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DSLR Photography Digital cameras, and their compatible lenses are often very expensive. But with quality equipment, some fundamental photographical techniques, and the digital basics for post-processing your pictures you will be able to produce astonishing photos in little time. The cost of ownership will not increase as with film loaded SLR's, saving you a lot of money in the long run. Digital SLR Cameras Canon has introduced EOS 40D, 10.1 Mpx ($1300). This is an improvement on its already popular EOS 30D, 8.2Mpx ($1200), especially because the increased Mpx, self cleaning sensor, and high ISO performance. Key features for both cameras are ISO settings that allow for 1/3-stop increments, and spot metering. If you want the best picture DSLR you should save up for the Canon EOS-1D Mark III, 10.1Mpx ($4500). It will be the best camera out there for high ISO and quality in general. The highest Mpx camera money can buy is the EOS-1DS Mark III, 21.Mpx and it will set you back $8000. The Mark III together with a quality lens will step up your images into the professional realm. This camera increase the resolution/sharpness over a 40D. Low noise, color rendition, and the tightly centered 45 point autofocus option for following flying birds are also deciding factors to trade up (if you got the money). Canon verses Nikon: Note that mostly Canon is mentioned below, and that Nikon has a very similar arsenal. The competition is often neck by neck. Canon EOS 20D is often compared with Nikon D70, and a Canon EF 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM with a Nikkor 300mm f/4D ED-IF AF-S. Today (Jan 2008) Nikon has taken the semi-pro title with their D300 while Nikons D3 competes with Canon EOS-1D Mark III. I chose to review Canon since it is the most common brand among birdphotographers. But today there seems to be very little difference between the brands, and either one is a good buy. Crop factor: The image sensor can be full frame, or smaller than the regular 35mm film plane. If it's smaller it will increase the focal length of any lens that you attach. Thus the focal length multiplier or "crop factor" of the different cameras differ. Canon EOS 40D have a focal length multiplier of 1.6x the original lens, which will increase the focal length of a 300mm telephoto lens into a 480mm super telephoto lens. Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III has a full frame sensor and Canon EOS-1D Mark III have a factor 1.3x. Image Sensor: If you change lenses often there is a high likelihood that dust will start sticking to the image sensor. This will ofcourse affect the pictures you take, and you should check the amount of dust by taking a photo of a white wall, or a clear sky. You should learn how to clean the CCD/CMOS yourself. This problem isn't such a conundrum as you might think at first. Just as you need to clean your telephoto lenses once in a while, the glass covered image sensor needs its cleaning. Note that the latest cameras come with self cleaning sensors. But the word is that you still now and then need to clean it manually. My suggestion is to simply buy a set of 12 Sensor Swabs (size 1, 2, or 3 depending on your camera model), and a bottle of Eclipse glass cleaning liquid. Check out Photographic Solutions, Inc. website for retailers. Memory Cards: To find out what memory card works the fastest with your camera check out Rob Galbraith's CF Database. Portable Hard Drives: For us trigger happy RAW shooters a portable hard drive can save lots of money on Compact Flash cards. SmartDisk FlashTrax, and Epson P-2000 have long been the choice of many because of great features such as picture preview, and MP3 playback. But for simple, fast RAW/JPEG data storage (no picture preview) look at low cost/weight options such as Wolverine FlashPac with a 40Gig HD starting at just $200. Autofocus: Fast autofocus is also a great advantage in many situations. In fact Canon's very reliable, and fast autofocus was one of the reasons that initally made this brand the most popular one among bird photographers. Note that selecting all available focusing points can make the camera "hunt" for the image, or simply focus on something else. In bushes, or at sea you might want to select only the center focusing point, a selected few, or switch to manual (all depending on what camera you have, and the particular circumstance). Exposure control, and use of flash: Spot metering has been very popular in bird photography because the bird usually takes up a very small part of the entire film plane. But many well known photographers mainly use Evaluative metering instead. This makes sense if you have frame filling birds, or evenly illuminated bird views. But you still need to be actively involved in changing the white balance for contrastly lit subjects. You often need a flash to fill in some light. This is especially true for dark plumage birds, or when the light isn't enough to bring out the colors of the bird. Note that full strength flash can reflect details of birds feathers which will cause un-natural glossy images where the bird look overly illuminated. You should instead use it as a fill (note that you most often need a tripod to accomodate the slow flash sync and dial down the flash to avoid over exposure), and don't use a Better Beamer unless necessary to reach far away birds. Some of the best guides to the art of flash photography can be found on Luminous-landscape's Tutorials. You can also increase ISO settings from 400 to 1600 ISO, but using a flash is often better since high ISO can produce noisy/grainy pictures. Note that high ISO settings can produce very good pictures up to 400 ISO, and sometimes quite usable pictures up to 800-1600 ISO. Rule of thumb: A sharp grainy picture is better than a fuzzy low ISO picture. You can recover many badly exposed photos in Photoshop, but you need to take the picture as good as possible not to lose too much in quality! Image editing: Most DSLR pictures need improvements such as sharpening, color, contrast, or light adjustments. It is very important to learn digital basics to post-process your images. You can learn a lot about digital basics such as editing your images in Photoshop, and how to set up a digital workflow to minimize the time spent post-processing the images from Luminous-landscape's Tutorials. You can read more of what a digital workflow can look like at The digital picture: Digital Workflow. There is also an all in one purchase of such a digital basics tutorial from "Birds as art" founder Arthur Morris Digital Basics (a pdf file for $20). Thom Hogan's Sharpening 101 page is also a great short reading on the importance of sharpening correctly, and Ed Rotberg's Sharpening Tutorial is an excellent guide on how to get the best pictures out of your digital photos. Most tutorials use Adobe Photoshop CS for their image editing, but you can accomplish great results with the much cheaper Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 (and later) which comes with 16 bit, RAW image support for less than $100. The drawback being fewer tools that actually support 16 bit, and some tools that are only found in CS. If you want to take the highest quality pictures your camera can muster you should always use uncompressed format - RAW instead of compressed jpeg that holds much less information, and where image editing produce only small enhancements. |
| My Workflow:
Prime Lenses: To get the best pictures you need a fixed super tele (prime lens), and if used hand-held with image-stabilization (e.g., Nikon 400mm VR, or Canon 400mm IS), and a shoulder stock with remote release (e.g., BushHawk). The best prime lens combinations out there is Canon 500mm or 600mm f/4 L IS USM with Canon Extender II 2x, and a Canon EOS-1Ds Mk III (a tripod i strongly recomended). You will get excellent reach, and image stabilization. The 500mm is somewhat easier to carry around (less bulky, and three and a half punds lighter), but the 600mm will get you unparalleled reach. The 400mm f/2.8 L IS USM is very heavy and expensive, but extremely sharp. Canon 400mm f/5.6 L USM is very good hand held, produce excellent quality, but it lacks IS which makes it less popular today since IS has become standard on most other telephoto lenses. The 400mm f/4.0 DO IS USM has been burdened with a few optical shortcomings, and is very expensive. I have seen quite a few, very disappointing pictures taken by the very best naturephotographers. If you are going to spend a lot of money on a lens this one should probably not be it! Canon 300mm lenses are often usable to get "birds in their environment" pictures, but need teleconverters for most portraits (see Teleconverter section below). Zoom Lenses: The most popular hand held lens today in USA is the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM which is preferred because of its versatility, relative low weight, and image-stabilization. Sharpness at 400mm doesn't seem to be as good as with primes. Teleconverters: Teleconverters can loose a little light (one stop in aperture), and don't always produce as sharp pictures. Note that excellent pictures can be produced with teleconverters, but quality lens combinations are a must. The teleconverters are a great choice for creating super telephoto lenses without spending huge amount of money on a fixed lens, and to get the reach that you otherwise cannot get. The combinations are often much less heavy than the fixed lens counterpart. Two excellent lens combination are the Canon 300mm and the 400mm f/2.8 L IS USM + Canon Extender II 1.4x. One very popular alternative is the Canon 300mm f/4 L IS USM + Canon Extender II 1.4x which is much cheaper, and very light weight. My Suggestion: For the budget minded consumer looking to buy his or her introduction DSLR setup I suggest buying a Canon EOS 40D camera. There are three competing lenses discussed below. Regardless of what you decide to buy consider buying a shoulderstock with remote release if used hand held. Canon 300mm f/4 L IS USM is light weight, has image stabilization, and you can make it into a 420mm by coupling it with a Canon Extender II 1.4x without loosing autofocus. This combination looks to be sharper than the Zoom. Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM is great for its zoom versatility, light weight, and image stabilization. I have seen great pictures with this lens, but more often they are not up to par in sharpness. Canon 400mm f/5.6 L USM was my choice based on the razor sharp images it does take in good light, but I often curse the fact I don't have image stabilization. A Bushhawk shoulderstock helps me a lot in allowing very sharp hand held shots when seabirding. My 40D takes great high ISO images to boot, but a 1Ds Mark III would allow for the ultimate picture. The three lenses go for around $1000 each so I suggest you compare pictures taken by all camera/lenses (see sample configurations below), and consider its primary use. If you have the money to buy one really expensive lens, and camera I would suggest a Canon EOS-1Ds Mark III + 800mm f/5.6 L IS USM. But if you want something that you can still hold in your hand for a short while (when taking flight shots, or on a boat) and wants to save a few thousand dollars on previous config, then I suggest a Canon EOS 40D with a 500mm f/4 L IS USM. Here is an old but still valid equipment guide from a www.Birdsasart.com article 600mm vs. 500mm.
Great DSLR/SLR, and lenses links:
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