Wandered Outside

It wasn't raining this morning so I wandered outside to do a little bit of photography testing.  I am in the process of testing a new lens adapter to be used, mostly, for wildlife photography so I stepped outside for a short while this morning to see if I could find any birds or squirrels to capture in photos.  I'd even settle for a neighborhood cat but I couldn't find anything.

After sitting crouched down low to the ground and perfectly still for about ten minutes, I was thinking I wouldn't see anything and that I might be wasting my time.  The birds that I did happen to hear were off to the east too far away from me to see.  After a few more minutes I decided to very slowly and quietly wander around the yard in search of something to shoot.  

A couple of chickadees flitted quickly from one tree to another about 50 feet over my head so that was a good sign.  At least I saw a couple of tiny birds so now I was wondering if maybe I had spooked all the birds when I first stepped outside.  The more I thought about that, though, the more I realized that I always see birds in the trees all around me no matter what I'm doing in the backyard.  I could even be using a power saw and I'll see birds around me.  Something else must be spooking the birds. 

I wandered deeper into my backyard and slowly scanned all the trees.  After about two minutes into scanning this area, off in the distance, I saw a big hawk through leafless tree branches to the west take flight from high in a tree.  There was no way to miss the big six foot wingspan.  Now I understood why I couldn't find anything.  The hawk had all the songbirds quiet and hiding.  A hawk would also keep the squirrels in hiding too.  

After I saw the hawk fly off, I started seeing some birds off in the distance making their way closer to my location.  Still, at this point, I was losing patience and was thinking it would be easier to wait for a better time.  

The light was terrible too which is why I was now thinking that I might wasting my time with this endeavor on this morning.  It was dark, dreary and overcast.  There was no sun, no shadows, no highlights, so the whole area was very low contrast.  It is simply terrible light.  Clouds are okay but it is nice if you get some sun peeking out to brighten up the environment and add some contrast.  This is a dull, flat environment this morning.

Regardless of the terrible lighting and my desire to just head indoors, before I stepped back inside the house, I happened to see two chickadees in a tree deeper in our backyard.  They really were too far away for decent photos but I shot a couple of quick bursts and captured both of them separately in two different trees.  I would prefer the bird to be much larger in the frame than we see here and the only way to do that is to get closer to the birds.  Typically, photos such as these would end up in the trash bin because the subject is not as prominent in the frame as I would like.

I had a rather bright cloudy sky behind this bird, below, so it is mostly a silhouette.  Still...  a decent capture considering the distance to the bird.  And, I was walking around handholding this camera and lens combo which is a very long combo.  The fact that both of these photos are sharp is impressive considering I was not using a tripod or monopod.  

As I said, there is nothing special about these two bird photos other than they were the first two birds captured using this camera body, lens and new lens adapter.  I'm impressed with this very inexpensive lens adapter though.

As I was shooting these two bursts, I realized that I'm still trying to get used to this new-to-me camera.  It has a lot of features and I have focusing set up a different way on this camera.  I'm thinking that for birds perched on something, using back-button focusing would be best so that is what I am trying to get accustomed to at this point.  

When those two chickadees flew over my head, I realized that back-button focus isn't ideal for capturing birds in flight.  For instantaneous shots like capturing birds in flight, having the focus tied to the shutter release button would be wisest.  Hmmm...  maybe just keeping my camera set to continuous autofocus and back-button focus would work?  So now I need to figure out the best way to quickly switch from one focus method to the other and I should also try continuous auto-focus with "animal detect" turned on.  I was using animal detect but I think the camera was set to single autofocus.    

Anyway, not only am I testing this new lens adapter...  which happens to be working excellently so far...  but I'm also still getting used to this Panasonic G9 camera body.

EDIT:  April 20th, 2024 - I attempted to find wildlife in our backyard again today for a very short while.  The birds seem to be very skittish right now.  Maybe it is because there are no leaves on the trees so they have a more difficult time hiding out of sight?  I don't know.  All I know is that they seem be exceptionally skittish right now.

On the positive side, although this Chickadee is also quite a distance away from me in this photo below, I would not have been able to capture any photo if there were leaves on the trees.

Once again, I'm happy with the focusing when using this adapter since this photo is difficult to get in focus with all those branches in the frame.

There is no doubt that a native Panasonic lens would focus more accurately and more quickly but, for a cost of less than $100 for this lens adapter, I suppose I can't complain.  I'm still quite impressed with this adapter especially since the native Panasonic lens I would want instead of this lens adapter would cost me over $1000 (I just checked the going used rate this morning).  This combination will do for now!