400mm portraiture

I take a lot of images of my own and my daughter's dogs.  Sighthounds are very photogenic when they're running or playing.  But rarely would I take a portrait shot at the full 400mm reach of my OM systems 100-400mm Mk II.  Particularly wide open at the f6.3 and ISO 1600 settings that I use on my OM-1 for the action shots.  Why bother when you can easily get closer, shoot at lower ISO to cut noise and close down the lens for greater depth of field.

But sometimes you work with what you've got.  And that shows you how good or bad your lens is pushed to it's limits.  So, how good is the 100-400mm handheld with the above parameters?

This is Sam, my daughter's greyhound x deerhound longdog.  He specialises in exhausting high speed runs followed by prolonged resting far in the distance.

Here's a 100% crop of his face.

Just to repeat the exercise here's another full scale shot,,,

...and the crop.

Three things come out of this.

1. Animal eye detection works on the OM-1
2. 400mm wide open on the 100-400mm MkII is sharp
3. The isolation and out of focus blur (bokeh) at 400mm produces excellent portraits

No wonder this relatively inexpensive (compared to lenses with similar reach in both m43m, APS-C and full frame formats) is proving popular among we budget limited photographers.  Though I wouldn't recommend it is a daily portrait lens for ordinary portraiture.

An encounter with Hummingbird hawk-moths

Years ago - September 2013 to be precise - I took one, very lucky, shot of a Hummingbird hawk-moth, Macroglossum stellatarum,  Here's the shot:

Lucky in the sense that I was photographing this Ceratostigma willmottianum in my garden and the moth appeared, paused briefly to drink nectar, and then flew off, giving me time for only the one shot.  Lucky in that I had the Sigma 105mm macro on my, at the time, Canon 60D.  Lucky in that I was working at ISO 400, f6.3, and 1/200 sec and I somehow managed to get the eye, flower and proboscis reasonably sharp.  

Unfortunately everything else was blurred.  No wonder it's never sold.

I've seen these occasional UK summer migrant moths a few times since but never again managed to successfully photograph them.  Until last Monday.

I was working at The Garden House, collecting my usual social media shots.  I'd temporarily fitted the 100-400mm to the OM-1 to capture some nesting Jackdaws in the roof space of the old bothy behind the Walled Garden. I had bird detect on, continuous autofocus and sequential shooting set, ISO 1600 selected and the lens wide open at f6.3, giving a shutter speed between 1/000 and 2/1000 sec.  I happened to be near a patch of Nepeta (catmint) when a Hummingbird hawk-moth came to feed.

And then the fun began.  

Like hummingbirds these little moths flit about in unpredictable direction, wings blurred with the speed of their motion, briefly hovering in front of a flower to insert their long proboscis and drink the nectar.  Above all, they never settle while feeding.  Blink and they're gone.  Surely the harshest test of an autofocus system possible.  I had a lot of failures.  As evidenced by these three shots:

At first sight they look quite reasonable (I've cropped the images to square format only to cut out some extraneous content at the sides)  Now look at a 100% crop of the last image.

Not quite the success it appeared to be on first examination.  The swift, unpredictable, darting flight was producing real problems in attaining and keeping focus on the moth.  The others are slightly better but they've still missed focus.

But gradually, and aided by the arrival of a second moth*, I started getting a few better shots.

Sharper, more detailed and, most importantly, with better focus accuracy.  There's still the problem of wing blur but I didn't have enough light to raise the shutter speed to further freeze motion.  

In the end I finished with 3 shots I was reasonably happy with, and another shot (#1 in the final sequence) that was passable out of 46 in total.  The 100-400mm autofocus is just fast enough for the job though I suspect the PRO series lenses such as my 40-150mm might have been a bit faster and more capable of holding focus.  But you work with what you've got and an unpredictable small insect in flight would test any camera and lens combination.

An enjoyable experience.  I'd have continued but the moths took off for pastures anew and I didn't see them again.

* How do I know there were two moths?  Look at the backs.  One is fully covered, one distinctly worn where the scales have been rubbed away.

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm

Red kite in flight

A few days away in September last year gave Maria and I the opportunity visit Gigrin Farm, near Welshpool in Wales.  The farm is a feeding station for Red Kites, Milvus milvus, a UK bird of prey that had almost disappeared.  By providing supplementary feeding to a few of the remaining kites, initially at Gigrin, and, later, other locations, the populations have increased dramatically and they are now a far more common sight away from their mid Wales stronghold.

Gigrin provides a wonderful opportunity to see these graceful birds en masse.  Feeding starts daily at 3:00pm during the summer months, on a meadow surrounded by an arc of hides.  The birds know this and they start to circle overhead up to an hour beforehand, increasing in numbers as feeding time approaches.  The sky can get crowded as feeding time approaches!

At the time my longest lens was the Olympus 70-300mm f4-5.6.  Lightweight, with a good deal of reach for its small size, I soon found it wasn't really fast enough to acquire focus on these circling birds.  Out came the 40-150mm F2.8 PRO + 1.4x teleconverter and that stayed on the OM-1 throughout.  Bird detect on, of course.  I started getting better shots of individual circling birds though even here I've had to crop.

ISO 800, f4, 210mm, 1/3200 sec

Finally, at 3:00PM prompt the tractor with chopped meat arrived and distribution could begin.

It should be emphasised that these are wild birds, opportunistic scavengers by nature, and always on the look out for carrion.  Gigrin farm merely provides them with some supplemental feeding.  In return they provide a spectacle.

On cue, the first birds swoop down to grab a morsel, rapidly followed by a constant stream as more and more flock in to feed, individual birds jostling for position.

       

At times it's actually difficult to lock focus on an individual bird.  There are too many for the bird detection to settle on one and keep tracking.  But no system is perfect and I got enough good shots to have a selection.

In general the 40-150mm + 1.4x was a good choice.  The birds were close and I often didn't need the full 210mm to get a shot.  I did make one mistake.  It was raining.  Light rain but dull light and I should have taken the ISO up from my 800 setting to 1600 or more to get better sharpness for the in flight shots.  1/1250sec isn't really enough.

Examined at 100% both the above shots are lacking a little in critical sharpness around the wingtips - though still good enough to put on sale.  Every shoot is a learning experience.

A thoroughly enjoyable day for both of us and one I'd heartily recommend to even non bird watchers.  Though, hopefully, you'll have better weather and light.