fill naturally by rain of you leave it out long enough

[scarlet tulip]

I wonder if the source of the defocus is also a cause, I was shooting against a background of wet leaves that lit up in the sun and maybe that changes the look

You get really good results with the 600PF, did you have a 500PF before?

[gilded yarrow]

Or itll all evaporate because theres no rain once it actually gets warmer lmao

[wide flint]

Then you can take something like a plastic 2L bottle with you when you go and you refill it every now and then

[green meadow]

That could affect too, specially if there were actual water drops. Thanks and I have been really happy with it. Sometimes I hope that it could focus bit closer and of course aperture could be wider. Yep I had 500mm pf before and it was also really good. That's why I didn't have any doubts when I had the change to update to 600mm pf.

[scarlet tulip]

Did you adapt the 500 to a Z body? I’m looking at a 500PF, if it’s fast to focus on the mirrorless cameras then I’ll likely grab one

[green meadow]

Yes and it worked flawlessly even with the FTZ-adapter.

[scarlet tulip]

Good to know, this could save a lot of money

[green meadow]

on 600 stabilization is bit better and af might be slightly faster. But af also on 500mm worked really reliably with z-body.

[scarlet tulip]

I have heard that the Z VR is supposed to be better; yah

On my 300PF its alright, but the lens is short

[magic crown]

Time to take somes

[green meadow]

I have now used intensively that old 300mm f2.8 and it is definitely too short in most cases.

[scarlet tulip]

Probably a nice choice for feeder shots, but short everywhere else

[green meadow]

yep, and I hope that I'll learn to take some environmental shots with it. I mean that subject is bit smaller and more of its habitat is visible.

I'm currently watching Trump's inauguration. Is anyone else worried how Trumps decisions will affect to environment and global warming?

[wheat hare]

Everyone but his cult is

It’s depressing

[wide flint]

Yeah, his speech is batshit insane. Fascism is officially openly here and far right is on the rise in many parts of the world. We were already doing bad considering the climate under liberal democracy, but this will be absolutely devastating.

[green meadow]

I didn't have guts to say that but you said what I thought.

[wheat hare]

This is through glass but whatever

[gilded yarrow]

I think I'll actually be able to build a feeding Station on the edge of the forest relatively close to me

[wheat hare]

might be too warm I can't actually tell on this monitor

[wheat hare]

damn trees

[scarlet tulip]

Wish we got more juncos here

[wide flint]

Nice, having a proper feeding station with a hide next to it is amazing

[gilded yarrow]

Is that a spotted Woodpecker or a different one

Thinking it might be the smaller one, not sure what the english Name is

[wide flint]

It's actually a middle spotted woodpecker!! Not sure how it is in your area, but they are pretty damn rare in the Netherlands. Key differences between the middle and great spotted woodpecker are that the middle has a red cap in adulthood, great have it only when young. And the great one has a black stripe that runs over it's cheek, the middle has a fully white cheek.

[gilded yarrow]

Ohh thats sick, also good to know the difference

[dark ermine]

sweet lil sparrow - and a whole lotta compression

[green meadow]

Here's some of my training shots where bird is intentionally smaller on the frame. Any thoughts, is this something to go for or should I keep filling the frame?

[scarlet tulip]

3 and 6 work best I think

I find that wider shots work best when there’s some kind of isolation- could be having just the bird and branch in focus on a defocused background, could be color contrast

Second one, with a more consistent background color, would be really nice

Same with the bullfinch

[green meadow]

Thanks for the feedback. On wider shots that isolation is quite tricky part. Background is important on tight shots too, but on these it's role is really emphasized. I kind of like 4 and 5, not sure thou if those represent birds surroundings any better. I think that 3 and 6 are nice, but also just my regular work if I crop them tight. After all my plan is to learn something new and evolve. 😅

https://onnirantanen.kuvat.fi/Porfolio/ this guy has really nice touch to what he is doing. There is variation between wide and tight. Most of the wide ones are exquisite imo.

[scarlet tulip]

I like his diversity of focal lengths too

[green meadow]

yep, like this must be well under 100mm.

[scarlet tulip]

Wonder if it’s an auto-capture shot

Easier to get close if there’s no one actually by the camera

[green meadow]

true true. Auto-capture or some kind of remote shutter release thingy.

Well not auto-capture like one on Z9, because it is taken with old reliable D500 and 14-24mm.

[scarlet tulip]

Remote release, probably

14-24 is a really neat choice here, super wide

[green meadow]

definitely not the most basic bird photo focal length. 😄

[scarlet tulip]

Do you use a hide or tent when shooting? You get quite close, it’s impressive

[green meadow]

This is my hide at the bird feeder. I also have tent, but I use it quite rarely. Some birds that aren't shy it is actually bit easier to shoot outside of the hide. Hide is also kind of limiting (you can't easily get to different angles).

But it is as well necessity with shy birds.

[scarlet tulip]

This is helpful, thanks

I’ve been thinking of getting some kind of camouflage

[hidden wyvern]

wider bird shots is always fun to mess with but can be tough , 3 and 6 i feel the same as the above, although 4 is almost there too

[hidden wyvern]

(responding to this) but yeah, feel like the wide shot needs a point if that makes sense, like in the first image here clearly theres two birds fighting, in the second image its a beach with a seagull on it (fitting for the bird) , rather than just a seagull

sometimes i find it works well for flying birds actually lol, one of my favorite shots last year

maybe for the small birds you could try emphasing the size of the bird with the background/foreground somehow, im trying to do similar stuff but its not quite getting there (really tough when a tree doesnt cooperate)

[green meadow]

That is probably the case. Wider shots needs most of the time some point of interest besides the actual subject to make them work. I guess that is what makes it also much harder. I will keep practicing because learning and trying new stuff keeps things interesting. 👍

[wide flint]

Damn that is a really nice hide. Did you build it yourself?

[green meadow]

Yes I did. Planned and built it. I have found some points to improve for version 2.0. Roof should be longer or some additional lid for camera opening would be nice so that it would provide better cover for lens when it is raining. There is no heating and proper ventilation so it is damn cold and windows freeze up in winter and it gets super hot in summer. 😂

I made it from elements and bolted it together so that it could be moved. But elements are too heavy for that. And assembly and disassembly is too much of a job. So it has been on the same spot ever since I built it.

After a one week woodpecker made hole to it. I guess it gave a good echo for drumming. 🤣

[scarlet tulip]

Have you had anything try to make a nest in there yet?

[hidden wyvern]

something i meant to say is low to the ground shots are fun for this type of stuff as well, plus, never know what youll find sometimes lol

if i zoomed in on the mother goose it wouldve cut out the baby one, and well hummingbirds, theyre very anti camera person anyway

[gilded yarrow]

Hell yeah

Bad background and waaay too high iso but sick seeing one at the feeders

[wide flint]

Nice that you did it yourself. I'm thinking about building my own wildlife pond and hide somewhere this spring. Did you use any build plans or designed them yourself?

[green meadow]

Just bees and ants. And some small birds tried to break those fabric covers for camera openings.

[green meadow]

I did all by my self (well got some help from my father and wife). I also made technical drawings and calculations for materials as well. My inner engineer kicked in. 😅 Plans were quite good, but I had to do some alterations on the go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LvaX748pVI This kind of pond could be really nice. Last summer I tried to make a small puddle, but it was too shallow. Water vaporized away after a day or two.

[wide flint]

This was exactly the video I got my inspiration from :D. He makes such amazing content, absolutely love it.

Still debating on if I should make it deep enough and put fish in it so it could maybe attract the Kingfisher, not sure if that is feasible

[wide flint]

Really nice and very detailed technical plans! I think i'll make it a bit more simple with just pallets like the guy in the video did, but i'll have to see

[green meadow]

That would be really cool. I have no idea what kind it should be that there is enough food and oxygen for fishes to stay alive. 🤔

[wide flint]

As long as the fish are relatively small it shouldnt be too big or deep

And Kingfishers also prefer pretty shallow spots to fish, so it shouldnt be too hard

[hidden wyvern]

a puffin was spotted nearby... would love to see it closeup if i can

i guessit is very cold here lately

[magic crown]

what do you guys think ?

[spring vault]

u kinda clipped the neck at the top with ur crop

[magic crown]

it's in the original

[spring vault]

can fix that in Photoshop ez

[magic crown]

nah bro i want the natural scale not a IA generated scale

[spring vault]

there's non AI tools in photoshop

good ol clone stamp

[magic crown]

except for the crop what do you think ?

[spring vault]

I like the idea

execution could be better with higher effort masking but that's more work

wish there was some contrast between the black part of the beak and the background

[magic crown]

it's not the finished but it's the idea

[magic crown]

better ?

[spring vault]

yea

[gilded yarrow]

Holy shit what the fuck

I didnt know that was possible

[wide flint]

Yeah albino birds are possible in pretty much all species afaik

But cool that only the dark blue feathers are white ish

[hidden wyvern]

found a new bird for me but it had to be the weirdest thing ever so need better shots next time lol (tree creeper)

acts practically the same as a nuthatch

which are, unique in their own way

[spring vault]

omg they're friends

[hidden wyvern]

The 500 f/4 with 2x is decent enough on small birds, mind you a bird that climbs up trees with a very heavy lens wasn’t fun

Functionally fine

[carmine fox]

do any of you use the 200-500
apparently the 200-500 af speed is "lacking" but I'm not entirely sure if that's "lacking for a supertele" or "this would be bad on any lens"
I would hate to spend that much and have even worse luck with flying birds

[scarlet tulip]

If you go check Flickr, you’ll find a lot of really nice bird images done on the 200-500

[carmine fox]

I think i might just cope about the extra 100mm and get the 200-500, I found a basically brand new one locally for about $100 cheaper than an online 150-600

[scarlet tulip]

I’d take a 200-500 over anything third party

[carmine fox]

yeah after some consideration and ehrm
learning about the tamron going all schizo and needing you to reseat the lens every 400 shots it seems more attractive

also I think I was just trying to beat fomo
+100mm isn't that much and it doesn't really get any better when you need to stop up anyway

[gilded yarrow]

Holy shit guys I just saw 3 Black woodpeckers at once

1 of them lol

[gilded yarrow]

HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK

I'm shaking

Still far away but WHAT THE FUCK

at my local pond or whatever

Thats the most chill kingfisher ive ever seen

@wide flint @green meadow

I already put the cam away because the only battery I got with me has 6% left

AND THEN IT JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE

AND HES FUCKING TAME AS FUCK

Okay, went home, got new batteries and my tripod and omw back to the kingfisher now

[gilded yarrow]

there he is lol

[wide flint]

Niiiceee dude

Happy you finally found one that will actually sit in front of ur lens

[gilded yarrow]

Lmaoo yeah, atleast I hope he will

No really good pic yet but I'm 99% sure it'll work here

He's not there rn but the light is insanely bad anyways

[gilded yarrow]

Back home for today since it started raining, no good kingfisher pic yet

Will continue tomorrow

[wide flint]

Had a hawfinch visit my grandmas garden today, but right at the moment I was inside drinking coffee. Never showed itself again when I was outside...

[cedar beacon]

Hi people! Got a photo of this bird and would love help identifying! I thought maybe a fat morning dove that was cold, but I’m unsure.

[spring vault]

I think you're right

[cedar beacon]

Thank you

[gilded yarrow]

Cropped like crazy lol its like 2mp

[wheat hare]

nice

[hidden wyvern]

Golden hour duck

Also eye pain from looking at shiny water

[gilded gale]

Had some very bold kinglets on my walk this morning.

[gilded yarrow]

Of course he decides to sit in the middle of a bush where I cant get close to him

[gilded yarrow]

back home, no pic but still happy because I got to watch him for a few minutes, usually I never see them for longer than a few seconds

[cedar beacon]

That’s such a cool bird! What kind is it?

[gilded yarrow]

Its a european kingfisher been trying to get a good pic of one for a few months already and found one at my local lake yesterday haha

[cedar beacon]

Oh that’s awesome! I figured it was some sort of kingfisher. I don’t think we have them in my location.. let me check

[gilded yarrow]

Where are you from?

That one lives pretty much everywhere in europe and even asia iirc

[wide flint]

NA iirc, but there's still the belted kingfisher in most of NA

[gilded yarrow]

Yup, and the belted one is suuper sick too

Also a lot bigger than the european one I think

Damn yeah, up to 2x as big

[wide flint]

Finally had enough lighting today to try some in flight shots for the first time since I got the Z8

In flight shots are honestly fucking hard to nail. @green meadow how do you do it? Do you prefocus a little in front or behind a branch you expect birds to land on? Because trying to let the autofocus follow them doesn't really work if they're flying straight towards you.

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah in flight sucks lmao, I always try to focus on the bird with lock on af and then try to guess when the bird flies away, hasnt worked yet tho

Need an a7iv for that bird eye af

[wide flint]

Even with bird eye af I'm struggling 😭

[scarlet tulip]

send some of that light over here

[gilded yarrow]

fr lol

[wide flint]

Yeah it was gorgeous, backlight reflecting off of leaves in the background

[scarlet tulip]

it's all cold winter hell up north

[wide flint]

First time I have actually gotten good like in like 2 months tho

[cedar beacon]

I’m in the United States so it’s probably not here, but we have other kingfishers.

[gilded yarrow]

Ahh yeah gotta look for the belted kingfishers then haha

[scarlet tulip]

they're the skittish ones, too

it's a pain

[gilded yarrow]

Pretty sure all of them are skittish

The one at my lake is the 1st one I've seen that isnt insanely skittish

[cedar beacon]

Those ones look cool too!

They have a Mohawk LOL

[gilded yarrow]

Yup, and you dont need to get as close since theyre a lot bigger

[green meadow]

• I try to find place where birds take off regularly sideways compared to me. That way af needs to do least adjustments and might keep birds head in focus.
• Finding best compromise between distance to the bird, aperture and focal length to get depth of field that gives enough room to keep bird in focus but also gives enough background separation.
• Landing is difficult, it need prefocusing and luck (well takeoff shots needs luck too).
• Also key is taking lots and lots of pictures. I think that ratio is about 1000 useless : 1 OK shot. 😂

If someone knows how to get sharp shots when small bird flies towards you. I would like to hear tips to that. I, don't think that I have any success to that type of photos. If i do it has been only lucky shot.

[scarlet tulip]

In my experience it’s luck

Autofocus doesn’t like movement towards the camera unless there’s significant contrast

[green meadow]

Yep and that combined to fast and unpredictable movement of bird taking off...AF doesn't have a change.

[dark ermine]

If you can find some way to funnel their likely flight zone, direct the traffic, set something up temporarily to lock your focus on, then wait for them to come through, lots of variables to line up for that though

[green meadow]

Yep that is probably the only way. And then it comes to luck what kind of poses or wing positions you will get. 👍

Even with the side ways movement it is really often something like this. It is kind of in focus as I wish. But it is heavily cropped and has so much noise that I lose almost all the detail when I try to denoise it.

We had terrible weather all weekend as gray as coal tit. Cloudy, +1 C and it should be about -10 to -30 C and sunny in January here.

[dark ermine]

Granted there's no contest in terms of sharpness compared to the second one you posted, still way better than what I've managed to get through abusing my poor d7500s shutter via continuous shooting ala 'spray and pray' 😄

Also pretty salvageable, just running it through mobile LRs masked background blur knocked a good bit out.

[green meadow]

Yes it is possible to get something even OK for small screen results out of it, but it's not quite there what I want. I don't know if I'm being too much of a pixel peeper. 😅

[wide flint]

Thank you for the tips and insights Antti :D. Will for sure just have to keep trying and hope for more sun the coming times so I can actually have high enough shutter speeds for in flight shots. Btw what focus mode do you use for those shots. Is it the 3d tracking or the auto area? I used the auto area, but I feel it is a bit less consistent on busy backgrounds compared to the 3d tracking.

Also talked to my mom and she was super excited about my plans to build a pond in the backyard. Will be a nice project to work on this spring.

[green meadow]

I usually use 3D tracking or Auto-area AF for this type of fly shots. For me auto-area has worked quite well, but background might affect lot how it can handle the situation.

Great and keep us posted how your project proceeds. 👍

[hidden wyvern]

probably just single point AF and luck (half the time eye AF on small birds gets confused by similar colours, think like chickadee which has dark colours on its head and eye)

maybe even a focus limiter? like make sure the focus would be close rather than whereever the camera just decides lol

think these are the best i got but theyre not even coming towards me

[spring vault]

big bird didnt want its picture taken

[scarlet tulip]

"see ya suckers"

[spring vault]

saw a kingfisher tho

3mp crop

[gilded yarrow]

Man belted kingfishers look so sick

[carmine fox]

my first pileated woodpecker 🙂

I didn't get anything better unfortunately
they're quite skiddish and like to hang around the treetops
hopefully some more reach will help in future encounters

[gilded gale]

pretty boi

[gilded yarrow]

its supposed to rain tomorrow, I'll still try to get a kingfisher pic

25 hours or something and not a single actually good photo, I'm probably the worlds most unlucky wildlife photographer

[drifting silo]

Adding salt to ur injury: I only go out about once a month for bird photos (tight schedule) and I happen to just encounter Kingfishers with no prior dedicated planning

[gilded yarrow]

That happened to me twice

one of those times was on saturday, got this pic

[drifting silo]

Ugh I‘ve been trying to photograph woodpeckers as well but have no luck. It‘s always enough time to notice them and clearly see them with my eyes but as soon as I have my eye on the viewfinder theyre just gone

And the issue is also that they are always too high up, likely never giving us photographers a good angle

[drifting silo]

Yeah I just go out with no expectations atp. I let nature surprise me

Even if that means getting absolutely nothing

I consider it a nice day out, got some exercise, and I have improved my ‚patience‘

[carmine fox]

precisely

[gilded yarrow]

Yeah definitely

[gilded yarrow]

Ohh what bird is that??

That looks cool

[scarlet tulip]

dark-eyed juncos

winter birds here

[carmine fox]

we have those here as well
interesting little things

Now, this isn't anything spectacular but I am ecstatic I caught this, right place right time, I think it's one of if not my first real "in flight" shot

I also caught one coming towards me but the background is a bit messier than I'd like

I could probably do a tighter crop but it was already pretty far away

[daring imp]

Curse of the cam. Eagle sittin in a nice spot but ofcourse i dont have my camera 🥲

[magic crown]

just finished this one i've tried to put a simmilar color tone for the bush and the flamingo

[dark minnow]

So there was this big snow storm that hit my city yesterday so I decided to go shoot and I stumbled across these guys. The swamp sparrow and the white-throated sparrow where new ones for me. I also managed to refresh my song sparrow pictures. If y'all have any feedback, I'll gladly take it

[gilded yarrow]

Wish me luck guys, looking for the kingfisher again once I get home

[wide flint]

Nice, it's sunny in Germany as well today right?

[gilded yarrow]

Only for like 2 hours max today tho

[gilded yarrow]

Yeees finally

Waited 3 months for this

[wide flint]

Yeah, fucking finally some good light

[gilded yarrow]

Now I just need to find the kingfisher and get close to it, didnt see it at all yesterday

[gilded yarrow]

motherfucker is hiding from me

bitch

[gilded yarrow]

Well damn I couldve gotten a nice shot but missed it because I saw a cormorant

[wide flint]

L

[gilded yarrow]

tiniest bit of feather Detail visible lmao

Still didnt get close to him

Back home for today, no pic once again

cant believe it

[broken mantle]

Last trip i was too focused on some monkeys lol. Everyone else got pics of a pair of pied stilts kung fu fighting

[gilded yarrow]

You seem to live in an interesting place lmao

[dark ermine]

white-throated sparrows are super common right now here in AL. looking at their map though looks like that's normal for nonbreeding, but could swear I didn't see any last year

ebird says otherwise lol

[drifting silo]

Indonesian nature

[carmine fox]

What strap do y'all use for teles?
I don't want to hang a 2kg lens off my body and trust the stock strap

[hidden wyvern]

i use a pd slide but something similar and well known is blackrapid shoulder straps

[carmine fox]

the slide looks solid and I was thinking of getting one before I even considered my new lens but I'm a bit confused on how to make it all work

the blackrapid was another recommendation but I wear a pack and usually a thick jacket so I'm not sure how nicely that would all play together

[hidden wyvern]

i just have two pd anchor things, one on foot of the lens and one on bottom of the camera

[spring vault]

I just wrist strap and carry it by the foot

[hidden wyvern]

that would work too with enough strength really, personally i just walk for hours so i adopted the slide method

with my heavier lens i hold it by both the foot and the strap just incase

[spring vault]

when I get tired I swap hands

or stick it in my backpack

[hidden wyvern]

also speaking of which with the heavier lens, aside from me aggressively attaching/detaching from the lens i havent noticed any issue handholding the 500 f/4 with it (aside from tiring more)

not like its snapped off or something, seems the anchors really are tough

[spring vault]

yeah PD anchors are indestructible

[dark minnow]

Yeah, it was the same for me last year, I saw absolutely zero white throated one but I saw like five the other day

[scarlet tulip]

The strap goes on the tripod foot in this case

I like Blackrapids for big lenses like that

But with a backpack perhaps consider a non harness strap; just make sure to hang from the lens foot

Or the sling points on the lens body if applicable

[carmine fox]

Yeah that's what I was going to do, I'm gonna have to try and figure something out
I've see the 180-600 Zs have loops in the actual collar
however I'm not sure if the 200-500 has the same

worst case I'll just find a good quality QD swivel mount and see if I can attach it to the foot

I know they make them for the tripod threads so that might be an option

[wheat hare]

qd to lens foot that's about it if I'm not carrying it by hand

[spring vault]

my 500 doesn't have any anchor points which is annoying

it's not that heavy for a telephoto but it's still pretty long

I have an anchor attached to a plate attached to the foot

but I wouldve liked dedicated anchor spots in better places

on the 180-600 the strap lugs are on the foot which is removable so if you remove the foot you're outta anchor points

some ppl dropped their lenses by the removable foot knob getting loose but I think that's mostly a skill issue

[wide flint]

Yeah, for sure a skill issue

No way you get that loose by accident

[drifting silo]

Why are both anchors on one side

[drifting silo]

I bought my tele used and the previous owner had tightened the foot so much that I can‘t get it off at all now. I guess it‘s just gonna be permanently attached

But I may just be weak, I suck at opening jars

[gilded yarrow]

pd slide

feels great even after 2 hours if walking through the forest lmao

[magic crown]

quick question guys if i want to upgrade my tele to a better lens what you suggest me
the 200-600mm from sony or the 200-600 from sigma ?
i have the budget for both but i'm keeping my actual tamron to continue

[wide flint]

Pd slide, it's great

[broken mantle]

I use the leofoto QD strap/sling

Plus the leofoto arca foot replacement for my lens(i met 3+ birders here with similar setups)

[broken mantle]

Or the PD slide too.

[carmine fox]

I think to emulate a single point strap

[carmine fox]

lens:acquired
now to hand hold it until I can get a qd swivel and decent strap

[finite flower]

thats pretty smart

[finite flower]

im thinking of the blackrapid sport breathe

but its so expensive

[carmine fox]

indeed
I am a little heated my lens collar doesn't have those machined strap attachment points but eh

seems like a rather large design oversight tho

[wide flint]

Conditions were serene today

Have a really nice takeoff shot of a reed bunting.

And a Kingfisher that's about 2 pixels big

[daring imp]

And when i do have my cam eagles are too far away 🥲

[gilded yarrow]

definitely Sony

[scarlet tulip]

Sigma 500/5.6

[carmine fox]

hell yeah

[carmine fox]

we are still frozen over for a good few months yet

[scarlet tulip]

this is from one of a few open spots in the ice

[carmine fox]

do you guys have any general tips for finding subjects within the viewfinder at 300+
I know the whole one eye open technique but I think I severely underestimated the zoom

[scarlet tulip]

i sight over the camera

pop up to find the bird, align, then get down to the finder

[carmine fox]

I am exceedingly happy with the sharpness of the 200-500
af is better than expected as well, I look forward to catching some ducks in summer

[outer totem]

I'm a bit new to photography as a whole compared to some of the other people here.. I was wondering if I could get some advice? Was the bad lighting on these photos preventable (ie: based on my camera's settings?) or was it just bad luck/was it just a case of me standing in a bad place?

I was using a Sigma 150-600mm Telephoto Lens (and a Nikon D3500 body)

[gilded yarrow]

Well the bird is backlit in all of those pics so not really anything you can do about that setting wise

Unless you got a setting that moves the sun to the other side lmao

[outer totem]

I'd rather it be a case of my or the subject's positioning than something settings-related, at least 😅 -- thank you though! Good to knoooow

[wide flint]

Background is also really busy, loads of branches everywhere. Getting birds more isolated without too much distractions wil make for better photos

[carmine fox]

like others have said mostly environmental factors
however with a tighter crop and some decent processing you could probably save them

[dark ermine]

lighting is tricky to understand imo, which direction to expect shadow based on light location, ie sun or studio lights. I like this tool http://www.zvork.fr/vls/ for playing around with lighting position

and like percocet said, these aren't so harsh that they're not salvageable in processing, esp via masking, reduce the highlights in the background, reduce shadows in the subject - quick rough example

[dark ermine]

house finch and a northern cardinal hanging out (waiting their turn really)

[carmine fox]

at worst it's a class on what to do differently next time, and salvage sub-optimal lighting
I've recovered far worse lighting

[dark ermine]

exactly, the editing technology we have now makes almost anything salvageable i think, save for maybe completely under / over exposed and there's just 0 data left. even at that point can gen ai if small enough of an area

for example the original of that one ^ end result isn't amazing but not bad for 10mins saved from an underexposed plus general clean up

[outer totem]

Thank you all so much for the advice!! I wasn't expecting so many people to chime in at all, but I really appreciate it! I'll keep it all in mind for sure

[gilded yarrow]

Yep, like 60% of wildlife is editing

[gilded yarrow]

Some examples as to why editing is so important lmao

[daring imp]

Yup its the most annoying part haha

[gilded yarrow]

Nahhh I love editing