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Female Mountain Bluebird [OC] (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 month ago by dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world to c/birding@lemmy.world

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The further around-town perambulations of Captain Wrong Lens.

Hey, look! There's a bird all the way over there on that wire. Who is it? I have no idea. A little brown bird, very far away. These are the tribulations of not lugging the 200-800 around. This is the best I could manage in the drizzle with my 24-240, and is another cropped photo. The original is below:

Male Mountain Bluebirds, Sialia currucoides, are very blue. The females aren't. If they have the decency to face away from you they do have blue on the tops of their tailfeathers, though, which you can theoretically use to identify them from a distance. No such luck in this case at the very moment, however just a few seconds later she flew away to here:

And you can just see what I'm on about. You can in the crop, anyway. The original is here:

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[–] Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Not bad considering how much you had to crop. No lens is sharp cropped that far.

MFT sensor superiority strikes again, at least in the world of wilderness photography. 2x crop factor means smaller and lighter lenses. I carry my super zoom and macro lens together all the time. Let's just not talk about light gathering, lol.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Mine is at least an APS-C, or Canon's interpretation of the same, so when using one of their "real" RF lenses and not any of the toys from the RF-S series I get a free 1.6x magnification. That's only marginally annoying for close-in work. You know, the other thing I do around here, which is why I have a separate 24mm macro lens to get all of large objects when they're in my photo booth.

This also handily chops off some of the ugliness around what would have been the edges of the frame from a full frame sensor, which I guess is nice. So it could be better, but it also could be a lot worse.

[–] Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm definitely not up to date with Cannon terminology. I know they run the gamut of sensor sizes. On OM it's just MFT, for better or worse. No matter what your sensor size you can't beat physics. Do you prioritize bokeh and light gathering with FF, or portability and crop factor with MFT, or somewhere in the middle with APS-C.

[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The RF is Canon's current mount for their mirrorless models (the old and busted but most recent DSLR cameras use their EF mount instead), and the RF-S line is supposed to be specifically for their crop sensor APS-C models. I don't know what the S is supposed to stand for. Small? Slim? Skinflint? Styrofoam?

These purportedly follow the smaller sensor = smaller, cheaper lenses pattern of thinking, and won't actually illuminate all of a 35mm full frame camera's sensor. Thus if you bung it on one of those models the camera body figures it out via the data pins on the lens and puts itself into 1.6x crop mode, effectively converting your big expensive full frame camera into an APS-C one with a lower pixel count anyway. It really rather defeats the purpose.

The only RF-S lens I've got is the 18-35mm kit lens that came with my R10 and it definitely lives up to the kit lens stereotypes. It is not terribly versatile, is slow, noisy, feels extremely cheap, can't focus very close, and aside from all of the above it's also highly optically questionable. Despite this Canon has the audacity to charge $350 for it if you have the perverse urge to buy one separately. It does at least have optical image stabilization built in which might be part of why it's so damn expensive... Just like most of Canon's lenses.

[–] Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago

Yeah, I have a 12-50mm f/3.5-6.3 kit lens. It's not great, but kinda great for the price and its functionality. It's not all that sharp, but it has an electronic zoom and a dedicated pseudo-macro mode at 43mm. I bought it for $115 so not all that expensive either. I decided to get a dedicated 60mm f/2.8 macro instead, not too bad for $300.