GardenersHelper
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I don't have the patience, knowledge or skills for bird photography. But as part of some comparison testing I have been doing for a friend who has been having trouble with her kit, I went down to the local pond with a couple of bridge cameras and my 70D with 55-250 STM. For my usual photography (close-ups) I use live view, and I have never used the viewfinder on any of my cameras, but my friend always uses the viewfinder and so I used all three cameras' viewfinders for the comparison shots. I was astonished at how responsive the 70D was using the OVF and when I had finished gathering the comparison shots (with relatively static subjects) I had a go with the 70D at photographing some birds using the OVF, concentrating on in-flight shots.
There were plentiful, large targets, and the ambient light was strong so I could use fast shutter speeds and fairly small apertures, so I can't pretend that there was much skill needed (which is just as well!), but I was intrigued that even I was able to (by my standards at least) nail some shots of subjects in motion. I'm very impressed with how the phase detect focusing performed.
Here are some of the photos (1300 pixel high versions over at Flickr). The shutter speeds and ISO are a bit whacky for some of them, and I blew some highlights; I wasn't really thinking much about exposure, my concentration (and fascination) being on the focusing. The post processing (from raw) was pretty quick and light weight as this was only a side issue while I was busy grappling with a huge pile of comparison images for my friend, so there are some noisy backgrounds, some blown areas I couldn't recover, possibly some oversharpening and, looking at them again now, some compositions that are a bit iffy. So, all very much FWIW.
0748 01 2015_07_19 70D 079 IMG_6474 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 06 2015_07_19 70D 241 IMG_6636 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 07 2015_07_19 70D 246 IMG_6641 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 08 2015_07_19 70D 247 IMG_6642 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 09 2015_07_19 70D 249 IMG_6644 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 11 2015_07_19 70D 252 IMG_6647 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 12 2015_07_19 70D 254 IMG_6649 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 10 2015_07_19 70D 251 IMG_6646 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
There were plentiful, large targets, and the ambient light was strong so I could use fast shutter speeds and fairly small apertures, so I can't pretend that there was much skill needed (which is just as well!), but I was intrigued that even I was able to (by my standards at least) nail some shots of subjects in motion. I'm very impressed with how the phase detect focusing performed.
Here are some of the photos (1300 pixel high versions over at Flickr). The shutter speeds and ISO are a bit whacky for some of them, and I blew some highlights; I wasn't really thinking much about exposure, my concentration (and fascination) being on the focusing. The post processing (from raw) was pretty quick and light weight as this was only a side issue while I was busy grappling with a huge pile of comparison images for my friend, so there are some noisy backgrounds, some blown areas I couldn't recover, possibly some oversharpening and, looking at them again now, some compositions that are a bit iffy. So, all very much FWIW.
0748 01 2015_07_19 70D 079 IMG_6474 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 06 2015_07_19 70D 241 IMG_6636 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 07 2015_07_19 70D 246 IMG_6641 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 08 2015_07_19 70D 247 IMG_6642 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 09 2015_07_19 70D 249 IMG_6644 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 11 2015_07_19 70D 252 IMG_6647 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 12 2015_07_19 70D 254 IMG_6649 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr
0748 10 2015_07_19 70D 251 IMG_6646 LR 1300H by gardenersassistant, on Flickr