16Mpx Canon DSLRs (1 Viewer)

Now you can buy a reasonable DSLR for less than the price of a new car... do you use a 16Mpx Canon (or other high-res Digital camera) for bird photography... and with which lens and what result?

(Yes, you can buy two new cars for the new price of a good long lens!)

I use an 8 meg Canon 10D with a 100-400 zoom see the link below. Dunno why anyone other than a graphic designer would need a 16 meg though.

Gashead said:

I use an 8 meg Canon 10D with a 100-400 zoom see the link below. Dunno why anyone other than a graphic designer would need a 16 meg though.

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To me your pictures look very soft on screen: this might not be due to your choice of camera - perhaps you would like to e-mail me a full res picture?

Dick Roadnight said:

To me your pictures look very soft on screen: this might not be due to your choice of camera - perhaps you would like to e-mail me a full res picture?

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Sharpness/softness are not the same as resolution.

John

Gashead - size of prints is about the only thing that makes me want more megapixels. Of all the reasons to buy the 1ds mark II though, I think MP count is probably the worst.

BTW: Your shots look pin sharp and absolutely lovely to me.

Hi Dick!

I'm using a 20D.

You should have about 6 MPix for a A4 print. So if you want to crop things out of a picture it's good to have a bit more than that, e.g. 8 MPix.

Resolution of 16 MPix is nice, but current cameras and memory-cards are much TOO SLOW for bird photography.
Also you should know, that a 16Mpix resolution will need a VERY GOOD lens - i.e. 'L'-lenses with NO converters - and after Canon has stopped producing the 1200/5.6 lens you will have problems to find a lens for little distant birds - apart from looking for money...

Rgds

Degen

Btw.: You can buy a nice house for Canon 1200/5.6 L USM...
;-)

"Sharpness/softness are not the same as resolution."

I appreciate this - lighting can make detail more apparent, but megapixels (or film format size and grain) limit resolution.

I try to work to a high standard, and gave up using my Nikons due to the low res of 35mm film.

I think that my 3 body 4 lens Hasselblad system is more or less adequate for some bird and people photographs, and think my Sinar 5*4, 5*7 monorail is a serious professional camera.

I know that many people who earn their living from photography try to convince themselves that the current DSLRs are adequate - but one percent of the effort and expense goes into producing the picture, and ninety nine percent goes in trying to market the result!

With my office window 8 feet from my bird table, using a 22Mpx Sinar 54 digiback, I hope it will be possible to produce some good, sharp pictures of birds that will not look sick in comparison to my other work.

With the Sinar 54H you can use 88Mpx in multi-sot mode and get sharp backgrounds... if you want them... but the movements of a professional camera let you get the background in focus for "bird in habitat" shots.

"You should have about 6 Mpixel for an A4 print."

So, for a print over a meter wide (that will stand close scrutiny) 22Mpx is inadequate.

"Current cameras and memory-cards are much TOO SLOW for bird photography."

This can be a problem - but I am thinking of using my shutter-beam to fire the shutter and flash. Most point-and-shoots are useless as there is a considerable delay between pushing the button and the shutter firing. You cannot take 5 frames per second with any very high-res camera can you?

"A 16Mpix resolution will need a VERY GOOD lens"

I have a 600mm f6 and a 900mm f6, and these are very high quality lenses made in the cold war for aerial espionage, and cost as much as a new Ferrari, but they were designed for to use a few square feet of film per shot, and they would not be inadequate for digital work, even with a 5 * 4 CM CCD.

I also have a Leica-made 400 f5.6 which might be useful.

degen said:

Btw.: You can buy a nice house for Canon 1200/5.6 L USM...
;-)

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I have a nice house for sale, and I will have to sell it before I can get the digital kit I would like.

You can also buy a house for the cost of a Sinar 56H outfit.

When you use the Sinar 54H in 16 shot mode you get 88 Megapixels - and you do need a high-res lens to get the full benefit!

I was going to post a long post but decided not to do that. I like the photo's on GAS heads Pbase. If yours are better good for you. But the money it takes to get them or the time spent selling your SUPERIOR photo's is it really worth it. Have you got some kind of Size thing going on, Mines bigger than yours Mine cost more than yours. life get one springs to mind

russ1610 said:

I was going to post a long post but decided not to do that. I like the photo's on GAS heads Pbase. If yours are better good for you. But the money it takes to get them or the time spent selling your SUPERIOR photo's is it really worth it. Have you got some kind of Size thing going on, Mines bigger than yours Mine cost more than yours. life get one springs to mind

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I intend to come out of retirment and get this gear for commercial/industrial/architectural/landscape work... and if/when I get it - why not take some bird picture with it?

I would like to use my existing (second hand) 5 * 4 inch sheet-film monorail camera for some bird pictures... (I picked up a nice good modern 480mm shuttered lens on EBay) but I want to test the setup with digital first, as the cost and delay of sheet film would make experimentation with shutter-beams a pain.

There is an interesting article in the June issue of Popular Photography called "Resolution Roulette." It essentially says that when you use a telephoto lens on a camera which has a "35mm lens factor" - i.e. it has a smaller sensor than a 35mm film camera - you get HIGHER resolution images than the more expensive "full-frame" digital cameras. For example, it says, "it would actually take a full-frame sensor with 21MP to match the resolution of the EOS 20D after cropping."

What they're talking about here is the extra magnification you get with the smaller sensors in the less expensive DSLRs. Using the same telephoto lens on a more expensive full-frame DSLR gives you LESS magnification, so you need to crop the resulting image to get the same effective magnification. This reduces the resolution of the full-frame camera to be LESS than the smaller-sensor camera.

It's hard to explain it in a few words, but you should read the article. It essentially says that for folks who mostly use telephoto lenses (as opposed to wide-angle lenses), you are BETTER off buying a camera like a Canon Rebel, 20D, Nikon D70, etc than the much more expensive cameras like the full-frame Canon EOS 1-DS MarkII.

RAH said:

There is an interesting article in the June issue of Popular Photography called "Resolution Roulette." MarkII.

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What you say the article says is not all total nonsense.

With a small CCD you need less “magnification” or focal length to fill the frame.

Magnification is the ratio of image size to subject size – relevant for macro and micro photography… but for small subtended angles, the pixels (or square millimetres of CCD or film) per subtended square degree is what is relevant.

“Telephoto” is the type of lens construction – telephoto lenses are shorter than their focal length: Some lenses (e.g. my 2 600 mm lenses, my 640mm and my 400mm) are lenses of long focal length but they are not telephoto. My 900mm lens is telephoto… hopefully giving focus at infinity with a standard 600mm bellows.

If you have a very high res lens that can use the res of a high density, small CCD then, for narrow-angle subjects, using that lens, you may be able to fill your CCD with the subject and make the most of the res you have… without cropping.

You have to fill the frame to get the best res out of the format – this is not rocket science or anything specific to digital… and, if you are buying a camera system purely for bird photography (or other narrow situations like astronomy), a camera/lens combination with a small CCD will be a more cost effective option.

If you want to digitally take very high res images you need a very high res CCD, and a high res lens long enough to get the subject to fill the CCD.

Using a medium or large format film camera, or a very high res CCD does let you frame the shot loosely and crop and maintain res adequate for most purposes: E.g., if you had a 22MPx CCD and the agency or customer insisted on a minimum original file res of 11MPx…

For use with relatively low-res lenses designed for film, a small CCD may not give higher res, as the res of the lens may not match the res of the CCD.

Quality 35mm film lenses (Zeiss, Leica and Nikon) could resolve more detail than the high-speed films most people used for bird photography, and these lenses are (I hope) worth trying with large CCDs.

Just remember that you have to get close enough to fill the frame to get the most out of the res you have.

Sorry Dick!

Didn't understood your first post:

You already know everything about photography and you are just looking for someone with a 16MPix camera with a really big lens.

Why you don't ask Nigel?! You should know, that he was testing it!

Rgds

Many of you may have seen this March Artical, but it does not say anything new.

Degen - you have set me a task to live up to that!

Who is Nigel?

There was lately a link to very good and really scientific article about resolution on sensors versus resolution on lenses - but I've lost it... ((

May be my 'PhotoCalc' give you some fun (Menu 'More' on http://degenfelder.com)

'nigelblake' - here in BirdForum and anywhere else (e.g. 'nigelblake.co.uk')

May be you find someone using strange equipment in a big forum like http://www.fredmiranda.com

Rgds

degen said:

May be you find someone using strange equipment in...

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...and if I told you that I was hoping to acquire a Sinar 22Mpx digiback, and use it with a Sinar M electric leaf shutter and a 30 year old Leica-built Novoflex 400mm f5.6 lens, on a Sinar monorail camera to enable me to get bird and background (habitat) in focus - would you tell me that that was "strange equipment"?

I have Hasselblad and Novoflex tele-converters, and intent to est them to see if they improve res - on a 40 *50 mm CCD, they might!

Gashead just had a quick look at some of the photos in your Gallery and they looked very good to me (the bee-eater looked excellent) so it must be Roadnights monitor that is soft.

I'd be really interested to see your work Dick. That camera/lens combination sounds incredibly intriguing. And having just googled a bit, not outrageously expensive either, compared with what we tend to spend on DSLRs and L/AF-S lenses around here. I'm quite ignorant of large format photography in general because of the percieved lack of portability. Do share.

GavinM said:

I'd be really interested to see your work Dick.

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I am flattered, but have not used Large Format or monorail gear for bird photography… but I think there is potential for some interesting shots where it is relevant to see the bird in the context of it’s Habitat. When photographing waders on a lake you could get all the birds on the lake (and the habitat in the background) in focus!

I bought my LF gear for movements rather than resolution, mainly for, industrial and architectural work and landscape/skinscape.

I went round the world in 1975-6 with a Novoflex/Nikon system, and got some nice bird photos (I wish I could find them now) including an African Fish Eagle in flight with a fish, some nice close ups of some hawks in Australia and a close up of a juvenile Wandering Albatross (ready to fly from the nest, at the reserve near Dunedin).

If you want high resolution and movements, LF is cost effective for a few shots… If you are doing something complicated and need to take a large number of shots to get the system set up, digital is the way to go: I hope to buy a Digiback when I sell my house.

Sinar P3 monorails are for use with digibacks, and you could use them with Hasselblad film backs – but they are expensive, even if we could find them second hand.

I illustrated some (domestic) bird books for the Gold Cockerel series, but this did not need movements. I had to take about 5 shots for each species, so the customer (who relieved me of my wife) did not want the film cost of Hasselblad pictures, so I used a Nikon with Micro-Nikor 200mm IF lens.

I have had very little professional photographic experience, but I did all the photos for the my (mower manufacturer) employer for 2 years, including the November 1980 Farm Contractor Calendar, and I did some antique silver, gold and jewellery recently, using a Hasselblad Flexbody (with movements) for the plates.