Barry Boswell
Friday 22nd June 2007, 23:52
I got my new Mark III camera earlier this month - as luck would have it just two days before I went off on a holiday in Spain. I only managed a limited amount of bird photography and I used the camera straight out of the box without trying to make any minor tweaks or adjustments. I use a 400mm f4 DO lens for hand held or flight shots and a 500 f4 for tripod shots (often with a 1.4 teleconverter).
Initial results were good, but I felt could have been better. OK, I know it takes a good while to get used to a new camera but... Quite a few flight shots were not at all sharp when they were taken at a leisurely pace and should have been. The autofocus for flight shots was great against an uncluttered backgroung - ie the sky, but often I could get no lock at all when the subject was below the skyline.
Even some shots of stationary (small) birds were out of focus because the centre focusing point seemed to pick up on the area around the bird - ie the hedge or the ground - and so throw the bird slightly out of focus. It is almost as though the focusing point is too large.
Having said all of that - sometimes it worked stunningly well as with the Hoopoe which settled for just and instand and then was gone.
So - the main point of this posting - there are a lot of adjustments that can be made using the Custom Functions and I just wondered if anyone has worked out some useful ones that help when using long lenses.
I am also being a bit lazy and trying to eliminate a lot of trial and error!
Barry Boswell
Initial results were good, but I felt could have been better. OK, I know it takes a good while to get used to a new camera but... Quite a few flight shots were not at all sharp when they were taken at a leisurely pace and should have been. The autofocus for flight shots was great against an uncluttered backgroung - ie the sky, but often I could get no lock at all when the subject was below the skyline.
Even some shots of stationary (small) birds were out of focus because the centre focusing point seemed to pick up on the area around the bird - ie the hedge or the ground - and so throw the bird slightly out of focus. It is almost as though the focusing point is too large.
Having said all of that - sometimes it worked stunningly well as with the Hoopoe which settled for just and instand and then was gone.
So - the main point of this posting - there are a lot of adjustments that can be made using the Custom Functions and I just wondered if anyone has worked out some useful ones that help when using long lenses.
I am also being a bit lazy and trying to eliminate a lot of trial and error!
Barry Boswell