And another thing...
Last year I committed photographic heresy and moved away from an ever expanding set of lenses to a bridge camera with a large focal length range. Over the intervening months I have been assessing how it fits in with my style and usage. The bottom line is that I have taken my Canon 100-400mm out of my kit bag and replaced it with this camera. I haven't used the 100-400 in months, I may never use it again. The times when I really need a long telescopic zoom are shooting wildlife pics, usually birds. I have been genuinely impressed not only by the amount of zoom that can be achieved but also by the image quality that the camera presents. I have done some shooting from hides of birds that are typically 30-60m away and the camera has done a really good job of getting sharp pictures of the birds even highly cropped. Being lightweight the camera is easy to hold and less susceptible to shake, but also has optical stabilisation, so even poor light , such as for the shot of a pheasant below , can provide usable pics. This shot of a red necked phalarope (a life tick for me) and a wood sandpiper was taken from a distance of about 50m , resting on the edge of a hide window. Its has a big crop but the image quality is still good. Even for smaller subjects such as this black bodied skimmer dragonfly the image quality on the veins in the wings is good, taken from a distance of around 8m. The camera is not perfect and there can be some issues using it. It has what I think is a typical feature of electronic view finders - the dynamic range is limited so its hard to know looking at the image in the field if you have got the exposure correct. The images can look washed out but when you look at them on a screen they are usually fine. There is also a slight delay between what you see in the viewfinder and whats actually happening which makes timing moving subjects a bit tricky. By far the biggest issue is focussing. It is hard to be sure that the camera is actually focussing in the way you want it to focus. Even after shooting it can be hard to tell on the EVF. The focus can be slow and a bit unreliable so you have to take care. The picture quality is a little bit contrasty for my liking but this can be addressed in processing.
On the whole this is an amazingly flexible piece of kit , where if you only want to take one camera , this can do most things. I think this is the future of photography.
0 Comments
|
AuthorOptical physicist and frustrated photographer Archives
March 2023
Categories |