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Sunday, 21 April 2024

Photographing birds in Tasmania with the Canon EOS R7 and RF 100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L lens

 


Pied Oystercatchers

 

The Canon RF100-500mm f4.5-7.1 L IS USM is one of the best and sharpest tele zooms we can buy but 500mm on a full frame body is a bit short for most birds even when they are close. 

For a recent trip to Tasmania I mounted the 100-500L onto an EOS R7 crop sensor body.  This has a 1.6x crop factor giving a full frame equivalent focal length of 800mm which is a more useful focal length for birds.

Overall I rate the combination very satisfactory and more versatile than the alternative of a full frame body with the 1.4x extender.

Image quality is good, croppability is good, autofocus with subject /eye detection is good, handling and ergonomics are good. None of these performance parameters is perfect but I think the old adage applies here: perfect is the enemy of good.

I hand hold with this body/lens combination which does not require a tripod or gimbal.

I use Electronic shutter, Servo Focus and H (not H+) Drive mode even when the bird is mostly still (not flying). This combination seems to produce best results from  the animal/eye recognition system.

Some of my photos are made at a considerable distance from the bird making huge crops necessary.  I rate the results from this satisfactory for bird identification and sharing on the internet. They won’t win any prizes though.

I use CRAW capture and process in Adobe Camera Raw. Most images benefit from Adobe Denoise AI via the Enhance tab. I then upsize some of the smaller files in Photoshop using [Preserve Details 2.0]. This sequence works decently well although the more extreme crops are something of a rescue mission. 

I do not have Topaz Gigapixel yet. If Adobe does not offer an equivalent soon, I may have to get it. I have never gotten good results from Adobe Super-Resolution.

Here are some of the photos:

 

Yellow Wattlebird 1


Yellow Wattlebird 2 


Tasmanian Native Hen


Scrub Wren


Scarlet Robin 1 


Scarlet Robin 2 



Red Capped Plover  Original file 32.3 Mpx, Cropped version 0.83 Mpx, Version shown here upsized to 4.2 Mpx from the cropped version.


Pacific Gulls


New Holland honeyeater


Ringed Plovers


Green Parrot 1 


Green Parrot 2 


Starling



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