Show your Bird Portraits

[Click]

First time I share photos here so hope you like them.

I'm still very much a beginner. Only got into birds/wildlife during lockdown 1.0 here in the UK and so far I've been limited to the local parks in Bristol.
Can't really complain though since we do have a good number of different species from Kingfishers to buzzards, kestrels, peregrines and sparrowhaks (plus all your usual tits and songbirds)

Beautiful pictures. I especially like the Kingfisher. Keep posting your bird pictures.

 

[maulanawale]

Beautiful pictures. I especially like the Kingfisher. Keep posting your bird pictures.

THanks! Will do
We have a breeding pair of kingfishers around so they're very easy to spot all year round and then the juvs during summer.

 

[dpc]

Mourning dove sitting for a portrait

Canon R + adapter + Sigma 150-600mm C

 

[Click]

Nice shot, dpc.

 

[IslanderMV]

Juvenile Red Knot and a Little Blue Heron Preening. (lifetime bird for me)

 

[AlanF]

Just one for the humour (that's for @Jack Douglas). My sunflower hearts feeder, the Canadian Squirrel Buster, is meant to be proof against squirrels and larger birds as their weight pulls the cage down to cover the feeding apertures. This Great Spotted Woodpecker (Jack loves them) is just light enough. She normally is very skittish but is letting me get closer.

 

[Click]

Nice pictures, Islander.

 

[Click]

Cool gif, Alan.

 

[Click]

Lesser Yellowlegs

 

[AlanF]

At home, we've been enjoying hummingbirds at our feeder. I noticed one perching in our trees and thought I might as well see if I can get a decent photo of it. So I got out the R5 and the RF 800 with RF 1.4x TC (that I just leave on it). I got some crops of one in the same spot in the early morning sun, about 11 to 12 meters away. Here's the first half of those that were decent enough to keep. PL4 with 0.7 lens sharpening and deep prime output. There's a lot of "very similar" poses, but after culling down 800+ photos to just 19, I didn't feel like culling them down any further.



Cheers.

The upside of 20 fps is that sometimes you can get just the right shot in an action setting and it's great for making these little gifs. The downside is that you can get just too many shots to plough through. I went out for just a few seconds for the woodpecker and got 120 images. I don't know what I'll do if I am ever able to go on a safari or birding holiday. Self restraint and using ES only when necessary I suppose.

 

[usern4cr]

The upside of 20 fps is that sometimes you can get just the right shot in an action setting and it's great for making these little gifs. The downside is that you can get just too many shots to plough through. I went out for just a few seconds for the woodpecker and got 120 images. I don't know what I'll do if I am ever able to go on a safari or birding holiday. Self restraint and using ES only when necessary I suppose.

I've found that for for taking bursts of photos, I've given up on 20 fps because 1) I get too many photos afterwards (in the thousands) to wade through in post and the hobby isn't fun for me then, 2) I don't like losing 2 stops of DR when there are many times when I desperately need to pull detail out of shadows, 3) if I want to have a crazy high fps and can tolerate the loss of 2 stops then I'd rather just take an 8K raw video at 30fps which I can easily replay and focus on any snippets to pull a (almost FF) raw photo from, and 4) if I just want short bursts of FF raw photos I'll use the slowest fps setting so that the number I get in post is 2 to 3x less than 20fps and then it's not as daunting to wade through and I still get the max DR for pulling shadow detail. So EFCS in slowest FPS continuous mode is my default and I press & release the shutter quickly for single photos.

It sure would be nice if Canon would allow the user to set the fps they want for the various shutter modes.

 

[JPAZ]

At home, we've been enjoying hummingbirds at our feeder. I noticed one perching in our trees and thought I might as well see if I can get a decent photo of it. So I got out the R5 and the RF 800 with RF 1.4x TC (that I just leave on it). I got some crops of one in the same spot in the early morning sun, about 11 to 12 meters away. Here's the first half of those that were decent enough to keep. PL4 with 0.7 lens sharpening and deep prime output. There's a lot of "very similar" poses, but after culling down 800+ photos to just 19, I didn't feel like culling them down any further.

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Cheers.

Surrounding foliage and the size of these birds always makes them tough to capture. Nice series.

 

[JPAZ]

I've found that for for taking bursts of photos, I've given up on 20 fps because 1) I get too many photos afterwards (in the thousands) to wade through in post and the hobby isn't fun for me then, 2) I don't like losing 2 stops of DR when there are many times when I desperately need to pull detail out of shadows, 3) if I want to have a crazy high fps and can tolerate the loss of 2 stops then I'd rather just take an 8K raw video at 30fps which I can easily replay and focus on any snippets to pull a (almost FF) raw photo from, and 4) if I just want short bursts of FF raw photos I'll use the slowest fps setting so that the number I get in post is 2 to 3x less than 20fps and then it's not as daunting to wade through and I still get the max DR for pulling shadow detail. So EFCS in slowest FPS continuous mode is my default and I press & release the shutter quickly for single photos.

It sure would be nice if Canon would allow the user to set the fps they want for the various shutter modes.

Almost never use high fps for all of these reasons. Of course, the downside is multiple shutter presses, instead, and each could cause a little camera shake and the chance I'll miss a good pose between presses. But, I might only have 15 or twenty images to cull instead of hundreds for each shot. Maybe we'll see the ability to limit the fps someday.

 

[AlanF]

I've found that for for taking bursts of photos, I've given up on 20 fps because 1) I get too many photos afterwards (in the thousands) to wade through in post and the hobby isn't fun for me then, 2) I don't like losing 2 stops of DR when there are many times when I desperately need to pull detail out of shadows, 3) if I want to have a crazy high fps and can tolerate the loss of 2 stops then I'd rather just take an 8K raw video at 30fps which I can easily replay and focus on any snippets to pull a (almost FF) raw photo from, and 4) if I just want short bursts of FF raw photos I'll use the slowest fps setting so that the number I get in post is 2 to 3x less than 20fps and then it's not as daunting to wade through and I still get the max DR for pulling shadow detail. So EFCS in slowest FPS continuous mode is my default and I press & release the shutter quickly for single photos.

It sure would be nice if Canon would allow the user to set the fps they want for the various shutter modes.

The DR penalties of ES don't affect my usage. Above iso 200, the DRs of ES and EFCS/MS are close enough the same and I never shoot below iso 200. https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon EOS R5,Canon EOS R5(ES)

 

[usern4cr]

The DR penalties of ES don't affect my usage. Above iso 200, the DRs of ES and EFCS/MS are close enough the same and I never shoot below iso 200. https://www.photonstophotos.net/Charts/PDR.htm#Canon EOS R5,Canon EOS R5(ES)

It was my understanding that you lose 2 bits per color in raw ES no matter what ISO you have. Have you found that to be incorrect?
And why would you never shoot at iso 100 or 150(or whatever intermediates there are there)?

 

[AlanF]

It was my understanding that you lose 2 bits per color in raw ES no matter what ISO you have. Have you found that to be incorrect?

Look at the measured DR in the link I posted - as iso goes up, you lose DR because of noise, and at high enough iso/noise the 2 bits difference at less than iso 100 are lost in that noise.

 

[usern4cr]

Look at the measured DR in the link I posted - as iso goes up, you lose DR because of noise, and at high enough iso/noise the 2 bits difference at less than iso 100 are lost in that noise.

Thanks, AlanF. That graph, if correct, seems to nullify (for much of the ISO range) the Canon statement that high speed ES loses 2 bits, or else it would imply (to me) that the low 2 bits are so swamped in noise that they are irrelevant (which they certainly would not like to be saying). That last part wouldn't surprise me, since it's easy for marketing to want more ADC bits to claim to sell cameras, while reality in the difficulty eliminating noise is harder to overcome.

 

[usern4cr]

Here's the rest of the photos I kept of the hummingbird at 12 (or so) meters away with the R5, RF 800 f11 + RF 1.4x TC.
I just kept the HB centered (as much as I could) at 8 (or so) FPS and after 800+ shots (of mostly the same left / right poses) I stopped as I didn't want to waste any more time in post that that number would take up. Fortunately, the HB preened a wing which I hadn't see before, and that's probably the most interesting part of the effort for me.
So here's the rest of the 19 photos:



















Cheers.

 

[Click]

Very nice pictures, usern4cr.

 

[usern4cr]

Very nice pictures, usern4cr.

Thanks, Click!