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Canon G3X for Birding (1 Viewer)

Great captures! How did you get them to accept the photography noise?
They are normally pretty aware of what is happening around them.

PS Good on you for fighting the absurd badger cull scheme.

Thanks etudiant.

I set the camera on mute when photographing badgers, so no sounds from camera. They are very accepting of the flash as long as it isn't repeatedly fired.
 
canon G3X

Hi Moocher
I have just bought a Canon G3X
i have read a lot of your posts and looked at pictures.do you still regard the g3X as i good bird camera and how do you manage to focus through branches?
do you use the EVF?
thanks
 
Humming Birds, in Tucson, Az.

I have again been putting the Canon G3X through its paces trying to capture some wildlife while out and about.

More pictures can be seen on my blog if you are interested.

http://moochersmoor.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/hares-foxes-and-badgers.html

Hello there, you across the lake. I too have just acquired a Canon G3x and I am enjoying it immensely. I have looked at your pictures and now I am very curious. Would it be possible for you to share your camera settings? I see you are achieving a much more detailed focus than I am and I am trying very hard to sharpen my pictures without post processing. I prefer to shoot my pictures as best a can and not do much post processing other than to crop and notate my pictures for future reference. One of the features that I am most enjoying is that the camera has a digital teleconverter feature. Are you using this? As far as I can tell, I am getting a picture at twice the distance with no loss in f stop or shutter speed. With or without, I am getting the pictures with exactly the same settings regardless of magnification. I do not think this is the same for digital zoom which I am avoiding because I can not hold the camera steady enough for this to work for me. Frankly, even with the digital converter set to on, I am having difficulty hand holding this little camera. Up to now, my birding camera was a Nikon D610 with a Sigma 150-500 mm zoom lens. That set up is huge compared to the G3x so you can understand why I have to relearn to hand hold while shooting. Looking forward to your response.
 
Canon G3x Desktop Slides

I have concluded thus far that there is a learning curve attached to this camera. Firstly, because of the size of birds and the distance between the camera and the bird, it is hard to hand hold as the image stabilization is not quite steady enough. Secondly, I do find it a bit difficult to narrow the focus point to what I normally use for birds, pin point focus. With this camera it seems the best I can do is to get a small square in the middle of the frame and then I struggle to keep the subject inside the box. Having said this, I do believe the problem is me and not the camera as the pictures are mostly focused although not as sharp as I would like. Any focusing tips you all might have would be greatly appreciated. I have shot in raw mode using this camera and am considering not shooting in this mode anymore because the jpg images this camera produces are very, very good. Then because my post processing software, Adobe Elements 15, has a raw image component that permits raw processing for jpg images, I can avail myself of any fine tuning that may be needed. Somehow this strategy seems at odds with the idea of buying a 20 mega pixel camera but there is where I seem to be.
 
Hi Windfire and Robert,

Glad you are enjoying your GX3 cameras. I am still plugging away with mine and I am still very pleased with it. It has, like most cameras good and bad points, I feel for my type of photography and the way I use a camera, its plus points outweigh its negative points.

There are two main issues that most people ask about.

1. No EVF - The camera as standard has no eyepiece. All framing is achieved via the LCD screen on the back of the camera. I have no problem with this. I had a bridge camera prior to this camera, a Canon SX50. it had an EVF that a rarely used, preferring the LCD screen. I must admit, it makes it a challenge to focus on a moving object, but that is not really something bridge cameras excel at anyway.

2. The RAW continuous shutter speed is very, very slow! Again, I just don't shoot in RAW, so this is not an issue for me. I find the HQ JPEG is just fine for what I do.

I find the image stabilization good even at the extreme of the zoom. I occasionally go into digital zoom 100X to just get a poor record shot of a distant bird. I can do this hand held. I do at times use a tripod, but 90% of my shots are hand held.

I have found what works bet for me is to shoot in shutter priority. I set the shutter speed to around 125 in lower light. Aperture is set by the camera and I set ISO to auto. Obviously, in better light conditions I up the shutter speed.

Most focusing is done with the standard small square setting. I have learnt though, that for shooting through branches or any other pictures that have lots of clutter the auto focus can lock onto rather than the actual subject the best results come from using the cameras manual focus.

I just press the MF button on the lens and turn the focus ring to ensure what I want is in focus and not a blade of grass in front of it. The camera zooms automatically on the subject to help in achieving focus.

A recent example of a hand held picture take pointing the camera upwards almost vertically. The Peregrine was high up on the Cathedral and the camera pictures were better than those I took with my digiscoping equipment.

Hope some of this is of use to you.

Regards

Moocher
 

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I have concluded thus far that there is a learning curve attached to this camera. Firstly, because of the size of birds and the distance between the camera and the bird, it is hard to hand hold as the image stabilization is not quite steady enough. Secondly, I do find it a bit difficult to narrow the focus point to what I normally use for birds, pin point focus. With this camera it seems the best I can do is to get a small square in the middle of the frame and then I struggle to keep the subject inside the box. Having said this, I do believe the problem is me and not the camera as the pictures are mostly focused although not as sharp as I would like. Any focusing tips you all might have would be greatly appreciated.
For bird photography I am using smallest focusing/exposure metering area and also set the camera to AF/Manual focus mode. Some birds are small and if background is not contrasting enough the chances are AF is going to need manual intervention. AF/Manual mode allows us to bring subject into focus by holding shutter release button semi-depressed and to achieve desired focus all we need is to twist the infinite adjusting ring (EVF will greatly help with the manual focus setting). As well, if the subject is constantly moving it will be a good idea to change AF to Servo mode and also reduce the shutter speed. I also use burst mode, to make sure I can select a photo with the best focus possible out of several dozen.
I also, since the invention of image stabilization, never use a tripod. If I feel shaky I will use burst, or find a tree to lean against. Having small camera and tripod defeats the whole purpose of the small camera for me.
As well there is one useful trick I use every now and again to keep the focus right: when digital camera focuses on something when we half depress shutter release button it is not going to change this setting up until we fully press it, meaning we can focus on something and change composition and still get perfect focus on our subject, or we can focus on something and wait until our subject gets into this focal range (for instance bird moving through the bush).
Hope this helps!
 
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I could'nt get on with mine....i found the focusing awful when things got a bit tricky.I wasn't all that impressed with the image quality either.
 
I guess it depends what you’re looking for in a camera Neil. I wouldn’t be without mine. Had it a few years now. I brought it when they were first released. If I lost it today, I would replace it with another one tomorrow.
I could'nt get on with mine....i found the focusing awful when things got a bit tricky.I wasn't all that impressed with the image quality either.
 
I guess it depends what you’re looking for in a camera Neil. I wouldn’t be without mine. Had it a few years now. I brought it when they were first released. If I lost it today, I would replace it with another one tomorrow.

Maybe i had a poor example.
 
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