OM-D saved the day.

It was hot in the camouflaged tent placed in front of a tree with the nest of a very coloured bird in the Danube Delta.

I was going nuts trying to capture the European Roller coming and going to feed the nestlings: the angle of view of my 400/4 DO on the Canon 7D was too small, the tracking AF was not fast enough and had no other Canon glass with me.

All captures were either the empty cavity in the tree, the Roller peeping through it or his tail at the lower edge of the frame

I was about to abandon when I remembered that I also had the OMD with the 35-100/2.8 packed in my bag: the field of view was a little wide but better, I had 9 frames/sec and a very smooth Manual Focus ring. So I framed the nest and verified the direction of rotation of the MF to slightly shorten focus distance.

When the bird put his head out of the cavity I pressed the shutter button and kept it down whilst I gently turned just slightly the focus ring. Of course the scene disappeared from view, the EVF is not an OVF, but seeing the scene was of no use anyway.

There were 3 captures with the framed bird and the one shown below was the best one. Not exactly of pro standard but enough to show the other guests what the tiny OMD can do.


European Roller, "Ultima Frontiera", Danube Delta, Romania

Cheers, Vittorio

PS more pics of this colourful guy and other fowl at the link http://www.zoomview.it/page intro montecavallo 19gen13.html

Vittorio I see from your site you have a good idea what it is about. I have not wondered into the wildlife photography much myself, only on those occasions when something flies by or lands close. That was until recently. You have missed focus but it is all enjoyable and at some point it will be bang on. It is a shame there are not any native long focal length lenses, with a bit of luck on your side and even with the OM-D lack of tracking a few shots would hit focus now and again. If they did get the tracking up to something workable It would be a great bonus a a good birding tool as said with good lenses.

Recently I took the OM-D and EF 400 f5.6 to a hide. F5.6 is good as on a fine day it will give me shutter speeds of up to 1/2000 with iso 400. I find it fun and a change, nice to see the wild life and what it gets up. Have you tried the 400/f4 do on the OM-D?

Here are some still shots using the EF 400 f5.6 + OM-D and the last two fliers are the Oly 75 f1.8 so heavily cropped.

Thanks for the post and link.

Very nice capture. Well timed for sure.

Andrew

The second is really very good! Good detail and a nice image.

Andrew

ju_ju said:

ju_ju wrote:

Vittorio I see from your site you have a good idea what it is about. I have not wondered into the wildlife photography much myself, only on those occasions when something flies by or lands close. That was until recently. You have missed focus but it is all enjoyable and at some point it will be bang on. It is a shame there are not any native long focal length lenses, with a bit of luck on your side and even with the OM-D lack of tracking a few shots would hit focus now and again. If they did get the tracking up to something workable It would be a great bonus a a good birding tool as said with good lenses.

Recently I took the OM-D and EF 400 f5.6 to a hide. F5.6 is good as on a fine day it will give me shutter speeds of up to 1/2000 with iso 400. I find it fun and a change, nice to see the wild life and what it gets up. Have you tried the 400/f4 do on the OM-D?

Here are some still shots using the EF 400 f5.6 + OM-D and the last two fliers are the Oly 75 f1.8 so heavily cropped.

Thanks for the post and link.

Click to expand...

Hi ju_ju,

The pics with the OM-D + 400/5.6 look very good, I was tempted to find an adaptor to try what you suggested (the 400/4 DO on the OM-D), but was afraid that the MF ring rotation would not allow fine enough adjustment. What adaptor do you use? Does it allow to adjust aperture from the camera?

Well, many of us are waiting for Panasonic and Olympus to apply a form of mixed contrast and phase detect AF, and why not colour recognition too like the high end Canons and Nikons, to start a new era of AF tracking in M4/3, a dream...

Completely blurred out background would not be achieved but to be honest I prefer nature photos with background anyway.

In the meantime whenever movement of the target is tangential you can try to freeze BIF like the brilliant ones you achieved with the 75/1.8, well done.

Thanks for your favourable comments and regards, Vittorio

19andrew47 said:

19andrew47 wrote:

Very nice capture. Well timed for sure.

Andrew

Click to expand...

Hi Andrew,

good to read your kind words, I always try to share the less evident aspects of the M4/3 world whenever I can.

Regards, Vittorio

Some really terrific shots. Thanks for sharing. Luca

LucaBrasi said:

LucaBrasi wrote:

Some really terrific shots. Thanks for sharing. Luca

Click to expand...

and thanks to you for appreciating, Luca! V.