California Quail Family

Noticed a family of California Quails outside my window earlier today; took a few shots. All but the last two taken with the M6. First five with the M6 + Tamron 150-600mm. Enjoy!

Ali

This is the male bird (I'm assuming the dad). When the family is traveling together, the male bird usually sits at a high spot as lookout and will warn the family on any sign of danger. By the way, you will notice he seems unaware of the bee right behind him.

Here's the mother bird, usually on the ground with the chicks, also keeping a watchful eye.

One of the young ones. They are pretty small, don't know how old. They run around super fast pecking at anything they see.

And most (but not all) of the chicks

And here's the mother looking my way, a bit mad. I don't know if she was mad because she noticed me, or because the bokeh in the picture came out so bizarre. Not sure why that happened; any ideas? This was thru a window, but no screen or anything else. Same conditions as the picture of her above, in fact, except this one is at 600mm, while the other at 500mm.

And here are several other shots of the male bird (same scene as the first photo above) , included just for comparison purposes:

Same scene as the first one above, taken a few minutes later with the M6 + Tamron EF-M 18-200. The bokeh not as smooth as the first picture above, of course.

And this with the M6 + Canon EF-M 55-200.

This one taken a few minutes earlier with the 5D4 + 150-600mm. Included as comparison.

And finally a similar shot taken a yet a few more minutes earlier, with the Sony HX50V compact superzoom, when the male bird was facing the other way. Yes, the nice birds were kind enough to hang around while I paraded out three cameras and bunch of lenses...

Hi Ali,

thank you so much for sharing your pictures!!

Although it is hard to judge from your pictures via the internet I think it's a close call between the first quail picture made with the M6 and the similar one you took with the EOS 5D mk IV. As an owner of a 5D mk IV, EF 100-400 mk II lens and an EOS M1 I am very interested in the performance of the M6. I owned the M3 for a while but wasn't impressed by its ergonomics maybe the M6 is a better choice as replacement for the original M. The M5 is not that attractive because of the size.

robbert100 wrote:

thank you so much for sharing your pictures!!

You're welcome!

Although it is hard to judge from your pictures via the internet I think it's a close call between the first quail picture made with the M6 and the similar one you took with the EOS 5D mk IV.

If you get a chance to look at them at 100%, yes --- they are very close. I can usually tell the difference between 5D4 and M6 photos, but maybe not in this case.

As an owner of a 5D mk IV, EF 100-400 mk II lens and an EOS M1 I am very interested in the performance of the M6. I owned the M3 for a while but wasn't impressed by its ergonomics maybe the M6 is a better choice as replacement for the original M.

I found the M6 to be an improvement over the M3 in button positioning and such. Easier to turn on/off, and since I customized a dedicated button, to change ISO.  Also faster.  As far as grip and how it feels in the hand, the M6 is similar to the M3.

The M5 is not that attractive because of the size.

Agreed, my main reason for going with the M6 rather than M5.   Overall I find the M6 to be a pretty good companion to the 5D4.

Ali

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Best regards,
Rob
www.namaqualand.wordpress.com

Although it is hard to judge from your pictures via the internet I think it's a close call between the first quail picture made with the M6 and the similar one you took with the EOS 5D mk IV.

If you get a chance to look at them at 100%, yes --- they are very close. I can usually tell the difference between 5D4 and M6 photos, but maybe not in this case.

By the way, the photos of the female quail with the M6 did not come out sharp as I would have liked; not sure why.   Maybe shake, one is at 1/640s at 500mm and other 1/800s at 600mm, while the photo of the male is at 1/1600s.

An interesting fact, the California Quail is the official state bird of California.   I guess that explains the ceremonial plume.

Ali

That's a nice story about the California Quail, I didn't know that.

About the sharpness; I've experienced that in most cases the pictures of the ff cameras I owned are sharper than comparable pictures of the aps-c cameras. But I have to say this becomes noticeable while viewing the pictures at 100%