I felt this warranted a thread all of its own rather than in my usual, lazy, location of ODDS and SODS.
Our daily morning walk takes us through a local golf course. Scattered through this golf course are a number of ponds and bridges. One footpath we take brings us quite close to bridge. Last week we spotted a Kingfisher on the bridge, using it to hunt from. Several sightings since then confirm the Kingfisher is resident. It does have a number of ponds to choose from, but does have competition from a Grey Heron.
I've also been playing about with CRAW burst mode on my R7.
This morning, I had the perfect opportunity to try it out on the Kingfisher.
I'm using Shutter Priority with a shutter speed of 1/16000 or faster. Camera is handheld, but I'm leaning against a tree. The Kingfisher is about 50 yards from me. Time is 7:45am. The sun is still low, but bright.
Here we go...it's long...masses of photos...burst mode in action...watch the bridge frame distort as the R7 does its own weird thing...
Our next contestant is Mr K, attempting a swallow dive, with half pike, power dive and hover...
Mr K sets up
And he's off
The judges will mark him down surely for ungainly, non-streamlined legs.
Nice swallow hold coupled with brilliant height. The judges will like that.
And now Mr K begins the critical power dive.
Into the dive we go. Marks will come with the beautiful streamlining.
Mid course correction with added stroke to increase power of dive. What a performance.
I don't believe it! Mr K is going so fast the camera can't keep up.
How on earth is Mr K going to pull out of that power dive?
Mr K has done it! A gold beckons surely.
Unfortunately the R7 couldn't keep up with the Kingfisher, even though I had animal tracking turned on and Accel/decel at +2
The R7 is also renown for having a weird auto focus capability. Rather than track the Kingfisher or stay focused on where the bird perched, the R7 appears to have shifted focus to the trees behind the bridge.
Note also how the bridge distorts, even though the camera was quite steady, and the above sequence is roughly 0.3 seconds long.
There are about another 10 frames with the bird in it, but they are way out of focu.s
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
Very well captured Angus, nice set of photos
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Great sequence. I wonder if it loses the Kingfisher as it passes the post where it all becomes dark and then starts to hunt explaining why the focus doesn't really seem to be anywhere in the last picture.
Isn't there some software that shows the focus point? Might shed some light, but don't know if it needs to be on the original file.
There is software that shows focus points. It's Canon's very own DPP-4, Digital Photo Professional. I've used this feature many times, and puzzled in equal amount about the R7's chosen focus point.
The problem is, the R7 does not store focus point information as part of raw burst photography. I'm not sure why. I hazard that either the software designers didn't specify that focus telemetry be stored with photos or the programmers forgot to store it or the in camera extraction software deletes this information or the R7's processors doesn't have enough computing power to store focus information.
It is highly possible that the R7 lost the Kingfisher as it passes the post. The camera does suffer from poor performance with low contrast situations.
Though the bird is very brightly lit, and does stand out from the post.
Tracking was turned on, and the R7 is supposed to sort of be able to keep track of an object if it passes behind another object (or, I guess where the object doesn't stand out against another object) i.e. anticipate where it will reappear.
I feel the R7 started to lose focus before it passed the post. Photos prior to this event show the bird getting more blurry.
The R7 has garnered a notorious reputation about its random focusing. Canon admit this. The solutions, sadly, are to live with this feature, and try to find ways around it.
Still, we have a Kingfisher a few hundred yards from our house. Can't be beaten in an urban landscape.
I am liking burst mode.
Angus M said:I am liking burst mode.
Given a similar scenario, why not try just using the fast FPS, which as you say isn't markedly different inflame rate. You may miss lift off but it would be interesting to see if there is any difference in ability to hold focus.
As far as the R3 goes: as I have said there is no pref shoot buffering so a burst works only from pressing the trigger. However the customisable high speed allows for up to 50 frames at any speed up to 195 fps. That said there is no focus tracking available in that mode so its use is rather limited.I have played with it and its interesting but really never needed anything other than standard High Speed which will do approx 150 shots.
That's a fabulous sequence of photos Angus.
I'm with Bob on the tracking thoughts, the change from light to dark, having noticed similar myself on scenes with wide light contrasts. I wonder if at one point, the kingfisher blends in with the dark background confusing the AF, even just for a milli-second.
Whatever, one of the beauties of rapid burst photos is you can select the few you want and ditch the others.
Mike
Flickr: Peak Rambler