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Wildlife videos with Nikon D500 + Nikon 200-500/5.6

Started 7 months ago | Discussions thread
Joe Lynch Veteran Member • Posts: 3,185
Re: Wildlife videos with Nikon D500 + Nikon 200-500/5.6

Here is a link to a YouTube playlist where I have posted several insect videos. The newest ones are from Tuesday of this week, one for a moth, one for a grasshopper, one for a bee. These are short, 2-4 minutes, produced for our grand kids.

insect videos playlist

I have picked the one of the moth (correction--skipper butterfly!) from that playlist:

I had to shoot all of these using manual focus, which is very critical using this long focal length lens, even at f/11-f/16. The lowest iso available is iso 400 with the log400 profile, and, at 200 fps, I try to shoot at 1/500 or so shutter. Ideally, I would need at least a 2 stop ND filter in bright sunlight just to keep from overexposing, much less optimizing the aperture. These clips are not zoomed in post, they are straight out of camera with the LUT applied and no further adjustments. These are 1080p exported as 1080p and uploaded to YouTube.

There are two challenges here. Manual focus errors caused me to cut a lot of footage and then finding and holding the subject centered or at least positioned somewhat in the frame without jerking the camera/lens around. In other words, same challenges one has with a much older and less expensive rig than this one, which is less than a year old.

 Joe Lynch's gear list:Joe Lynch's gear list
Sony a1 OM-1 Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 60mm F2.8 Macro Olympus 40-150mm F2.8 Pro Olympus M.Zuiko 300mm F4 IS Pro +5 more
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