This weekend had an opportunity to visit a marsh here in Hawaii to test the Nikon V3 and newly released 70-300CX (189-810mm equivalent). I was able to capture a couple of herons and and an egret in flight at 20fps. The problem is the V3 allows a maximum of 40 shots at high speed. Then it takes about ten to twenty seconds to clear the buffer and write to the card. The other problem is trying to maintain a BIF in the viewfinder at 810mm (V3 has 2.7 crop factor) for more two seconds. Not easy, so some of my sequences have only a few images rather than 40.
The video links below are to the BIF shots at 20fps. Rather than post each individual full size photo I reduced the size and combined them into a video clip and reduced the speed to 6fps.
I\'m also posting a handful of heron images below. These are of a heron surprising me and landing on a bare trunk nearby. I turned quickly and managed to fire off a few shots as it landed. The heron then posed for me so I took a few shots. The BIF landing photos are more heavily cropped.
Overall, the setup worked well. All shots are handheld (weighs less than 2 pounds). Once I had initial focus, the camera maintained continuous focus whether the bird was flying toward or across from me. Pretty impressive. By the way, I\'m not a bird photographer and have only started taking these type of photos because of the extraordinary capabilities of this camera and lens. Hoping to use this setup for surf photography this winter.
This weekend had an opportunity to visit a marsh here in Hawaii to test the Nikon V3 and newly released 70-300CX (189-810mm equivalent). I was able to capture a couple of herons and and an egret in flight at 20fps. The problem is the V3 allows a maximum of 40 shots at high speed. Then it takes about ten to twenty seconds to clear the buffer and write to the card. The other problem is trying to maintain a BIF in the viewfinder at 810mm (V3 has 2.7 crop factor) for more two seconds. Not easy, so some of my sequences have only a few images rather than 40.
The video links below are to the BIF shots at 20fps. Rather than post each individual full size photo I reduced the size and combined them into a video clip and reduced the speed to 6fps.
I\'m also posting a handful of heron images below. These are of a heron surprising me and landing on a bare trunk nearby. I turned quickly and managed to fire off a few shots as it landed. The heron then posed for me so I took a few shots. The BIF landing photos are more heavily cropped.
Overall, the setup worked well. All shots are handheld (weighs less than 2 pounds). Once I had initial focus, the camera maintained continuous focus whether the bird was flying toward or across from me. Pretty impressive. By the way, I\'m not a bird photographer and have only started taking these type of photos because of the extraordinary capabilities of this camera and lens. Hoping to use this setup for surf photography this winter.
