M43 Musings

Jim Salvas wrote:

OK, so show me a photo of a small, fast BIF under less than full sun that was taken 10 years ago and isn't grainy or noisy. I maintain this is something relatively new. It is now considered the norm, but how long has that been so?

After I want you to show some photos of female lion in Africa at midnight under dull moon, taken with under ISO 400 when sprinting after something..... And was taken in last week... Okay?

As I didn't specify those thingsand neither did the original claims.

Example one:

Example two:

Those are two 20cm size birds, taken around sunset or before sunrise at winter time when sun doesn't light either one, used ASA 1600 film by notes.

Example three:

The most blurriness etc is by my handhold camera in low light and of course that medium is a book so quality suffers lot.

And here is one sample for the quality from ASA 800 photo that is A3 by size.

and book is from 1983....

Of course if you mean by fast that subjects travels about 35-40km/H, then those fills that, because relative speed is high.

And those are low grain photos if you see them on the book.

And while those ain't size of a bee hummingbird, those are common sizes and far smaller than bigger birds.

And I believe that the rest of the things falls fairly well in the demands that you changed and didn't exactly specify.

There are photographers who have been photographing BIF far before AF was even in SLR cameras, small ones at close ranges and medium ranges where manual focus was required.

And I as well remind that there has been sports photographers who have photographed action and sports as well in similar demanding situations as today, with even more limiting gear as today and yet being successful.

And one reason why birds were not photographed in flight, was the illustration purposes of bird being in its environment and sitting bird was (and even today is) considered more preventive of it. And there is as well reason why it was easier to hire a artists to draw animals to books instead using photographs, and yet the drawings are most often birds sitting than flying, unless the flying position is important information for identification purposes.

And there is a reason why those nature photographers were given all kind cameras by Canon and Nikon for testing before anyone else got those, as they were pushing the gear to the limits and gave valuable feedback. And when they represented their works around the world, they answered to questions about their gear etc.