Stereodude
Not really a
No samples of your handiwork?
???no photography was specifically requested during the ceremony
Yeah, that's a little odd. Even if they didn't request it, I'd still have taken pictures.???
Here, if that happened, they'd hang the photographer. I mean could you explain what memories one can take pictures of in a rehearsal?
I think you need more rule of 1/3rds.
I think you need more rule of 1/3rds.
Now you are getting into the hard stuff, Dave.
What can you do with a subject like that? Several things:
1: get closer to the bird. (Yup, that's often pretty hard.)
2: use a longer lens (bearing in mind that this will cost you lots of money, weigh a ton, be difficult to hold steady, and useless for all your other work).
3: use a teleconverter. You gain a bit of resolution but not as much as you expect because a bare lens always performs better than lens & TC, so you only get perhaps half of the advantage you expect in theory. Plus you lose a stop (i.e., slower shutter speed and/or higher ISO, both of which cost you image quality), may run into depth of field problems, and have to live with significantly slower and marginally less accurate autofocus. I use my 1.4 quite a bit if the light is good, hardly ever the 2X.
4: use fill-flash. This introduces a whole new world of complexity, but can produce very good results if you master the technology.
5: Use some +ve exposure compensation. On that shot, about 2/3rds of a stop would be about right.
6: ask the bird to please move somewhere more convenient for you. Most birds will do this if you ask them nicely. (Oh, provided, that is, that you wait around until they do. A couple of days is usually long enough.)
2 & 3 will work better if you ditch the Canon, and get a Nikon D3, shoot at 6.4k ISO or if you really need it and can work that Noise Ninja mojo, go for 12.8k or 25.6k.
6: you must have some mighty right friendly, social, civil, and polite Neognathae down under Tannin; cause the blue heron I tried to photo, didn't take kindly to the very quite shutter of my OM2, couple of clicks and it was spooked...flew away. The much noisier Canon 20D would have had it flying away after the very 1st shot, unless you where digiscoping from likely, 100m or more away in distance.
Nice work indeed, Dave.
E_Dawg is a Nikon man, so can be forgiven for not realising that Canon cameras (at least ones of 20D vintage) don't apply any noise reduction worth mentioning to JPG images, so there is no requirement with a 20D to shoot raw just to avoid the horrible plastic look that some cameras (notably the older Nikons - D200 for e.g.) produce at high ISOs.
I understand that the latest Nikons are much better in this regard, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the latest Canon models (such as my 40D) have gone a short distance in the opposite direction. In short, your 20D remains a very fine tool indeed if you are after birds. (Or pretty much anything else, of course.)
Udaman makes a couple of points above that are, frankly, nonsensical.
2 & 3: Out of which bottom are you pulling this stuff, Udaloonie? I've seen you claim some fairly ridiculous things from time to time but this one is the #1 prize winner with a bullet. Well done!
In reality, of course, a D3 is a particularly poor choice for this sort of task as it has very low pixel density, which is how it manages such impressive high ISO performance - the bigger the light well, the better the high ISO. The other side of the coin is that there is an inevitable loss of finer detail because the pixels are not small enough to record it. Now if you were talking deep shadow with rainforest birds, where you can generally get quite close but can never get enough light on them, a D3 with something like a 400/2.8 or a 500/4 or even a 300/2.8 would be just the thing. But for most bird shots (including, in particular, the sort of subject Dave has here) you need to get as many pixels on the subject as possible, and for that any other current or recent DSLR will perform better than a D3. In the Nikon world, a D300 (or for that matter a D40x) would outperform it easily, even a 6MP D40 would put more pixels on the bird than the D3. In the Canon world, well, any of them, but the 20D is a good choice.
These days I'm mostly using a 1D III for birding, which in some ways is a step backwards from the 20D or the 40D, as I sacrifice a certain amount of reach, meaning that I have to get closer than I would with a 20D. I accept that compromise because I've spent enough time learning how to read the birds' state of mind that I can get closer, and because the 1D III has several other features that make it a very nice tool indeed, notably in this context the excellent high ISO performance.
Note that it is easily the best-performed high-ISO Canon camera, but that it achieves this through having the lowest pixel density of any Canon model (leaving aside the outgoing 5D) - i.e., you have to get closer to the bird with a 1D III than with (e.g.) a 20D or a 1Ds III, and the Mark III is only out-performed for high-ISO work by the Nikon D3, which has much bigger pixels again. It's a matter of judgement, of course, but the majority of good bird photographers elect to go with something that has reasonably high pixel density (20D, 30D, 40D, 400D, the new 1Ds III) and live with the (relatively) limited ISO performance. I use the 1D III most of the time but have the 40D and the 20D for times when I'm reach-limited and the light is good; I'm currently undecided which gives me better results under those circumstances: 40D and 1.4 converter at (say) ISO 400, or 1D III and 2X converter at ISO 800. Probably the latter, but I'm still experimenting.
Anyway, short answer is that, on this point, Udaman is far enough off base to leave some doubt as to which planet is the one of interest.
Now to shutter noise. I've written about that before, so you can just go back and re-read the appropriate post to get some fairly detailed hints, but in short, it is up to you (the photographer) to figure out a way to get the bird comfortable with the shutter. Usually, it's not difficult. One thing to note is that the sheer volume of the shutter noise is not the point. Birds have, as a rule, excellent hearing, so they can detect a quiet shutter just as effectively as a loud one. What they react to, most of the time, is first the degree to which they are expecting the noise, and second, the quality of the noise. For example, on my old Nikon Coolpix digiscoping rig, it wasn't uncommon to have birds that didn't mind the sound of the shutter in the least, but spooked immediately at the (much softer) sound of the zoom motor. Similarly, depending on the species, many birds react more to the (fairly quiet) 1D III shutter than they do to the (very loud) 20D, but if you switch the 1D III down to 5 or 6 FPS instead of the full 10 FPS, they are OK with it.
Short answer that works >80% of the time: fire of a few bursts while you are still some distance away. They soon get used to it. Hell, you could probably fire a starting pistol 5m away from a bird if you spent a few weeks letting it get used to the noise first.
E_Dawg is a Nikon man, so can be forgiven for not realising that Canon cameras (at least ones of 20D vintage) don't apply any noise reduction worth mentioning to JPG images, so there is no requirement with a 20D to shoot raw just to avoid the horrible plastic look that some cameras (notably the older Nikons - D200 for e.g.) produce at high ISOs.
If you have an a620, a630, a640, a700, a710, S2IS, or S3IS, you have lots of options ... A560, A570, SD500, SD700, and G7 have a more limited selection currently, although growing.
Hmmm. A G7 with RAW would be as good as G9, maybe even better (less noise).Whoops. Turns out they managed to crack the DIGIC III firmware with the A570 and G7 DIGIC III cameras. Still, those two models are hard to find now, so get them while you can.
OR, you can take your chances that they have made initial progress with the DIGIC III and it's only a matter of time before they get to yours...
Thanks for the offer. I have no idea if I even want to buy another point and shoot at the moment though. I'll keep it in mind if I ever decide to pull the trigger.BTW, if you're interested in the A710is, I have a New In Box A710is I could make available, bought as a backup of my current A710 in case it breaks. I'm using my Olympus E-510 as my main travel camera these days, and it doesn't seem as worthwhile to have a spare A710 around just in case when it's no longer my primary camera.
The A720is CHDK hack still has a ways to go before it's usable, and the sensor is a little noisier than the A710's due to the higher pixel density.
E_Dawg, could you tell me how long the 12-60mm f/2.8-4.0 is from flange to the tip of the lens hood? I'm going to go and see if my local Henry's or Vistek have ones I can look at this week, but I figured I'd fire it out there while I thought of it.
I wonder if it would fit in my camera bag without reversing the hood...
In reality, of course, a D3 is a particularly poor choice for this sort of task as it has very low pixel density, which is how it manages such impressive high ISO performance - the bigger the light well, the better the high ISO. The other side of the coin is that there is an inevitable loss of finer detail because the pixels are not small enough to record it. Now if you were talking deep shadow with rainforest birds, where you can generally get quite close but can never get enough light on them, a D3 with something like a 400/2.8 or a 500/4 or even a 300/2.8 would be just the thing. But for most bird shots (including, in particular, the sort of subject Dave has here) you need to get as many pixels on the subject as possible, and for that any other current or recent DSLR will perform better than a D3. In the Nikon world, a D300 (or for that matter a D40x) would outperform it easily, even a 6MP D40 would put more pixels on the bird than the D3. In the Canon world, well, any of them, but the 20D is a good choice.
Woohoo!Nice Piyono, admitting you have a problem is the first step to losing yourself in the problem.