BIRD Photography is HARD!! Sigma 150-600 and Canon 90D Field Test.

g'day and welcome to the channel in today's video i want to share with you just how difficult bird photography can be and the challenges i encountered in making this video if you've been watching my videos you might think i've got some sort of magical power in attracting and finding birds however that's just not the case in reality i struggle just like many of you do as well so i'll be honest in that i actually debated whether i'd make this video at all i went out into the field on a number of occasions and i just didn't get as many nice shots as i'd hoped however i think it's important that i do share the images i was able to capture and the struggles that i went to to capture those images because i'm sure many of you can relate to just how much of a struggle it can be out in the field so i reached out to canon australia and they were very generous in sending me the canon 90d to test and i only had it for a short amount of time and i really wanted to test it with the sigma 150 to 600 which i obtained from one of my lovely subscribers brian thanks brian so the pressure was on to get out in the field and capture some videos so for my day job i do get to travel around a bit and after work i've gone out to a new national park that i've not been to before i had high hopes of creating a video and capturing lots of images i've parked up i've filmed the intro i've captured some b-roll and then i've walked around looking for birds quickly dawned on me that this location wasn't really suitable for photography and after the fourth place i visited i just had to give up i'd spent three hours driving around trying to find some birds and i just ended up not taking a single photo so it was a bit of a bummer but i had high hopes because i had another afternoon the next day so i've traveled to another town and i've decided to go to the botanical gardens because generally that's a good place at least to get some wattle birds or some sort of honey it is feeding on the native flowers so again filmed the intro got some b-roll started looking for birds and again i started to struggle i just couldn't find any birds but luckily i actually did spot a native blue banded bee and i didn't really have any good photos of this the bee was feeding on a rice flour which is a very nice little shrub so i had the sigma 150 to 600 at 600 milliliters plus the 90d times 1.6 gives us that 960 full frame equivalent so it's a lot of focal length so it can be a real challenge even finding the subject that's in front of you so once i can find the bee i need to focus on it before it jumps to another part of the flower so i was madly following and chasing this bee as it moved from flower to flower taking a heap of shots luckily i managed to get a few that were sharp and this one that you can see on the screen it's actually a bit of a crop but i was really happy with how this turned out we can see the distinctive markings on the back of the bee it's actively feeding in this beautiful flower and i was pretty happy with how this image turned out so i've taken some shots of this blue banded bee and then i've spotted a painted lady which is a beautiful native butterfly here in australia and i've set myself up and i've managed to take a few shots of the painted lady and again i was really happy with the quality and the type of shots that we were getting so i was happy i'd actually photographed something but i was still looking for a bird and i did actually spot a couple of noisy miners which are fairly common here in australia and i did try to get some shots but they were just flying away so i was questioning my abilities at that point but luckily this noisy mind has landed on a kangaroo paw that was flowering but when i moved around to photograph it it was pretty apparent that it's going to be difficult to get a nice background so as you can see there was a a sign next to it we've got a path behind it we do have some trees and it was just hard for me to position myself to get the shot that i was after and you can see in a couple of these shots the background's not quite right and i also must focus a few times where i've accidentally focused on the flower and the bird was slightly soft thankfully there were a couple that were salvageable and i did get one bird that was sharp the only issue was i actually cut like it was very close to the tail at the bottom of the frame luckily i'd taken another shot which had more of the bottom so i've actually taken the bottom off another photo stitched it together which has given us this photo so i was happy to at least had one in the bank that i was happy with so i thought all right so we've gone a bit of a roll let's try and find some more birds so i've walked down this big hill to this big lake thought i'd be able to photograph some ducks tried to photograph them they just swam away i walk through the bush beautiful bushland i must admit still looking for birds i've then seen a swamp and i thought oh i'll go into the swamp there might be some heron so i've walked into there herons just flew away at this point i was hot i've been walking for ages and i just didn't have any images so after two full days in the field i literally had one photo of a bird one photo of a butterfly one photo of a beast nowhere near enough content to create this video so i've obviously had to go out for a third time to try and get some content for this video so i've gone to a location i've been to before so we should be able to get some birds it was marginally better than my first two attempts but again i really struggled i walked and walked and just you know it was just a real challenge but i did manage to get some shots and i'm going to share that footage with you now i didn't get the shots i was exactly after but it's important that i do share the shots i was able to get so you have some sense of what it's like out in the field at times so i hope you really enjoy these shots i was able to take with the 90d and the sigma 150 to 600. g'day and welcome to the channel in today's video i'm just going to go for a walk with the 90d and the sigma 150 to 600. it's going to be very casual i'm not going to use calls i'm not putting in expectations of myself it's just a lovely sunday afternoon a great bush walk here in warby airlines national park i'm just going to go for a walk and see what i can see i've got plenty of water because it's quite warm so let's see what we can find let's go [Music] it's a song like i can hear calling loudly they usually stick at the top of the trees so it makes it pretty difficult i must admit [Applause] i'm definitely no flower photography expert but the same techniques we use to photograph birds you can use to photograph reptiles flowers whatever it is it's a matter of getting the subject isolated nothing directly behind it get low eye level with the flower and you should be able to get some shots so i've just noticed this blue bell on the track and it's not that high off the ground but it's isolated and i should be able to get a shot the flowers facing this way so just getting low here i should be able to just get a shot i get to minimum focus distance which i'm at i'm just going to do my settings and bingo should be able to get a nice shot of that flower there's plenty of detail beautiful so happy day well a lot of walking so far no birds but it's still beautiful there's a bird so we've got a family of yellow tufted honey it is oh yeah unfortunately the shots i took were ruined due to me over exposing the shots i'm so used to the live exposure in the mirrorless view timer that i totally forgot to check here's the overexposed raw file and as you can see i've blown all the details just for fun i've processed the shot just to see what we can recover it's not too bad but obviously i've lost lots of clear detail all right can i keep walking see if we can't find something did you see that that's the gray strike thrush it's got a beautiful call one of the highlights of the aussie bush is that bird whether i can get a f oh he's just in this eucalypt over there he's a bit far away but i'll just keep my eye on him he might come down and allow us to get a photo there he goes so the gray strikes rush gst flew off and i didn't get a shot taken photos of this beautiful bird before so here's this previous shot that i've taken and i hope you enjoy it's a little bit more open now if only this grass tree had a flower stem that would be ideal oh still going up so we're definitely getting some elevation i've just spotted a nissan yellow robin but i've lost it we've got an eastern yellow robin it's just over here it's in shade so i'm having to over expose it by quite a bit you drop down there's definitely a there is the season yellow robin is another shot i'd normally delete but it's worth sharing to show how difficult it can be photographing birds and shadow with a bright background i was lucky that the 90d has allowed me to lift the shadows in post while retaining plenty of detail i just wish we had some eye contact and those branches weren't quite so distracting okay well i've lost them again it's really difficult conditions when you've got dense bush like this and the birds are jumping around it's easy to lose them that's for sure all right we'll keep moving well i've made it to the top of the warby's it was a bit of a long walk a struggle in this heat and very little birds unfortunately but that's the way it goes an absolutely stunning view up here there's your classic aussie bush just eucalypts and bird song and that's great there's a grey shrug throws over here [Applause] oh so i attempted to follow the grey strike thrush but they flew off so you know if you can't get close to a bird you're never going to get really good detail and there's just no way around that you just have to try and get closer or get more focal length but i've got plenty today oh it's been a struggle today i'll tell you dear so i was walking back and out of the crew of my eye spotted that yellow footed anti-kindness again that i photographed a few weeks ago and it was scurrying around here on the grass and i've haven't had time to turn the camera on but i've run down here and it's hopping around on these uh dead logs got a few shots and then on the track here i'll show you so then ran out onto this track and it was kind of running up the track and i was where the camera was and i actually had to zoom out it was getting that close so it's a real struggle to focus on this this little marsupial as it's running up here but i think i got some shots of it until it saw me and then oh and turn around and run off so i'm actually pretty happy with that little session with that marsupial so haven't had much luck with birds but i'll take that it's always exciting to see that little guy very cool to keep my eyes open for another one oh there he is he's over the back there [Music] all right so it's it's getting pretty dark in here now but i've spotted a dusky wood swallow flying around so i'm going to try and photograph it at a pretty high iso 3200 6400 see if we can get any sharp shots at all so i've just seen it on the side of a tree over here so we'll go and try and photograph it over there all right so we've got a few shots of a dusky wood swallow as it was perched on the side of the tree back here iso 3200 and then up to iso 6400 so it's gonna be really interesting to see if any of those shots are sharp i know many of you have asked me to try it in low light and it's definitely low light now i'm so interested to see how we go i assume most of them will be soft and whether we get anything decent will be a bit of a surprise but you never know so i was happy when the dusky wood swallow actually landed on a nearby branch and i managed to take quite a few shots i did have to do quite a bit of heavy processing to get the shot up to my taste which i know isn't for everyone but it just shows what is possible in post-processing we've got a yellow-footed anti-kindness on the side of this tree looking at us it's really inquisitive and i've managed to take lots of shots at different isos and different settings just to see how well it performs that was a really good little session so it actually was quite inquisitive it was staring at me which is pretty cool and i managed to get quite a lot of shots a nice way to finish the session that's for sure well that brings my walk to an end i went up and down hills it was hard yakka in the heat it's cooled down now i had a really nice time you know saw lots of things saw plenty of birds saw that little yellow-footed anti-kindness again look i struggled to get photos today and that was to be expected when you just walk around in the bush it can be really hard to get the bird where you want it and i discovered that today i've got a few photos i was happy with overall you know the sigma performed pretty well i think i had no trouble hand holding this all day it's not that heavy so you can definitely hand hold it without any worry whatsoever the focus of the 90d you know it's not as good as the mirrorless clearly and it does struggle at times when you're trying to find the subject and track the subject it just doesn't do as good a job but i'll be interested to see how the shots went today what sort of photos i got especially in low light but overall you know it was good to test the camera and the lens and conditions like this which is typical of what most people will be using this gear for so you know overall a really good session well i hope you enjoyed my struggles in this video i think it's really important to share the struggles and the failures as well as the successes i think if we just looked at social media and youtube you'd think people just got good shot after good shot after good shot and this simply isn't the case you know often we struggle and that's what helps us get better and i'd love to hear from you in the comments what failures have you had how often do you struggle let's get that conversation going i will read and respond to the comments look if you enjoyed the content please give it that thumbs up subscribe if you want to see more of these videos and if you're not aware you can actually directly support the channel there's a join button directly under the video and for a small monthly fee you support the channel helps me create videos like this and for those that are already members i sincerely thank you for your support and i really do appreciate it until the next video take care and see you later what that was some big fish gave me a heck of a fright lucky we don't get crocodiles down here

Channel: Duade Paton

Views: 19,626

Keywords: Bird Photography, Bird Photography Tips & Tricks, Wildlife Photography Tips, Telephoto Zoom Lenses, Canon RF tips and tricks, best kit for bird photography, Canon DSLR Camera For Wildlife, How to photograph birds, Canon RF100-500, Telephoto lens for wildlife, Canon Zoom Lens For Wildlife, Supertelephoto lens or zoom lens, Sigma 150-600, Sigma Zoom Lens, Sigma 150-600 Contemporary, Budget Wildlife Gear, Canon 90D, 90D, APSC Camera for wildlife, Sigma zoom lens and Canon camera

Id: WP1NRh8TS5M

Length: 16min 22sec (982 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 27 2021