really hard to hand hold at 840mm and it is croped but just a littlie
Casual photographer learning new hobby. I want to learn how to take such amazingly beautiful bird shots as I am seeing so many of you guys posting. Gary, I especially like your work...any tips you (or any other posters) could give me. I have a 7D and 100-400L and a cheap $30 tripod that broke. I need to get a good tripod and monopod ( and heads) for birds, flowers and maybe landscapes. Don't want cheap any more but since I'm not a pro, I don't need a Rolls Royce. I don't mind paying for good quality. What do you use or recommend? Also, I've only shot jpegs ( I know I must learn to use RAW) and some pp with Canon's DPP. What do you use and how do you do any pp? I have been reading this forum for several months and am learning a lot from all of you, so this isn't meant only for Gary. Thanks everyone for your time to give advice and show case your work.
The Lens and Cam should be good to start with for medium and large birds. For the small ones and difficult light you will at one point need to move up (1D IV or 1D X or 5D MK III with 500 or 600mm lens) but this a very expensive step.
For the tripod: I have this combination which is a real lightweight and small working horse:
http://www.gitzo.com/ser2-6x-leveling-4s-g-l-long http://acratech.net/product.php?productid=76This will be sufficient for uses with
ALL normal lenses up to 300mm f2.8.
Once you buy a really big lens you will need more support, but I would not buy it yet in your case as this gear is much heavier and bulkier and you will likely leave it at home more often if you don't already own the big lenses where it would be essential.
Btw many pictures here are handheld, the trick is to use a little higher ISO and get the shutter down to 1/1000 (better 1/1600) sec or less (this is also good to stop bird motion - as these guys move quite fast most of the time) ... Hope this helps