{"id":114895,"date":"2022-07-23T05:46:43","date_gmt":"2022-07-23T11:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=114895"},"modified":"2022-07-23T11:53:15","modified_gmt":"2022-07-23T17:53:15","slug":"belted-kingfisher-seven-image-flight-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/07\/23\/belted-kingfisher-seven-image-flight-series\/","title":{"rendered":"Belted Kingfisher Seven Image Flight Series"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another mini review of the Canon R5. (7 photos)<\/p>\n

Earlier this week Canon came out with a new firmware update for the R5 so I chose yesterday to update mine. To do so you need to download the update, copy it to a memory card and then transfer it to your camera.. The R5 has two memory card slots – one for CFexpress Type B cards and the other for UHS-II SD cards. Except for the first few days I had the R5 I’ve always use CFexpress cards, but I have both so I decided to use my SD card for the firmware update.<\/p>\n

Well, guess what I found on that SD Card that I haven’t used for so long?<\/p>\n

Hundreds of photos that apparently I’d never downloaded, including the following series of seven Belted Kingfisher flight shots that were taken three months ago, on April 24th. They were taken in typical kingfisher habitat so the setting is incredibly busy. But collectively I think they’re excellent evidence of the capabilities of the R5’s autofocus system and the advantages to the bird photographer of shooting full frame when the image file size is as huge as the R5’s (I shoot in Compressed RAW, C-RAW, so the file size is much more manageable, without any noticeable loss of detail).<\/p>\n

The following seven images are sequential without any skips.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

This is the first flight shot I got after the kingfisher left the diagonal branch at upper left to dive on a fish.<\/p>\n

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1\/5000, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

To gain speed quickly he turned on his afterburner but only three frames into the dive he…<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

began to pull out of the dive and abandon his attempt on the fish. Now his goal was to land on another branch slightly above him and to the right.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Up to this point all my photos of him were sharp but this shot’s a little soft.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

However, in the next photo in the burst my active AF point locked onto him again and maintained that lock for…<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

one more shot.<\/p>\n

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1\/6400, f\/5.6, ISO 640, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn’t lose sharp focus again until the kingfisher was so close to the right frame edge I didn’t have enough room there for a horizontal composition, so I had to go vertical. His flight posture in this shot is amazingly similar to what it was in the previous one. In the next shot in the burst everything but his tail was out of frame.<\/p>\n

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With the kingfisher coming partly toward me, flying erratically, and with the background so close and so busy, if I’d been using my previous camera (the 7D Mark II) I’d have been extremely lucky to get more than one sharp shot of him in flight. Getting this many would have been completely out of the question, at least with me at the controls.<\/p>\n

So, to what do I attribute the fact that I got seven sequential photos of the kingfisher in flight that were sharp to reasonably sharp without cutting off any body parts? I think there were three major factors involved and yes, one of them was the skill of the photographer. But I’ll still give the R5 much of the credit. Here’s why:<\/p>\n