Kicking off this year's odds and sods with Starlings in a rainbow on that extreme rarity: sunshine.
It was early morning, with the sun barely cresting the tree line. We were able to get out for our morning walk as it wasn't raining. This photo is my trusty Canon 80D and Sigma 18-300mm lens zoomed in at 300mm.
Pulling back a bit.
And finally all the way back.
Oh, 2024 got off to a good start with this.
So far my cat, perhaps two neighbouring cats visiting our garden, a local fox and Tawny owl, and this trap have accounted for at least five of the beasties. Sightings of rats in our garden are getting rarer, so I think I'm winning. Two rather timid and wary rats, that I know of, are proving more elusive to catch. I've resorted to buying a lethal trap. The trap was triggered, yesterday, but no rat, sadly. Though a mouse might have triggered it, and was small enough to be within the kill bar.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
Nice photo's Bob. Only once got close to a hare, it ran straight towards me.
Steady on, Mike. The R5 is waaaay out of my price range. I've got an R7, relatively basic but good.
With my old IT hat on, I can see CRAW being faster and slower, if that makes any sense.
Slower, in that it takes a finite time to compress an image.
Faster in that it is quicker to compress a file in memory, than write the uncompressed image to an SD card.
However, if SD cards become solid state (basically memory) with a super fast bus, then CRAW may become redundant.
For, and until I win an awful lot of money, I shall stick with the limitations of my R7 or until CRAW technology filters its way down the food chain.
Glad you mentioned firmware updates. I thought I was at the most recent (1.3.1), but after your post I went looking and discovered a 1.4.0 release.
What a palaver upgrading my R7. Canon's software engineer who designed the update process should shot soundly beaten.
I use a USB cable and Canon's utility EOS utility to communicate with my laptop.
The utility took me through the upgrade process: Find the FIR file, select it, but when I clicked on button to perform the upload a little pop up appeared saying I couldn't downgrade!!!!
After a fair bit of internet searching, and a bit of lateral thinking, I decided to format my SD card. No worries as there was nothing on it.
The upgrade process went smoothly. The FIR file was copied from my laptop to the R7, and the in camera upgrade utility did its business.
The reason for the downgrading message? Notice I said the FIR file was copied to my R7. This meant I still had the 1.3.1 FIR file on my SD from the last time I did an upgrade. While the initial part of the upgrade process recognised I was going from 1.3.1->1.4.0, the copy part did not check the upgrade version file on my SD card (and so overwrite it), but simply assumed it was at a higher version number!!!!
Just catching up briefly as still busy with family over from Aussie; took a long walk around Peak District yesterday to see if the common Redstarts were back to their faithful breeding area and was lucky enough to see this handsome male Redstart ...... was a fair distance away but happy the 100-500 (CRAW) managed to maintain enough detail on a heavy crop.
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Regards, Hazel
Great shot Hazy! Particularly as you say, it was a fair distance away ... . When I was in the Peak District recently I saw a lot of Chaffinches and Mistle Thrushes, but unfortunately no Redstarts. In the wrong place again ... .
I guessed you'd appreciate the tech side particularly with compression and file sizes. However, I felt a lot of that YT video had a lot in common with the R7, albeit for full frame and not cropped sensor. I'm still waiting on my son, who recently bought an R7, to let me know how helpful the video was he.
I always thought the R7 had RAW shooting capability?
Canon seem to have become very lapsed with emails informing of any firmware updates, no longer an email to advise, I only seem to discover them when logging in on the Canon page or on the rare occasion that I use the Canon Connect.
As for technical progression on SD/Micro DS cards, I think it's already here. My Gopro keeps telling me I need to upgrade the card, and yet it's supposed to be the latest level....
Mike
Flickr: Peak Rambler
Fabulous detail Hazy and good to see you're exercising the R5.
Mike B said:firmware updates
The new camera was already on 1.9 firmware so although I downloaded the latest it was only a tweak taking it to 2.0 version. I went through the video tutorial twice as it has such clear screens (not a YouTuber who has their face on screen reminding you to follow subscribe every few seconds in an amateur boring monologue !! ! ) On this tutorial you can follow very clear advice/tips whilst following menus on the camera LCD; it helped familiarise myself with the different menus although I've still yet to feel 100% comfortable changing settings when you need to change quickly. Considering I've only been at this for 4 days max, it's not going too bad and happy the new camera is giving me good pics even if I haven't got to grips with all the correct settings. Off to Minsmere via Rutland on Thursday.
Lovely photo Hazel, great to hear from you again. Hope you have a lovely time with the family.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Oh, it's got RAW. I shoot exclusively in RAW. It doesn't have CRAW - which I assume stands for Compressed RAW.
I hadn't realised about solid state SD cards. I guess they are the hyper fast ones I read about, but being a skinflint Yorkshireman with Scottish ancestry I can't be bothered to shell out more for it.
However, reading some online reviews, they suggest a standard, but fast SD card isn't much slower than a Solid State SD card. I reckon this is due to the bus speed i.e. both are limited by how fast data can be transmitted over it.
A bus is the bits of wire that transmits data from the camera's processor to the output device - in this case a SD card. Though, as with all things these days, a bus might be called summat different.
The upgrade to 1.4.0 did appear to help one aspect of my R7 with my Sigma 150-600mm lens. Focusing seems to be much faster. It's hard to tell. I did try it out on a sunny day - I kind of remember them. The whole lot seemed to snap onto a subject much faster than before, with Rev 1.3.1.
I need to try it out on a cloudy day, and on something small flying - couldn't today as it has been raining. The R7/Sigma combination used to flaff around all over the place trying to lock onto a subject. I've found various ways around it, but it is still a pain.
The 1.4.0 upgrade does not, sadly, appear to have solved this problem with my Sigma 18-300mm lens. This is an ancient beastie, bought secondhand. I have no idea what rev of firmware it has on it. But when I point it at the sky to try and photograph a smallish subject on a cloudy day it
1) Seems to have everything is focus and a little black square surrounds my subject and tracks it. So far so good.
2) Then the blasted lens unfocuses, with everything going totally blurry.
3) It then tries to focus back on the subject, which by this time is now out of frame or the camera/lens fails to lock onto the subject period. Very frustrating for BIF photogarphy.
Again, I have various work arounds that can produce good results. One it to point the camera at the sky with shutter release button held halfway. This seems to give the camera a better chance of locking on to a subject.
This doesn't happen when I pop the lens onto my 80D.
HAZY said:Mike B said:firmware updates The new camera was already on 1.9 firmware so although I downloaded the latest it was only a tweak taking it to 2.0 version. I went through the video tutorial twice as it has such clear screens (not a YouTuber who has their face on screen reminding you to follow subscribe every few seconds in an amateur boring monologue !! ! ) On this tutorial you can follow very clear advice/tips whilst following menus on the camera LCD; it helped familiarise myself with the different menus although I've still yet to feel 100% comfortable changing settings when you need to change quickly. Considering I've only been at this for 4 days max, it's not going too bad and happy the new camera is giving me good pics even if I haven't got to grips with all the correct settings. Off to Minsmere via Rutland on Thursday.
I recall you saying you'd updated it almost as soon as it came out of the box. Thankfully the menu layout is more or less a carry over from earlier and sister models, with the new and updated tech incorporated
I've had a look at the YouTube tutorial that was suggested on the Mirrorless thread, which I'll comment on.
If it's any consolation, I'm still exploring and learning, and enjoying it.