Looking for Crossbills in a local Pine Wood.
31st January 2022
Last week I met up with a couple of friends with the intention of photographing some Common Crossbills. These little birds are not easy to get an image of because they spend most of their time up high in conifer trees and also they like to roam around the plantations looking for food and this makes them doubly difficult to photograph. Sometimes a birder can be lucky and see them coming down to water to drink as they have to drink often because of their diet of pine seeds.
However, this is difficult and luck is almost always involved. We all met up mid-morning in a local plantation on a horrible grey and misty morning but things were predicted to improve so we sat tight for an hour or so and the weather duly obliged.
My two friends have made the transfer from DSLR’s to Canon ‘mirrorless’ cameras, both now using the impressive R5 models. These new cameras with their much improved view finders, high megapixel full frame sensors with a 1.6 crop mode option, high ISO capabilities and advanced auto focussing systems are a quantum leap forward in technology, making me feel like a bit of a dinosaur still relying on my trusty Canon 7D Mk 2 DSLR. Having said that I’m not one to rush into things, but I accept that the time is coming fast when I will have to go ‘mirrorless’, to quote commonly used parlance.
I am, however, very reluctant to part with my Canon EF600 f4 is Mk 2 lens because of the awesome image quality and beautiful bokeh it creates. My one friend was using the 500 version of this lens – also a great performer and the other has switched to the much vaunted Canon 100-500 zoom, all these lenses having their different merits.
Tech talk aside there is one thing that alerts a birder to Crossbills and that is their sharp ‘Chip Chip’ contact call as they fly over the tree tops and as the morning progressed we were alerted to some birds in the top of some spruce trees. Typically they were high up but you have to deal with it so we manoeuvred ourselves into the best positions possible to get some shots. The birds put on a good display and they were also singing as well as calling which you don’t hear all that often. Because the birds were sometimes against a bright white sky (which is probably the worst scenario for exposure) I deliberately drastically under exposed by shooting at 3000/sec. This made the negatives really dark but I knew from experience of shooting in raw that the details would still be there and recoverable in post processing. Using these shutter speeds also took the glare from the light off the pine needles which can look really over exposed in this type of light. I always try and use high shutter speeds or really small apertures and 'RAW' recovery of negatives to off set difficult lighting situations rather than use e.g. high ISO ratings.
Thankfully we all managed some shots of these awkward little birds and later after a cup of coffee, a bite to eat and a catch up we went our separate ways promising to get together in the spring for another day out.
I was pleased that I was able to get a few reasonable images from these challenging conditions.
For more. Please see Latest Images, Crossbills
However, this is difficult and luck is almost always involved. We all met up mid-morning in a local plantation on a horrible grey and misty morning but things were predicted to improve so we sat tight for an hour or so and the weather duly obliged.
My two friends have made the transfer from DSLR’s to Canon ‘mirrorless’ cameras, both now using the impressive R5 models. These new cameras with their much improved view finders, high megapixel full frame sensors with a 1.6 crop mode option, high ISO capabilities and advanced auto focussing systems are a quantum leap forward in technology, making me feel like a bit of a dinosaur still relying on my trusty Canon 7D Mk 2 DSLR. Having said that I’m not one to rush into things, but I accept that the time is coming fast when I will have to go ‘mirrorless’, to quote commonly used parlance.
I am, however, very reluctant to part with my Canon EF600 f4 is Mk 2 lens because of the awesome image quality and beautiful bokeh it creates. My one friend was using the 500 version of this lens – also a great performer and the other has switched to the much vaunted Canon 100-500 zoom, all these lenses having their different merits.
Tech talk aside there is one thing that alerts a birder to Crossbills and that is their sharp ‘Chip Chip’ contact call as they fly over the tree tops and as the morning progressed we were alerted to some birds in the top of some spruce trees. Typically they were high up but you have to deal with it so we manoeuvred ourselves into the best positions possible to get some shots. The birds put on a good display and they were also singing as well as calling which you don’t hear all that often. Because the birds were sometimes against a bright white sky (which is probably the worst scenario for exposure) I deliberately drastically under exposed by shooting at 3000/sec. This made the negatives really dark but I knew from experience of shooting in raw that the details would still be there and recoverable in post processing. Using these shutter speeds also took the glare from the light off the pine needles which can look really over exposed in this type of light. I always try and use high shutter speeds or really small apertures and 'RAW' recovery of negatives to off set difficult lighting situations rather than use e.g. high ISO ratings.
Thankfully we all managed some shots of these awkward little birds and later after a cup of coffee, a bite to eat and a catch up we went our separate ways promising to get together in the spring for another day out.
I was pleased that I was able to get a few reasonable images from these challenging conditions.
For more. Please see Latest Images, Crossbills