Birding Equipment


The latest equipment I have for my persuit of those perfect pictures is a Canon EOS 5D mark 2 and a 400mm f 2.8 lens. This lens gives me an incredible opportunity to photograph birds (and lions) like never before. It has such a wide aperture and shallow depth of field at its widest that it will really give the "wow" factor to the bird images.
EOS 5 D and 400mm f 2.8 "beast"


Southern Carmine bee-eater

Bird photography is a really interesting and quite challenging off-shoot of our day to day birding. I have been photographing wildlife for many years now but my attention to bird photography is fairly new.
 The challenge with so many species of birds is that they move so often and so fast!! No doubt because of faster metabolisms and small bite sized prey or food items they need to keep going and your photography is a way of catching them for a split second as they go about their lives.

Most birds are prey to someone else and as such are usually very nervous creatures.....I have recently discovered that the sight of my big lens coming out of the truck window is enough to scare most birds off their perches!! You need to be quite bush-savvy as they say to get close enough to fill your frame.

Big lenses make all the difference, not just in magnification (the difference between a 300mm lens and a 600mm lens for birds is like the difference between Calcium Carbonate and Camembert!)
but also in their potential for very shallow depth of fields! look at the image above of the Southern Carmine bee-eater and notice how the wide aperture (f4.5) throws the background out of focus and centres the eye on the subject.

A fast motordrive is an advantage to shoot off several shots and ultimately hope for the perfect picture but there are few substitutes for knowing your subject and being able to predict its next move!

On this page I will  add bits and pieces about birding equipment and fieldcraft that may help you in your persuit of the feathered beasties.

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