Photographing birds with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro - Part 2

In Part 1 of this pair of posts I looked at my - rather inadequate - efforts photographing birds with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro lens.  Even with the 1.4x teleconverter attached to give an effective 420mm f4 (ff equivelent) it's hardly long enough for any birds in the wild that are neither large nor accustomed to humans.  Yes, I can crop, quite heavily in some cases, and still retain a small but useable at web size file, but that's hardly adequate for my needs.

For example, the little wren above was singing his heart out on a telephone wire at the end of my garden when I crept out and captured him at 210mm, f5, 1/4000sec.  The image is fairly sharp and detailed but, to get good framing I had to crop down to 3.6Mpx from the original 20Mpx, way below Alamy upload requirements.  Put simply, I didn't have enough pixels on the subject, even at 420mm equivelent.

There are three solutions to the problem:  

• Firstly, buy a longer M43 telephoto to give me more reach and a larger subject in the viewfinder.  Even sticking to Olympus lenses there are 4 options: the 150 - 400mm f4.5 (very expensive), the 300mm f4 (expensive), the 100 - 400mm (not as good as the previous two and still quite expensive), or the cheaper 70-300mm - but that's not really good enough at the the long end.
• Secondly, use an adapted lens.  When I switched to M43 I bought a Viltrox Canon EF to M43 adapter to try my 70-300 f4-5.6 L lens to get me out to 600mm ff equivelent.  It had a fair bit of reach but the autofocus was way too slow to be of use for anything other than static subjects.
• Thirdly, lure the birds to the photographer rather than go hunting them.  In other words, feed them and/or provide bathing and nesting facilities. Definitely the cheapest solution but you are limited to what visits in your locality.

Given my budget limitations it came down to Solution 3.

With feeders and bird baths in both front and rear gardens, all visible from our windows, it's been fascinating to watch the birds come and go.  Yes, I'm generally shooting through glass but that's nothing a little post processing in Lightroom won't fix.  Here's some results:

Male blackbird on a bird bath

Great tit on a feeder

Robin in flight to a feeder

Sparrows on our improvised bird bath

Starling on a feeder support

It's well away from my usual plant and garden photography but it's fun and occupies a few hours.  I'm even thinking of getting a hide so I can get even closer and without window glass in the way.  Meanwhile, I've seen blue tits investigating our nest boxes.  Pro capture opportunities for 2024, perhaps.

Photographing birds with the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8 Pro - Part 1

I am not a bird photographer.  To be honest I've never been that interested in them and I've never had the budget to afford the long, fast telephoto lenses required to do the job properly.  But, like any wildlife / nature photographer I'll take the opportunity to get a shot should chance permit.

Stover Park, near Newton Abbot in Devon, is a 114 acre nature reserve centred around a large lake that attracts large numbers of migratory birds in winter,  Because there is a flat road running round the lake it's ideal for Maria's mobility scooter and we can enjoy a day out together.

Now the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8, even with the 1.4x teleconverter fitted, is not, by birding standards, a long lens.  420mm ff equivelent, though great for picking out flower details at the back of borders or capturing butterflies feeding without spooking them, is not really long enough for small, shy birds in distant treetops.

But it's just long enough and fast enough for waterfowl aclimated to human presence.  Water fowl such as this flock of coots...

...or a red billed moorhen.

Of course, bigger birds are even easier, as exemplified by this mute swan juvenile enjoying a wing stretch.

But all too often the bird is just a dot in the viewfinder and even the sharpness of the lens isn't enough to produce useable images.

But there are circumstances when even shy birds will tolerate human closeness.  During my regular days at The Garden House I'm often followed around by one of the resident robins.  They're quite happy to get close and even pose.

Of course, they're looking for food, hoping the human will turn up a tasty morsel at ground level. It's what gardeners do, after all.  Mind you, the need to search for food can certainly overcome caution, as with this song thrush hunting for snails amidst a hard early winter freeze.

Hopefully it found something worthwhile.

Regular feeding, as anyone who's put up feeders or bird tables knows, will always attract birds and some of my better shots have been taken on the feeders in my own back garden.  But that's the subject for my next post...