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saaber1
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Posts: 2,164
Re: First attempt at wildlife photos with sx730 - bald eagle
CMCM wrote:
BIFs are incredibly difficult, I've found. I'm struggling with it myself, with very little success yet. It's fun trying, however. I'm not sure which AF mode to use myself, but maybe continuous AF with a multiple shot fast release mode would work best, but I can't yet say for sure as I haven't played with it enough. Mostly I'm using my Nikon P900 and D5600 for BIF practice as I have long zooms on those two. The G7XII has such a short zoom it doesn't really work for BIFs. But your SX730 has a nice long zoom, so you're in a better place to succeed with that one.
I took this photo with a G7XII in horrible, overcast, foggy light conditions, and I'm fairly certain I was well into digital zoom territory, which is one reason the quality is lousy. The detail is horrible and a definitely pixel peeper's nightmare, but this is the only half decent shot I've managed so far.

Not bad at all IMO. It's hard to get pics of any bird at 120mm outside of a zoo or other confined environment. That's at least partially my reasoning for having a g7xII + sx730 as a travel combo. When traveling, I think g7xII will do 90% of the shots as they are of people or are wide/normal focal length for me. But there are times when I want a long zoom like for castles/some distant detail, wildlife, landscape features, or even "what the heck is that over there?/pocket spotting scope" shots.
Also there is the stealth aspect of getting candid/unposed photos when in a new culture or place which I have not tested yet with the sx730 (but I think it would do well in some cases such as sitting outside a cafe and shooting a long ways away). I watched a couple documentaries on Henri Cartier-Breson and was surprised to learn that many shots were extremely stealthy and this was critical to his technique. He was very adept at hiding his little leica and pulling it out at the last moment, taking someones picture, and then off to the next shot. Had those subjects known he was taking the picture many of those shots would not have worked. Speaking only about stealth technique here not about composition or anything else of his amazing technique/skills. It seems to me that sx730 or similar pocketable long zooms allow stealth also, but in a different manner than popping out in front of someone with a 50mm leica. I might try it on some local street scenes to see if it is a viable method.
Cartier-Bresson's technique (one of them anyway) is really shown well at the 30:52 time mark of this video (also at 9:05 mark). https://youtu.be/ei45S87R2dk?t=1852