Tuesday, May 25, 2010

25th May 2010: Juru with Canon 1D Mark 2

I bought a 2nd hand Canon 1D Mark 2 camera body yesterday, chiefly for its autofocus capabilities (it has a 45-point Autofocus area, as opposed to my 40D, which has only 9 focus points).

Today I took it out to see how well it would cope with flying bee-eaters against a busy background! As it turned out, this was being a tad ambitious, as the AF couldn't cope any better with the challenge than my 40D, so I ended up resorting to manually focusing! The 8.3 frames per second was fun, but meant I soon started filling up my CF card! Here are some of the better efforts.




















































































All the bee-eaters today were Blue-throated apart from this solitary Chestnut-headed!





I got a few fortuitous shots of a fly-by Emerald Dove. They weren't particularly sharp, but it's not often you get chance to photograph an Emerald Dove in flight, in good light, and a bright adult male into the bargain! At least you can see the curious double-banded rump pattern.

Early days with the camera. I know from past experience that it will take a few months' use before I start getting the best out of it. In the meantime I think I'll need to do some arm exercises - I certainly felt the extra weight today!

8 comments:

Erwin said...

Nice sharp shots! :)

John Holmes said...

With a cluttered background the single centre point is the best bet, I think.

But it's still difficult. Very well done with the manual focussing !

digdeep said...

Thanks Erwin and John

So John, what would you use with less cluttered background - Custom function 17.2?

Dave

Thaibirder said...

Just wondering why 45 focal points would be an advantage? I only use one, especially on a flying object.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I was going to come to those
45 focal points. Unlikely we will
have a small bird flying from one
to another of the 45 focal points.
Maybe anything from 10-20 should
be enough. Could it be just a Sales gimmick by Canon (or Nikon)??
Having so many may slow down your
focusing speed?
Choo Eng.

digdeep said...

For fuller and more knowledgeable answers than I can give, see http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t28931.html

Ari said...

Very skillful with manual focusing! Great shots.

Stuart Price said...

Great BIF shots esp the Bee-eaters......