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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Olympus 300mm f4 (1 Viewer)

Ron, let me tell you about the two situations where I have really loved having a zoom: Safari in South Africa and a trip to Galapagos. In both cases, you could go from a distant flying bird to something almost too close for 100 mm in a split second. Probably half of my pictures from Galapagos were at less than 200 mm.

Niels
Having had the privilege to experience similar situations (yet other destinations), I have learned to bring two setups.
One setup with a short-medium telezoom (like the 50-200 SWD) for mammals and the real close encounters with birds.
One with a fixed focal length super telephoto mainly for bird photography. If I were to select one length only, I would go for ~500mm. On the first trip I brought my TLAPO804 480mm refractor scope, it was close to perfect. Next trip I brought the 300mm/2.8 lens and found myself using it with the EC14 in >80% of the situations. Last trip I brought a SW80ED 600mm refractor scope and Canon 400mm/5.6. Scope was too much, so I fell back using the Canon 400mm/5,6 in most birding situations.
 
Yes, I can imagine in the Galapagos where many of the targets are unafraid of humans, a zoom would have advantages, but also any time when you might want more flexibility and maybe you have limited time or opportunity, like when you travel to a place you may not get a chance to visit again, and you find yourself in situations like Niels described. I know zooms are a popular choice for wildlife photographers on African safari. My first birding lens was a Nikon 200-400mm zoom, but I often stalk small birds and I found I needed to use a teleconverter most of the time on the zoom, and I eventually moved to a 500mm prime which worked better for me both with and without a teleconverter.

As a direct answer to Ron's question, I've only been out with the new lens 3 times, but I know from my past experience with other lenses that I will rarely find myself too close to birds, especially small birds. Some people appreciate the option to zoom out to facilitate target acquisition, then zoom back in, and I think a zoom does indeed help with that. But I am really finding the EE-1 sight helps a lot when I have seconds to frantically get on a small bird that has suddenly appeared, or moved (I now use the EE-1 on my Nikon rig too, if I'm not using a flash). I think the advantage of a zoom super telephoto is proportional to how often one might want to (a) photograph larger birds/animals, (b) photograph non-animal subjects e.g., flowers or landscape perspectives. I'm willing to compromise on these applications in order to perhaps get a little bit more image quality for birds.

Dave
 
It is indeed possible to get great detail with the combo, but I think that particular photo looks over sharpened.

Here's one of mine with no post processing (pretty sure, except a crop)
https://flic.kr/p/GtCyvT

I highly recommend them! (A lot of money, though)
 
Graeme,
What a fantastic bird and a wonderful photo! Someday I will visit the tropics for the first time. Until then I will keep practicing my skills with the less diverse but still interesting assortment of species in the North American temperate zone.

Regarding the 300mm with the MC-14 teleconverter, I concur that the image quality is excellent. And I know what you mean about an "over-sharpened" feel on bird images coming out of my E-M1... I am often adding no sharpening or almost none, and I'm even starting to think about turning down the in-camera sharpening one notch (right now it is set at 0).

Dave
 
Thanks Dave.
I haven't actually had any complaints about the out-of-camera images looking over-sharpened, though I have dialled back pretty much any processing the camera does itself (eg turning off noise reduction, using the Natural setting etc).

What I do find is there's no need to add any sharpening in post-production (it actually degrades quality), which used to be useful with my cheaper zoom lens.
 
Bird migration is in full swing here in Toronto Canada. Below is a my most recent image, but you can check my flickr account for more examples.
 

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