Author: DMcA

  • Why I prefer Olympus 4/3 to Sony full frame for Birds in Flight

    ByDMcA

    The conventional argument against Olympus for birds in flight is sensor noise — but the 1.3-stop sensor disadvantage is cancelled by the 1.3–2-stop lens speed advantage of the OM pro telephoto lenses over the Sony 200-600mm at equivalent focal lengths. Focus accuracy testing confirmed this: in challenging afternoon sessions requiring instant acquisition on erratically moving birds, the EM1x matched or outperformed every Sony system tested, and the OM system’s substantially lower inertia made the difference in shots requiring rapid tracking.

  • New Lightroom workflow for improved high frame rate bird photography

    ByDMcA

    The standard workflow of importing 200+ keeper images into Lightroom first and then passing them to specialist tools falls apart at scale — the process is too slow and the round-trips between programs compound badly. The workflow I now use reverses the order: cull in FastRawViewer, batch denoise in DxO Photolab (200 images in around 10 minutes), process in On1 for dynamic contrast and resizing, and import into Lightroom only at the end for metadata and final culling.

  • Effect of teleconverters and light level on Olympus Pro lenses for for birds in flight

    ByDMcA

    Testing 11,467 shots of Gannets at Bempton Cliffs over two days, the 1.4x teleconverter on the 40-150mm f2.8 caused almost no accuracy penalty — 73% hit rate versus 74% without it, a result that means the 1.4TC can stay on permanently. The same 1.4TC on the 300mm f4 halved the hit rate from 78% to 39%, and a 5-stop reduction in ambient light dropped the 300mm’s solo accuracy from 78% to 60%.

  • EM1x test, great results with ProCapture and Bird AI tracking

    ByDMcA

    At Bempton Cliffs using ProCapture L and Bird AI tracking together, I took 4,382 shots of Gannets landing in 61 minutes with a 76% focus hit rate — and 12% of those in-focus shots were portfolio-quality landing captures, a result I had never come close to achieving in previous trips without ProCapture. The pre-capture buffer captures the frames before your finger fully presses the shutter, which is the only way to reliably catch a Gannet at the exact moment it drops its feet.

  • Bempton Gannets landing

    Bempton cliffs on the east Yorkshire Coast is an excellent RSPB nature reserve. Its great feature is that the cliffs are over 300 ft high and as a result shots can be taken of the birds at eye level. The year-long residents of the cliffs are Gannets although in summer Puffins and other seabirds congregate there. Gannets are large birds and whilst attractive, they’re not particularly interesting in flight until they start to land, when their feet and wing movements are beautiful and comic at the same time.




    Capturing these landing moments is pretty difficult because they fly in at high speed from the sea and at the last minute either drop down or carry on, giving the photographer only a second or two to capture the landing . With most cameras, it’s very hard to do this, because by the time you recognise a landing is about to happen, you’ve missed it. With the latest Olympus OMD cameras however, there’s a feature called Pro Capture which is specifically designed for capturing split second events. Over the course of around 3 hours. I got around 800 in-focus shots of Gannetts landing. This is a selection of around 30 of the best of those, chosen because of the beauty of their wings or the comedy of their feet (or both).




    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

  • Hogsmill waterbirds

    Hogsmill Nature reserve is a perfect little wildlide refuge in an obscure part of Berrylands in south London. These shots were taken on my first ever visit. Around 120 bird species have been recorded at Hogsmill, some quite rare.

    These are shots of the very common Gull (plus a swan and a goose). In flight and loafing around, common Gulls are unremarkable, but when diving into and emerging from the water, they look quite beautiful. These shots were taken with the Olympus EM1x, using the Procapture feature plus Bird recognition autofocus, which enables the capture of events that occur before the shutter is pressed . No full frame camera at any price can do this.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

  • Hogsmill songbirds

    Hogsmill Nature reserve is a perfect little wildlife refuge in an obscure part of Berrylands in south London. These shots were taken on my first ever visit. Around 120 bird species have been recorded at Hogsmill, some quite rare.

    There are two hides, and outside one of them are several birdfeeders that attract a range of small songbirds. These are extremely nervous and move super fast. Normally they are impossible to capture in flight. However, using Olympus technology (Pro capture), I got a surprisingly high number of shots. The difference between these little birds at rest, and in flight is profound – they turn into proud and beautiful avians, with more impressive plumage than many larger birds.



    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

  • Richmond Pen Ponds Gulls, Duck, Geese and Terns

    Photos from various Camera tests at the Richmond Park Pen Ponds in summer 2021, all with the Olympus EM1x and various lenses including the extremely exotic 15-1400mm lens, which is both rare and expensive ($7500).

  • Yorkshire and Northumberland landscapes and seascapes

    These are photos taken on a couple of Landscape workshops in Northumberland and North Yorkshire in June and August 2021 with the excellent Steve Bell. Steve is a very talented landscape and dark sky photographer, and his courses are packed with useful information and great shooting opportunities. These shots benefit from Steve’s careful approach to composition and technique, which is very much in tune with my own style gained from Long Exposure photography. Most of these shots involve some form of exposure blending, focus stacking or panorama stitching. The first three photographs are from Yorkshire and the rest are from Northumberland.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

  • Farne Islands seabirds (and seals)

    These shots were taken from a boat trip to the Farne Islands in Northumberland in June 2021 on a photo workshop with the excellent Steve Bell. The 2 hour Farne Island boat trip is highly recommended, and there is no shortage of birds to see, although it’s quite hard to get good shots of them.


    Touch or click any image to go to a lightbox view and then touch the full screen icon in the top right hand corner to get the best viewing experience. And for information on the shot and the location, be sure to click the little ‘i’ icon

  • AF for birds in flight with the Sony A9 and the 200-600 zoom

    ByDMcA

    The Sony A9’s PDAF array is linear — it detects vertical contrast well but struggles with horizontal contrast like a bird in profile, unlike the Olympus EM-series cameras which use cross-type sensors that detect any pattern orientation equally. This structural limitation, combined with the 200-600mm’s single focus motor and 2.1kg weight, explains why the A9 hit only 39% accuracy in the demanding afternoon session at the Hawk Conservancy Trust against the EM1x’s 45%.

  • Sony 200-600 zoom: 4 cameras, two lenses

    ByDMcA

    Across four Sony cameras and two copies of the 200-600mm lens, the pattern was consistent: the A7R4 produced 100% out-of-focus shots at Gigrin Farm and 97% out-of-focus at Andover with a replacement lens, while the A9 and A6400 performed better but still fell well short of the Olympus system in demanding conditions. The same autofocus failures appear across all four cameras with both lens copies, ruling out user error or a single defective unit.