Bird photography with Canon 7D

I took my new Canon EOS 7D out for a field test on Sunday. Practiced a lot of shooting on these mallards and gulls trying to get a feel for how the auto focus system works and what settings are the best for tracking birds.

The detail captured by the 7D is amazing. Shooting these ducks on the water it captured incredible amount of detail compared to my old 10D or even to the 1D Mk2 that I have used for bird photography before.

Duck

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Bird photography with Canon 1D Mk II

I borrow my friend’s Canon 1D Mk II for a while and trying out shooting bird with this camera. Gave Scarborough Bluffs a try to see if I can test the camera out. The auto focus is really good but being 1D has a 1.3 crop factor while my 10D has a 1.6 crop factor, I found I lose significant focal length, so much so that I started to use the 1.4x extender on my Sigma 100-300 all the time. But the problem with the 1.4x extender is that is slows down auto focus by a lot and it degrades picture quality. So in the end I think Canon 1D is not really for me. I would rather have a really good APS-C factored DSLR than a 1.3x crop factored camera.

Now here’s the result. First up a few common birds.

To the left Common Grackle and to the right American Robin.

Common grackle American Robin

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Sunrise at the Scarborough Bluffs

Well I’ve done sunset in the Scarborough Bluffs before. So this time it’s a sunrise. Drove down to the bluffs while it was still black, waited there for a long time on this chilly winter morning to capture the magic when the sun peaks over the rocks. It was wonderful, some Canada Geese flew by and created just the perfect shot. The shot below is a panoramic shot that was stitched together with 3 horizontal photos.

Runrise at the Scarborough Bluffs

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Scarborough Bluffs winter shoot out

One not too cold winter evening, I decided to go down to the Scarborough Bluffs to see how it was like down there in the winter. The harbour is all iced up and the ducks that are flying in had to land on the ice.

An American Black Duck flying in for an icy landing.

Mallard landing

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