Photographing birds by accident

This suggests that I should think of club photo competitions as being a bit like an Olympic diving competition, where degree of difficulty (in obtaining the photo) has a substantial effect on the judges score. I must admit to a bit of difficulty with the idea.

I don't think the work of David Bailey, for example, had a particularly high "degree of difficulty". No getting up at 3am to wait for a sunrise; no mountains to climb; no freezing his bits off in bird hides - and I suspect that the models he shot would have been quite co-operative. I wonder how his photos of the Shrimp would go down in the average club photo comp - probably pretty well, only being outscored by the odd "bird on a stick" photo maybe.

Andrew

I agree, and would have thought an image would have been judged on it's own merits and not on the difficulty or perceived difficulty in obtaining it, or the subject come to that. Although to be fair it must be quite hard to ignore these factors when judging.

Here is a couple of birds and no sticks Andrew.
Taken with a K5 DA 50-200 (aka kit lens) 1/1000 sec f11. iso 400 @ 125mm
I don't know but am sure the lenses you already own out perform this lens so maybe for now you have the gear you need for "birds on sticks" or flying etc.
By the way this image was not difficult to get




Jim.

The old Tamron prime outperforms it at 400mm.

I think I'm quite sold on the notion of using a DA 55-300mm. It has a very useful range and could replace a number of lenses. Quite apart from a foray into birding, I think it would have long term value to me, if it is as good as everyone says.

It's time I had an extensive declutter to fund the purchase. Keep an eye on the classifieds.

(BTW, I rather like the photo - despite the obvious lack of sticks)

Andrew

Quite possibly depending on the Judge, but regardless of what judges think or what method they use you shouldn't take pictures to please them, take what you like yourself and if other people (and judges) like them too then that's an added bonus.

It is a fact that some judges will take into account how difficult an image was to take, especially if it comes to making a decision on the best of several shots with equal merit, there are also judges who will ignore technical skill or artistic flair and simply choose the image they would like to see hung on their wall, I've had one judge award not only best colour pictorial to a shot but also choose it as best overall image in the exhibition, other judges have given the same image very poor comments and dismissed it as "average"

On the subject of lenses, the 55-300 would be a good starting point but for something the size of garden birds you'll need to get within around 3-4 metres to get the subject well into the frame, for bigger birds like gulls it should be fine, the birds are bigger and also far less timid at approaching, although anyone who's been to the seaside and eaten a bag of chips will know that.

Yes, I agree with that completely. This birding business is strictly experimental. I tend to take way too many "landscapes" (aka holiday snaps) and need to widen my photographic interest a bit.

Yes - and that's another reason for getting one. The closest focus distance for my old Tamron 400mm is about 9m!! Mind you, I suppose I could always use extension tubes.

Indeed, yes. I remember once, many years ago, being parked on the sea front at Penzance and seeing gulls dive bombing someones lunch through an open car roof.

Andrew

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Abso-bloody-lutely!
Dave

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Any photo of a bird in flight deserves to win if taken with the speed of Pentax AF!

On the judging front everything said is true. Ours is just a friendly little meetup group with no prizes but the judges often seem to fall for a quick cute snap of a child. It does grate a bit when you've spent hours on something "clever" !

Rarely had that from a Judge, comments are usually "its a competent shot and the childs parents must love it" just goes to show how varied judges can be.

I wouldn't buy any especially for the purpose, I've tried extension tubes on my Pentax A*300mm and just can't get used to the limited focus range, it's OK for stuff that doesn't move but trying to capture something that's there one minute and gone the next is nigh on impossible.

I already have some Jessop's cheapo manual extension tubes. I agree that focussing a long MF lens, with or without teleconverter and/or extension tubes on fast moving objects would be nigh on impossible.

Coppering up for a DA 55-300m has to be a priority.

Andrew

The way to do it is to try and second guess where the subject is going to be and wait for it to (hopefully) happen.
By watching the subject's habits - eg using a certain branch regularly, this is by no means nigh on impossible! Autofocus is more recent than auto exposure and the likes of early Pentax's, Zeniths, etc in the 60's had no option - the electronics we take for granted now were unavailable or so new to be unaffordable for most - everything had to be manual.

John K

Too late to worry about such stuff now - just ordered a DA 55-300mm lens from SRS.


Andrew

A good choice and surprisingly portable compared to something like the Sigma 150-500. The method of pre-focussing still holds good however!

John K

I received the Pentax DA 55-300mm from SRS a couple of hours back - and took a few test photos out of a bedroom window.

This is the image taken by the Tamron 400mm (same image as first post in the thread, repeated for convenience), taken at f/11:




This is a shot of the same door (around 80m distant), using the Pentax DA 55-300mm also taken at 300mm, f/11 but resized to (roughly) the same image size as the Tamron shot.



I reckon that the nice but eccentric manual focus Tamron 400mm f/7.5 has just been retired.

This is a 100% crop from the photo of the door taken by the DA 55-300mm



and this is a 100% crop from a photo of the same door taken a few minutes later, also at 300mm, f/11 by the FA 100-300mm f/4.7-5.8



The FA lens is clearly bested by the DA 55-300mm but does stand up rather better to the comparison than I thought it might.

The FA lens is now retired and is available for sale at a very reasonable price, as also is the Tamron 400mm f/7.5 and probably also a XR Rikenon 300mm f/4.5 APO prime. I am going on holiday this weekend, but will post these in the Classifieds section when I return.

Andrew

Shame you didn't see my 55-300 for sale here
smc DA 55-300mm ED £195