{"id":109802,"date":"2022-04-10T05:30:39","date_gmt":"2022-04-10T11:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=109802"},"modified":"2022-04-10T05:30:39","modified_gmt":"2022-04-10T11:30:39","slug":"black-crowned-night-heron-in-flight-an-eight-image-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/10\/black-crowned-night-heron-in-flight-an-eight-image-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Black-crowned Night Heron In Flight – An Eight Image Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting test of the autofocus capabilities of the Canon R-5.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Four days ago at Bear River MBR this Black-crowned Night heron came from out of nowhere and flew parallel to me over the phrags on the other side of the canal. My instincts told me that it wasn’t worth making an attempt to photograph ‘him’ in flight because I wouldn’t have time to get him in the frame and lock focus on him before he was gone. But with my new Canon R-5 I impulsively decided to try anyway, fully expecting to fail.<\/p>\n

Obviously, these are grab shots so I didn’t have time to adjust my camera settings.<\/p>\n

To my surprise I locked onto him immediately and got about a dozen sharp shots before he turned away from me and was gone. And when I say ‘sharp’ I do mean sharp. Even though he was far away from me (these photos are cropped significantly) the sharpness and detail are surprisingly good, at least to me.<\/p>\n

These eight photos are sequential without any skips. I’m not particularly fond of the plain blue sky background but many readers have been requesting feedback from me on what I think of the R-5’s AF capabilities so I’m presenting the entire series, for better or for worse, as evidence.<\/p>\n

The photos speak for themselves so I won’t be providing any more narration until the conclusion of this post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

1\/8000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Using my old camera, the Canon 7D Mark II, and with this bird so far away and small in the frame, I would have had virtually no chance to keep my active focus point(s) locked on to the heron for this many consecutive shots. But the animal\/eye detection of the R-5 “found” the heron immediately, locked on, and stayed locked on – even though my unsteady hands had the bird bouncing all over in my viewfinder. The AF points work from frame edge to frame edge which really helped.<\/p>\n

With the 45 MP file size of the R-5 the image quality of these photos held up MUCH better than a similar crop would have with the 20 MP 7DII. And since I was shooting full frame I had a much better chance of keeping the bird in the frame for this many shots than I would have with the cropped frame 7DII.<\/p>\n

The R-5 doesn’t always work this well. There are times when I think I’ve locked on to a bird in flight, and at first the images look sharp when I’m previewing them, but when I look at them at 100% they’re just not quite sharp enough.<\/p>\n

But when the R-5 works, it really works.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting test of the autofocus capabilities of the Canon R-5.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109804,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[338,6,334,1126],"tags":[6297,49,716,6296,6298,6299,146,1127],"class_list":["post-109802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge-favorite-locations","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-black-crowned-night-herons","tag-animal-eye-detection","tag-bear-river-migratory-bird-refuge","tag-black-crowned-night-heron","tag-canon-r-5-autofocus-capabilities","tag-canon-r-5-image-quality-with-large-crops","tag-compare-canon-r-5-to-the-7dii","tag-flight","tag-nycticorax-nycticorax"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/black-crowned-night-heron-9798-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-sz0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=109802"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109840,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/109802\/revisions\/109840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=109802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=109802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=109802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}