{"id":759,"date":"2017-11-04T11:11:55","date_gmt":"2017-11-04T11:11:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/?p=759"},"modified":"2020-02-21T13:01:52","modified_gmt":"2020-02-21T13:01:52","slug":"kingfishers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/2017\/11\/04\/kingfishers\/","title":{"rendered":"Kingfishers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>After seeing lots of good photos of Kingfishers taken at Forest Farm Nature Reserve (situated at the edge of Cardiff, between the river Taff and amongst the Glamorganshire Canal) I decided to take my little-used Canon New FD 500mm f4.5L, Canon FD 1.4x Extender and my Sony A6000 down to one of the hides to see if I could get any shots.<\/p>\n<p>After waiting nearly 5 hours without seeing any wildlife, let alone Kingfishers, I finally got the chance to put my manual focusing skills to the test. As it was raining and the light wasn&#8217;t great I started with just the 500mm on its own.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Kingfisher\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/uponnothing\/23558545478\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4488\/23558545478_d845152532_z.jpg\" alt=\"Kingfisher\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Even with a dedicated hide and the Kingfisher landing on the nearest perch, the 500mm (even with the 1.5x crop of the A6000) still wasn&#8217;t getting tight shots. I therefore added the 1.4x extender and dropped the shutter speed to deal with the loss of one stop of light.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Kingfisher\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/uponnothing\/37410539221\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4441\/37410539221_438663e533_z.jpg\" alt=\"Kingfisher\" width=\"640\" height=\"427\" \/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>With the extender the lens still performs well &#8211; although ideally I would stop down one stop if the light was good enough &#8211; and you are able to get tight enough to the Kingfisher to really blur out the background.<\/p>\n<p>I did go back another day and this time used the extender and cropped the shots to taste.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Lunch\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/uponnothing\/37986393512\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4482\/37986393512_74b5fbba33_z.jpg\" alt=\"Lunch\" width=\"640\" height=\"586\" \/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>What did become clear is that you need to watch the auto ISO settings, and drop the shutter speed accordingly, in order to keep the shots as clean as possible.<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"Perched\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/uponnothing\/37312061194\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4502\/37312061194_7be2111bfe_z.jpg\" alt=\"Perched\" width=\"640\" height=\"566\" \/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Whilst most photos were in sharp focus, occasionally action shots missed it a little (compounded by slow shutter speeds not freezing the action).<\/p>\n<p><a title=\"One last hurrah...\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/uponnothing\/37991264292\/in\/dateposted-public\/\" data-flickr-embed=\"true\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/farm5.staticflickr.com\/4512\/37991264292_0c23719e0e_z.jpg\" alt=\"One last hurrah...\" width=\"640\" height=\"555\" \/><\/a><script async=\"\" src=\"\/\/embedr.flickr.com\/assets\/client-code.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>But overall I am very pleased that with perched Kingfishers, manual focus is perfectly useable to get good shots &#8211; and shooting alongside photographers with the Canon 500mm f4L II IS, it also became apparent that the old FD 500mm f4.5L can still hold its own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After seeing lots of good photos of Kingfishers taken at Forest Farm Nature Reserve (situated at the edge of Cardiff, between the river Taff and amongst the Glamorganshire&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,9],"tags":[12,13,14,17,22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/themanualphotographer.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}