Canon SX50 Specs (1 Viewer)

[Roy C]

I'll post this as an example of a poor picture, but only because I'm being unrealistic about the range where one can get a reasonable picture. Incidentally this is a target, apart from the individual bird, that I've taken at a variety of settings with all my cameras, just to see what they will do ETA it is certainly the best I have taken.

This one is taken at superfine, it will have been subject to photobucket compression, it's got good light, it was not taken with a tripod, but supported by a metal railing, it has not been cropped, and it has had nothing done in any editor. It was at full zoom with the in camera 2x widget.

To the closest 10 feet, as measured on Google Earth, it was 1150 feet from where it was taken, and I think it as good as I can do. Certainly good enough to tell what bird it is, but it's not a difficult one.

I'd say, and I wonder if I will have any dissenting voices, that to do significantly better with this camera is unrealistic.

OTOH, it is, I think, remarkable enough.

http://i419.photobucket.com/albums/pp275/dble_photo/IMG_2252_zps29053fd9.jpg

To put it in perspective, it was taken from the railings near the bandstand in this pic from wiki, and is of the top of the larger rock at the back of the island pictured (not the one a mile and a half away)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:St._Catherine's_Island_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1455808.jpg

David

David,the trouble with a thread like this on these small point and shoot cameras is that most of the contributors tend to fall into two categories. One is the fairly experienced DSLR bird photographer who buys this little Cam as a lightweight alternative to the heavy gear and the other is the novice bird photographer who has had little or no experience with bird photography.

For the DSLR shooter it is mostly about image quality and getting the best out of the Camera, it is difficult not to judge a shot on its technical merit, be it sharpness, noise, composition or whatever.

The novice point and shoot users themselves tend to fall into two distinct categories as far as I can see, those that genuinely want to improve and are looking for constructive criticism and those that are just interested in getting the shot no matter what the IQ is like.

There is no doubting that a little cam like this is a great asset to a birder who may be after a record shot perhaps for ID purposes, for a birder who normally uses a scope and tripod set-up it is great to whip out this little cam instead of connecting all the digiscoping kit.

We all have different standards and objectives but at the end of the day the main thing is that if you are happy with a shot then that is all that matters.

 

[greenwell]

I think we are making a little progress now thanks to Roy and other members.
Couple of pics here taken in the garden at quiet close range through the window.I have managed to do a little crop and touch up in aperture,weather was a bit dull for light.Then did as you suggested Roy,transferred image to desktop,then into tools to resize,then transfer image into iTunes.
What i cannot do yet is read EXIF on others pictures,Have tried right click,but that just brings up a box with save as ect in,maybe it is some thing to do with the new Mountain lion OSX 10.8 ?.
The last shot was taken after tea last night sun behind but quiet a dark area,this camera seems to take quiet good scenic photos,my other camera i use for fishing pics is a Lumix DMC-TZ30 and i thought that was good,but this is much better,but the Lumix does have the advantage it drops in the top pocket.

 

[Shaggy2070]

What i cannot do yet is read EXIF on others pictures,Have tried right click,but that just brings up a box with save as ect in,

I don't have a Mac but I just did a quick search and found this quote from another forum:
"you have a great EXIF reader on the Mac it is called Preview

try it drag a jpeg or nef file on to Preview and then pull down from Tools in the menu"

As I said I don't have a Mac so cannot try this myself but it may be worth you trying it.

Or failing that if you do a quick google search for Exif viewer for Mac you should be able to find one to download easily enough:t:.

 

[Atricapilla]

ROY C Quote:~"There is no doubting that a little cam like this is a great asset to a birder who may be after a record shot perhaps for ID purposes, for a birder who normally uses a scope and tripod set-up it is great to whip out this little cam instead of connecting all the digiscoping kit."
You've hit the nail on the head Roy,in the past all my bird photos have been digiscoped,the SX50HS being my first superzoom camera.
Attached is a poor shot of what I think can still be ID'ed as a STE,the distance guess-timated( by a pilot friend who was with me at the time),was around 5000 feet,a great little camera for ID purposes.

 

[Mike Beer]

Yep, I can see all the shooting info:- 1/60 sec f6.5, ISO 800 etc........ also I see you shot at 4x digital zoom!!!. Out of interest Mike you will never get good image quality using digital zoom like that, especially shooting what amounts to 4800mm at 1/60 sec.
It depends what you are after in a shot (e.g. good quality or just a record shot for ID purposes). If you want any sort of reasonable quality I suggest that you stick to the optical zoom only. If you do need more than the optical maximum of 1200mm I would suggest that you will do better using the built-in digital converter which gives better results than using digital zoom.

For this shot at the focal length and shutter speed to say 'Again I think I was expecting to much' is the understatement of the year if not the decade LOL.

Roy
thanks for the information, I expect you have noticed that I am a complete novice with this camera also this is the first decent camera I have had. You suggest that I stick to the optical zoom, which I accept but Im not sure what you mean, have I managed to change something in the camera setting. Not having a instruction book is difficult and I find the 2 cds supplied difficult to follow.

I thought the distance was much to far but the target of the Kingfisher was to good to miss. When I took the picture I was in Italy the Kingfisher was in Switzerland.

Further update I checked the menu on the camera and found that the digital zoom on auto was set to standard I have now switched digital zoom on auto off, see if this helps.

Mike.

 

[Mike Beer]

I don't have a Mac but I just did a quick search and found this quote from another forum:
"you have a great EXIF reader on the Mac it is called Preview

try it drag a jpeg or nef file on to Preview and then pull down from Tools in the menu"

As I said I don't have a Mac so cannot try this myself but it may be worth you trying it.

Or failing that if you do a quick google search for Exif viewer for Mac you should be able to find one to download easily enough:t:.

Thanks for the tip. I have just found the Exif in Preview.
Mike.

 

[greenwell]

I don't have a Mac but I just did a quick search and found this quote from another forum:
"you have a great EXIF reader on the Mac it is called Preview

try it drag a jpeg or nef file on to Preview and then pull down from Tools in the menu"

As I said I don't have a Mac so cannot try this myself but it may be worth you trying it.

Or failing that if you do a quick google search for Exif viewer for Mac you should be able to find one to download easily enough:t:.

I can do all the above and did do in my last post,were i am stuck is if i try to EXIF a picture posted on here by another member i can not get the readings directly off it.
Chris

 

[franknotes]

I took this, um, 'action shot' yesterday. It's heavily cropped - to about 20% of the original - and was shot in Sports Mode. Do any of you have a custom setting saved for BIF that produces significantly better results than the Sports Mode?

 

[greenwell]

We had a nice visit of about a dozen Lesser Redpoll in the garden this afternoon,so took the opportunity to get a bit of practice in with the SX50.
Last night i was up a near by stream trying to get a pic of a Diper,problem was between me and the bird was a load of branches,i just could not get a focus on the bird,any way to solve this ?.

 

[Mike Beer]

We had a nice visit of about a dozen Redpole in the garden this afternoon,so took the opportunity to get a bit of practice in with the SX50.
Last night i was up a near by stream trying to get a pic of a Diper,problem was between me and the bird was a load of branches,i just could not get a focus on the bird,any way to solve this ?.

If you look back through this thread there are some settings put forward by Crazeyfingers which are about this type of problem.

Nice pictures by the way wish I could see a Redpole anywhere.

Mike.

 

[DavidNB]

Much better pictures! I'd like to have taken that redpoll shot too.

Page 16 of this thread in general, and post 389 in particular, is what you need to find settings to shoot through clutter,

David

 

[Vipers]

I've been doing a little bit of experimenting with zoom settings today. Here are three shots of a Siskin on my feeders today, the light was poor and it was very windy so the feeder was swinging around a quite a bit.

The first one was taken on 50x max optical zoom, the second taken on 60x standard digital zoom and the third was on max zoom with the 1.5x converter.

All have been cropped and resized with a little bit of sharpening.

 

[Mike Beer]

What have i done wrong

Today I took this picture of a Kingfisher on auto settings. But again the bird looks fuzzy the tree branch is much clearer. The bird was about 15 mtrs away

Mike.

 

[IanF]

Today I took this picture of a Kingfisher on auto settings. But again the bird looks fuzzy the tree branch is much clearer. The bird was about 15 mtrs away

Mike.

Yep, the focus has locked onto the more contrasting background rather than the bird.

I have the same issue myself in similar conditions. Other than swapping to manual focus all you can do is try a few adjustments such releasing the shutter and half depress it again to try to lock focus or holding the button down and moving the centre focus point sometimes lets the auto focus find the bird and lock onto it. Other times I either zoom out a little or zoom in a little.

This didn't use to be an issue for me but seems more prevalent since I engaged the super-fine setting. It's happened a few times now, including this morning when I met up with some friends who were ringing. Even close birds in the hand were proving difficult to focus. I think I'll try de-selecting it next time I have a similar problem to see if that helps.

All photos taken today.

The Little Bunting & Wheatear were around 8m. The Willow Tit, Blackcap and Siskin around 2m.

 

[Mike Beer]

Thanks Ian try again tomorrow

Mike.

 

[Bob Philpott]

I have just come back from Trinidad and Tobago. At Asa Wright the camera would pick up easily on Trogons etc but I did struggle with Mannakins in the woods ending up with similar photos to the kingfisher. I came to the conclusion that the focus point (even on small) may have been larger than the birds and found better contrast on surrounding vegetation. This may have been worsened by the birds being basically white at the front with no discernible contrast. Other than that thje camera performed very well. DSLRs were outperforming me on moving and small birds but where birds were tucked into bushes I was getting the focus into places the DSLRs couldn't reach.

 

[DavidNB]

Today I took this picture of a Kingfisher on auto settings. But again the bird looks fuzzy the tree branch is much clearer. The bird was about 15 mtrs away

Mike.

Put the camera into centre focus as on crazyfingers settings post 389, stored in C1 or C2, and it works for me.

David

 

[Roy C]

A few more snaps, all taken in RAW, cropped, converted in DPP and finished in CS5.

 

[greenwell]

Nice shots Roy,
Query,i have tried setting up in C1 and set size to M2 but when i turn camera off then back on it keeps reverting to L.Which is much to big to big to crop and resize?.Is there any way to set to M2 so it stays at that?.
I am using the C1 setting to take shots were objects are in the way,ie branches ect.
Chris.

 

[Moocher]

A few more snaps, all taken in RAW, cropped, converted in DPP and finished in CS5.

Excellent pictures Roy.