What’s Up?
On the morning of February 21, 2016 our prayers were answered as we awoke to a foot of fresh snow, our first of the trip. On previous trips it had snowed an average of every day or three. We did quite well that afternoon with the cranes flying and dancing in the field just below our lodge. As always, most everyone in the group including and especially me, enjoyed the hot springs onsen followed by yet another great meal prepared by Shinobu.
Please shoot me an e-mail if you would like to join me in Japan next year, if you have any questions on the trip, or if you would like to learn about either the repeat customer or the couples’ discounts.
The Streak
Today’s blog post marks 111 days in a row with a new educational blog post. This post took me about four hours to assemble including the time spent on the image optimizations. As always–and folks have been doing a great job recently–please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated.
Selling Your Used Gear Through BIRDS AS ART
Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog or via a BAA Online Bulletin is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charges a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly–I offer free pricing advice, usually sells in no time flat. In the past few months, we have sold just about everything in sight. Do know that prices on some items like the EOS-1D Mark IV, the old Canon 500mm, the EOS-7D, and the original 400mm IS DO lens have been dropping steadily. Even the prices on the new 600 II and the 200-400 with Internal Extender have been plummeting. You can see all current listings by clicking here or by clicking on the Used Photo Gear tab on the right side of the yellow-orange menu bar above.
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This Photo Mechanic screen capture represents the six full frame RAW images from which the optimized images below were created so that you can get an idea of the sizes of the crops and just how well the 5DS R image quality holds up. |
600 II/5DS R Flight
As first reasoned by Patrick Sparkman, when working with the 5DS R you can work smaller in the frame, have lots of depth of field, not worry about clipping wings, and enjoy fast AF without a TC and wind up with superbly sharp, high quality images that can be cropped to outshine images made with any other Canon dSLR.
If you are not sure you are buying that, study the six full frame RAW files above, note the optimized image crops in #s 1-6 below, and note the detail and image quality on the seven crazy crops: #s 1A to 6A and 2B. Frame rate be damned, I have never seen anything like the images that I produced on February 19. When I shared images the raptors in flight images from that folder with multiple IPT veteran Alejandro Furman on my MacBook Pro with Retina Display, he gasped each and every time I enlarged an image in Photo Mechanic.
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #1: White-tailed eagle wings down looking down |
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Image #1A: large crop of White-tailed eagle wings down looking down |
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #2: White-tailed Eagle soaring flat |
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Image #2A: tight crop of White-tailed Eagle soaring flat |
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Image #2B: ridiculous tight crop of White-tailed Eagle soaring flat primary tips |
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #3:White-tailed Eagle pano |
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Image #3A: tight crop of White-tailed Eagle pano |
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #4: White-tailed Eagle vertical banking flight |
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Image #4A: tight crop White-tailed Eagle vertical banking flight |
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #5: White-tailed Eagle looking down |
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Image #5a: White-tailed Eagle looking down |
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This image was created at the Akan Crane Center on the 2016 Japan in Winter IPT with the Induro GIT 304L/Mongoose M3.6-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens, and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R. ISO 400: 1/1600 sec. at f/4 in Manual mode. AWB. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to see a larger version. Image #6: Black-eared Kite in flight |
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Image #6: large crop of Black-eared Kite in flight |
Comment and Questions
All comments and questions are of course welcome.
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Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right 🙂
Hi Artie,
first image I like very much. The zooming in of the images look very familiar to me. A friend showed me all that last year. Will see what I can do.
Saw you in the hotel lobby in the eve at the Crane Sanctuary, just did not had the time to say hello when we came in. Later on I could not find you anymore. Oh well, maybe next time.
PS I enjoyed reading the article 🙂
Ciao Anette
Next time say “Hi.”
a
Have you had any problems with artifacts or moire on the 5DS-R? Would you recommend the 5DS-R over the 5DS? I’m torn between the two bodies. So far many accomplished bird and nature artists I admire seem to have gone to the 5DS-R.
Hey Phil,
No moire problems at all. I saw one online mention of moire; the only time that guy saw any was when shooting a building with a strange pattern with a 12mm lens from far away…
Though I have never used the 5D S I can tell you that the images from the 5DS R are like nothing you have ever seen before… Just last night, Bryan Holliday, an accomplished photographer, was looking at Patrick Sparkman’s and my 5DS R images and comparing them with his 1D X and 7D II images. His reaction? “I cannot compete with 5DS R images in terms of sharpness, fine feather detail, and image quality.” He is calling B&H to order one this morning.
Please use this ink to order:
Canon EOS 5DS R.
a
ps: for more on the 5DS R please see here.
Thank you very much for replying. I’ve scoured the net over the past few days and am leaning towards the 5DS now. It seems the the difference between the two cameras is less than I first thought, and a little sharpening makes the 5DS images nearly identical to the 5DS R.
Also thank you for posting Rudy Winston’s comments on the matter. I was swayed by his statement, “…overall, Canon’s engineers remain very firm that in their opinion, OVERALL digital image quality is enhanced by the use of traditional low-pass filter design in digital SLRs.”. Canon engineers do this stuff all day and must have very valid reasons for including the low pass filter. Rudy said it twice so it must be important. Some with nice work on DPreview express a preference for anti-aliasing as well, since it takes care of other artefacts and moire. Also, since I might call on this camera for people shots I wonder about textiles.
It seems there are relatively few comparisons of optimized 5DS and 5DSR images. Most seem to compare unsharpened RAW output. This seems hardly fair given that I think images taken with AA filters are meant to be sharpened, whereas 5DS R images would be sharper right out of the camera, needing less or no sharpening. There is one such comparison here but I couldn’t find much else out there:
http://lightresolution.blogspot.ca/
I’m still torn as yourself, Art Wolfe and others whose work I admire have gone straight to the 5DS R, but I am leaning to the 5DS. Hopefully there is no wrong decision here! I hope that the 5DS images would also “be like nothing I have ever seen before”. Therein lies the trepidation about stepping off the 5DS R path worn by experts who do this for a living.
I am currently shooting with a 6D and wind up cropping frequently to change aspect ratio or fine tune composition. I think the extra resolution will prove invaluable to my style.
Once again, thanks!
Hi Phil,
I think that you are making a mistake. I have never seen anything like the 5dS R images… In a real world comparison between the 7D II, the 1D X, and the 5DS R, the results are no contest for the 5DS R…
I ain’t seen no moire and I ain’t seen no other artifacts 🙂
Either way, please use one of my B&H affiliate links:
Canon EOS 5DS R DSLR Camera (Body Only)
or
Canon EOS 5DS DSLR Camera (Body Only)
thanks, artie
The White-tailed Sea Eagle looking down is terrific!
I’m a little late but all the pictures are incredible!. My favorite is 1A: you can see the fine tufts of hair on both sides of its beak. Amazing!!
Which camera is better at higher ISO’s?? The 5DS R or the 1DX.
Hi Phil,
Theoretically, the 1D X. Practically they seem pretty close to me. a
Art, I am now a believer!
I have been sitting on the fence for along time trying to figure out what I will replace my Canon 1D mmII. This camera is just too incredible!! – Graham
What always amazes me is how you get that DOF at f4. I usually get the fore or aft wing OOF!
As above, when you work smaller in the frame with the bird farther away, d-o-f is increased; the greater the distance to the subject at a given aperture, the greater d-o-f. a
ps: d-o-f has nothing to do with the photographer; it is all physics.
Amazing!
Awesome!
Hi – first post here, so be kind 🙂
I also recently purchased a 5DSR (my main body till then was the 7d Mk2), and to my surprise, I’ve found that since getting the 5DSR, the 7D2 has been mostly sitting in the bag unused. The combination of 5DSR+500mm F/4 II (with and without extenders) is just great – for distant birds, the combo is sharp enough to allow close cropping without IQ loss, and more than makes up for the 7D2’s 1.6x crop factor. And when you get a bird to fill the 5DSR’s frame, the sharpness and IQ are just stunning. And to my surprise, the 5DSR’s frame rate, while not as great as the 7D2 or the 1DX, hasn’t proven to be as much of an impediment as I feared.
Nagi
Hope that you used my link 🙂 a
ps: agree
Artie, all of the images are spectacular. It is very hard to pick only one. I would love to be able to to capture any of them, with ANY camera! If I had to choose I would take number 4 for that classic pose. All have perfect exposure and great sharpness. You are amazing!
My favorite is #1. I love the body position of the bird, the engaging stare, and how it shows the bottom and top of the wings without shadows…and of course the sharpness! 😉
Great shots, Artie, and extremely impressive image quality. Wow.
Well, I guess the only thing I can say is that these are amazing. It’s kind of like cheating. The old adage that one needed to fill the frame in order to get a good image is no longer applicable. Of coarse, you still need to be in the right place at the right time and know your stuff, but the high megapixel camera simply opens up a whole new vista of opportunities for high quality captures. I guess I’m sold!
Shocking! These photos made my heart beat faster. This seems revolutionary to me, not just a better version of what has already been possible. I have dreamed about being able to capture and share bird photos like this. These images remind me of the first time I saw Winged Migration, and felt as though I were flying. Spectacular. Thank you for this.
Jim
Hey Jim,
Many thanks for your more than kind words.
a
How many frames before you got a keeper? One of the things I like about the 1series is it’s keeper rate.
Nearly all were sharp… a
ps: the keeper rate with any camera has a lot more to do with the situation and the person holding the camera than it does with the camera…
Easy summation: extraordinary!
Nice work Artie. I like some of the head angles on these raptors! The slow frame rates of these mega MP cameras is outweighed by all the details. I am still impressed of what my D800e is capable of.
My favourite is 1A
All of the crops are of course wonderful, but my favorite crop
is 5A. The light is spectacular and really makes those feathers
shine.
Doug