A Little More Bird Photography

I'm still waiting to get in to see my doctor (appointment is tomorrow) so I was still just hanging around doing nothing but hoping to find something to do. As I was boiling an egg for breakfast, I noticed a Nuthatch outside our kitchen window... "Hmmmm... I haven't seen these guys since last year!" 

I quickly decided that I'd grab a camera and a lens and try to capture a few photos.  

Last week when doing the same, I grabbed my smallest camera and longest lens. Since my smallest camera was plugged-in to recharge its battery this morning, I decided to use my larger Sony camera body. Once again, I grabbed my longest lens. I haven't really used this combo yet so this would be a good test while giving me an opportunity to practice on these jumpy fast moving birds. 

None of these birds outside our kitchen window ever sit still for longer than about three seconds so you need to be quick if you want to capture a crisp photo. This morning was no different. It is bad enough that you hardly have any time to compose a shot, focus and press the shutter release button but, to compound this problem, you need to get your camera to place the focus on the bird and not all the little thickets of branches surrounding the birds. It is pretty challenging!

By the time I had returned to the kitchen window, the Nuthatches were gone. "Oh well... there will be other times." 

I did, however, see some sort of sparrow or grosbeak and a Dark Eyed Junko so I figured I should see how my bigger Sony camera handles fast action.  

Well, as expected, this camera was far slower with this huge lens than my agile small camera proved to be last week. I managed to capture a few decent photos but now I know that the best combinations are using my fast little Sony camera body with my longest lens... and using my sharp Sony medium telephoto lens on this larger Sony camera body. This camera body is much more responsive with my medium telephoto lens so that is the combination I should use. The downside of that combination is that my reach is only half of what I can do with my longest lens.

The larger Sony camera that I used here for these photos is better suited for portraits and landscapes. Actually, it is awesome for those purposes!

In the meantime, I really need more practice in bird photography...