We broke a rather long hiatus of not going out chasing birds by taking a trip to Karnala to get some Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher shots.
The location was a small stream and had a lot of tree cover. And not much in terms of light. But a very pretty bird called the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher (ODKF).
The site
In my excitement on finally making a bird trip after a long hiatus, I rented a Nikon Z9. I mated it with my Nikon 600mm F4 FL using the FTZ adapter and it worked just fine. Ive been reading a lot so thought would try it out. Turns out a big learning curve and also a wrong decision for this trip.
Four reasons why it was a wrong decision:
a) I am outta practice for a longish time
b) This new camera given all its capabilities & features, needs some time to figure out
c) Really low light situation
d) And to top it all, a flighty super fast target subject
Brain fog and confusion galore at the shoot. I was setup for video and then as the bird approached, I instinctively reached for the shutter button and engaged it, missing the video button completely ! Set of super blur shots resulted.
Some points that I want to note for myself
1. I was trying to snag a flight shot as the bird launched from the perch. I focused on the perch and moved the frame a bit ahead to catch the bird. The bit ahead was not in focus. Z9 it is better to keep focus on the shutter button for the tracking to engage. I was using my MC30 remote cable with back button focus. But, that ended up in not tracking since I was not engaging the back button while using the cable release. This ofcourse resulted in a ton of blurred photos, even though I prefer blur shots to the super sharp ones ! That said, the focus away from the perch would grab the background too when targeted away from the perch with no subject in the frame. Best is to prefocus and let the burst shot snag the bird in the “pocket”. But if I had set the shutter to engage AF, the MC30 cable half press would’ve engaged tracking if I had grabbed the focus initially. I need to experiment more and come back on this.
a) Set focus on shutter button and that will engage the cable release half press for tracking
b) Set wide area, AF-C, 3D, Animal Tracking
c) Focus sensitivity to very sensitive
d) Focus on perch and keep holding cable half press
e) Move the frame to just ahead of perch while holding half press while the focus box is still grabbing the perch.
f) Wait for bird to perch and full press cable release as it takes off ( and that happens in an instant, so prepare for a lot of “blanks”). Finally one of the trys will snag it 🙂
2. For most parts I used AF-C, 3D focus and experimented with a variety of focus areas. Next time i should also try full Auto Area, just for kicks.
3. The next time, need to experiment with “pre capture” and also remember to change to jpeg settings for it ! I am permanently in RAW mode.
4. And Auto Capture ! Finally a much improved old “trap capture”. Check this video > Auto Capture with Nikon Z9 and here is the Ricci Talks Video explaining Auto Capture.
The MC30 on the D5 and Z9, after a bit of time, locks up image preview. One need to remove the cable to preview. Gave me a shock as the what happened on a new camera ! Then I realised the same had happened on my D5 too.
The Nikon NX Studio software is a mess for large quantity of images in a folder.
The big question, how the devil do you folks sort these huge bursts of 45 Megapixel sensor files? My Nikon NX Studio dies even before showing me the folder. I needed to make multiple folders with lesser images for my NX Studio to work properly. Seems like “silkypix” is the OEM for the Nikon NX Studio RAW processing software. Take a look > https://silkypix.isl.co.jp/en/ , the UI looks identical.
Planned “Blurred” Shot (F4, 1/40th, ISO 2000)
I also experimented with Auto ISO and shutter priority. (ISO 25600, F4, 1/3200th )
All in all when I mentioned this to my friend Kishore, he quipped, that I am now a “Blurred” & wildlife photographer“. Pun for Bird & Wildlife photographer 😉
More pics from the shoot below
Haha. . I feel your pain. Took me “a while” to get used to the new set of parameters one has to keep track of, to get decent pictures on my Z8. That said, some seem to have come out quite well
You still managed some great shots!
Those 45 MB images are a real pain. Coupled with 20 fps and silencing the shutter sound means thousands of images to sort through 🙁