Woodlands Birds of Ontario --- R5 + RF100-500 L USM

I find the image quality and the resolution of this body-lens combo simply amazing. The sharpness and fine detail are everything I had hoped they be when I bought this gear.

I had a great afternoon this week with these delightful little woodland birds.

Rudy

Very nice Rudy! Thanks for posting. I do enjoy that combo myself.

Pete

cpharm86 wrote:

Very nice Rudy! Thanks for posting. I do enjoy that combo myself.

Pete

Thanks very much, Pete, glad you enjoyed it. And yes what a combo!!!

Rudy

drsnoopy wrote:

My goodness those red cardinals are red!

There's a song that goes... "When the red red Robin goes bob bob bobbin' along," but Robins have nothing on these Cardinals when it comes to red!

Rudy

That is both beautiful and cinematic!  I live in Nepean myself and shoot all of those birds; just posted a male Cardinal this morning on Instagram.  It's nice to see the Nuthatch, Sparrow, Chickadees in detailed video like that; I've never tired it before, but feel inspired now!

Thanks for posting that!

Ron.

RonBr wrote:

That is both beautiful and cinematic! I live in Nepean myself and shoot all of those birds; just posted a male Cardinal this morning on Instagram. It's nice to see the Nuthatch, Sparrow, Chickadees in detailed video like that; I've never tired it before, but feel inspired now!

Thanks for posting that!

Ron.

Hi Ron,

Thanks very much for your very kind and encouraging feedback.

It's so nice to hear from a fellow Nepeanite. I and my fellow photographer friends are regulars at the Hillda birds feeders. I've always loved these sweet little birds and the stunning resolution of the R5 and RF100-500 really does them justice. The feather details is just terrific.

Cheers,
Rudy

Rudy Pohl wrote:

cpharm86 wrote:

Very nice Rudy! Thanks for posting. I do enjoy that combo myself.

Pete

Thanks very much, Pete, glad you enjoyed it. And yes what a combo!!!

Rudy

I looked at your wonderful photos on Flickr. Do you use both Nikon and Canon?

cpharm86 wrote:

Rudy Pohl wrote:

cpharm86 wrote:

Very nice Rudy! Thanks for posting. I do enjoy that combo myself.

Pete

Thanks very much, Pete, glad you enjoyed it. And yes what a combo!!!

Rudy

I looked at your wonderful photos on Flickr. Do you use both Nikon and Canon?

Thanks Pete.

Four months ago I switched to Canon with an R5 after having been a Nikon DSLR user for the previous 12 years. I wanted to do wildlife videos and Nikon only had the Z9 at the time which was too big and too expensive for me. I sold my Nikon gear a few months later.

Rudy

Good glass on the same lines as 100-400 M2. I wish it could be little faster.

Speaking of Red. Here are few from Toronto 

1

2

3

Cheers,

IB

Rudy Pohl wrote:

cpharm86 wrote:

Rudy Pohl wrote:

cpharm86 wrote:

Very nice Rudy! Thanks for posting. I do enjoy that combo myself.

Pete

Thanks very much, Pete, glad you enjoyed it. And yes what a combo!!!

Rudy

I looked at your wonderful photos on Flickr. Do you use both Nikon and Canon?

Thanks Pete.

Four months ago I switched to Canon with an R5 after having been a Nikon DSLR user for the previous 12 years. I wanted to do wildlife videos and Nikon only had the Z9 at the time which was too big and too expensive for me. I sold my Nikon gear a few months later.

Rudy

I’m glad you are happy with your choice. I have been with Canon since the film days!

indusbreed wrote:

Good glass on the same lines as 100-400 M2. I wish it could be little faster.

Speaking of Red. Here are few from Toronto

1

2

3

Cheers,

IB

Very nice shots!

Hi IB,

Wow, these are great images of two very challenging subjects—Northern Cardinal males because of their red colour intensity and snow because it's so easy to blow the details in the highlights. You have got them both perfectly! The feather details are also terrific. Great work and thanks for sharing them.

Cheers,
Rudy

R2D2 wrote:

Very cool Rudy. Love the snow.

What format did you shoot this in?

R2

Hey there R2,

Thanks for your feedback, it's very much appreciated.

Yes, I just love the snow too, it makes the whole thing magical. I was just packing up for the day when suddenly out of nowhere these big heavy flakes started falling so I decided to stay until I had enough "magic" on my memory card for a nice video.

Regarding the format, all the clips were shot at 4K 120fps ALL-I, which samples and outputs at a staggering 1880 megabits per second delivering breathtaking resolution and image quality. It is this particular video format which is why I bought the R5 when I could have bought the R6II which was announced the same week I bought the R5. And seeing the amazing fine detail and IQ in this latest video makes me very happy that I made that choice.

Just as a little aside: I found that the heavy falling snow flakes really played havoc with AF tracking, both with and without eye detection. So I switched to Spot AF and that worked really well. Prior to this I shot all the clips with the AF face/subject tracking, both with and without eye detection. The AF system did a great job. The following day I was down by the Ottawa River practicing flight shots on Ducks taking off from the water and I was blown away by the speed and accuracy at which the AF tracking system picked up and stayed with the birds.

Cheers,
Rudy

Bramble9 wrote:

Rudy; that was a very beautifully done video and I enjoyed seeing it very much. And I'm not a video guy. Thanks for posting.

Bramble9

Thanks Bramble, you really made my day!

Cheers,
Rudy

Beautiful work!

May I ask if those clips were done handheld?

Keep sharing these fantastic snippets of nature - magic stuff!

Blaize wrote:

Beautiful work!

May I ask if those clips were done handheld?

Keep sharing these fantastic snippets of nature - magic stuff!

Wow Blaize, thanks very much for your great encouragement, it's much appreciated.

Yes, these clips were all handheld, but even though I'm getting better at this with practice my footage still ends up being pretty jerky and with several sudden movements per clip. So I do a number of things to mitigate these defects. These include:

1. Shooting as much footage as possible at 120 frames per second. This high frame by itself smooths out a lot of the jerkiness right from the start.
2. In my editing software, which is Davinci Resolve 18, you are able to change the location(s) on the timeline for every frame in the clip. At any point on the timeline you can move it up, down, left or right.  So I put a temporary grid over the timeline and line up a certain spot on the image to a certain grid point, let's say the bird's eye, and then I slowly go through the footage and every time there is a big jerk or movement in the video I relocate the image so that the eye is back under the particular spot on the grid. This method can salvage virtually any footage no matter how jerky or uneven it is.
3. Finally, I apply digital stabilization to each clip which smooths it out even more. The end result is what you see in this video.

Cheers,
Rudy