Kestrels
While I was out walking one evening last week, I stumbled across a family of young Kestrels. I only had the X-T50 with me, but I'd had the foresight to pack the Fujifilm 55-200 zoom, which is relatively light and takes my reach out to 300mm in full frame terms. The light was really dull so I bumped the ISO much higher than I would normally want to, hoping I'd be able to tame the noise later using Topaz. Despite bumping the ISO to 6400, I was still getting relatively slow shutter speeds for capturing flying birds, plus they were a bit too far away while in the air, so the results were better than nothing, but not great.
Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?
This was an early attempt to catch one in flight. At the time I took this, I hadn't realised she was carrying a tasty snack in the form of an unfortunate field mouse (or it might be a mole, I'm not entirely sure). This was a relatively small crop, so it's had the full gamut of what Topaz can throw at it (upscale, noise reduction and sharpening) to try and make something acceptable.
Permission to Land
This would have been a great shot if I'd had more reach and more light. Again, it's been Topaz'd to within an inch of its life.
Waiting
She stood on this post for quite a while. I was initially about 30ft away and crouching in the grass, but every so often (especially when cramp set in), I'd try to shuffle forward and get a bit closer. Eventually, I got to within about 20ft where this shot was taken. It's probably the best from that particular encounter.
I was reasonably pleased with the last image, particularly given the equipment I was using, but reckoned I'd be able to do better with a more appropriate camera and lens combo, so the next night I set out to the same location with the Z8 and Nikkor 100-400 f/4.5-5.6S. An extra 100mm (effectively), a less noisy sensor and a camera and lens built for speed, this was going to be so much easier.
When I reached the location, I found a nice sheltered spot, sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. After about 20 minutes of contemplation, I decided the birds were going to be a no show and decided that I'd go and have a wander in the nearby woods instead. As I started to move off I spotted not one, but two Kestrels on some distant fenceposts and began to creep closer.
The Kestrels spotted me immediately, but weren't particularly bothered as I was still far enough away from them.
Not You Again?
As I got closer one bird flew away, while the other just stood there surveying the area and occasionally giving me dirty looks. This was taken at 400mm and the original image is cropped down to 6.5MP, so it still has a decent amount of detail.
Stretch Your Wings
While she was stood there, she decided to have a little stretch, first mobilising her wings.
Leg Day
And then stretching her legs. I knew she was getting ready to take to the air, so I was primed, the camera had a good focus lock, I just needed to wait for the right moment...
And She's Off!
In an instant she opened her wings and flew from the post, naturally I tracked her smoothly, probably too smoothly as all I got was a shot of her undercarriage as seen in this uncropped shot.
World Class Tracking
As she soared into the air, I continued to track her repeatedly firing the shutter. I think I was on CL release by this point, however, my shots of the Kestrel in flight were less than impressive. This (uncropped image) would have been pretty good had it been sharp. I'm not sure if the issue here was the focus tracking had missed or I simply hadn't dialled in a high enough shutter speed. I would have thought 1/1000th of a second would have been enough, but maybe not. In the full res image you can see what look like little streaks in the air around the bird, which I guess were water droplets or midges and, as they're streaks, it does indicate motion.
Faraway Flyer
This one looks sharp, but she's a bit too far away. This is from a 5MP crop that's been run through Topaz to upscale it a bit. I'm not entirely sure that's helping. It looks a bit sharper, but also (at full res) looks a bit impressionistic.
A Sinister Glare
When she landed again I was able to get close enough to take this shot (6MP square crop). She looks so pleased to see me, either that or she's weighing up whether it's worth attacking me or not. Either way, I decided it was a good time to leave.
Conclusion
Not that anyone should be taking bird photography tips from me, but for anyone interested, I had the Z8 set to AF-C, with the largest custom focus box it would let me set, auto subject detection enabled and CL release. I was in shutter priority, with the shutter speed set to 1/1000th of a second and auto ISO enabled. I have all of this set up on a 2nd custom bank, so it's a one button job to switch between this and my typical landscape setup.
In general, the subject detection worked well, latching onto the bird accurately and even onto its eye when I was close enough. Occasionally, it refused to see the bird at all and decided a nearby lump of rock was a better target. This was annoying, because when it does that, there doesn't seem to be any way to get it to re-examine the scene or even manually set the focus lock. I've subsequently read various configuration suggestions which sacrifice a programmable button for a one button switch between focus areas or even focus modes (i.e. back to spot AF-S) to deal with these situations, so I need to play around a bit more with how I've got the camera configured.
I could have done with a bit more reach, so I may need to invest in the 1.4x teleconverter at some point as I believe this plays well with the 100-400 and it would put me roughly in the same ballpark as the 150-600 without adding much extra bulk.
Out of the two cameras, the Nikon performed much better for this use case as expected, but the little X-T50 did quite well too, in fact its subject detection seemed a bit happier to find the bird than the Nikon did, whether or not it was actually focussing on it is another matter, although considering it was somewhat hamstrung by the lens I was using it with. Fuji's 100-400 would have been a handy lens in this instance, but I no longer own one as I always found its AF to be really hit and miss when I had it with the X-H2 (from my own experience, I'm convinced a lot of the problems people have with Fuji AF are lens related). It's also nearly as heavy as the Nikon 100-400, so it's not something I'd want to be carrying around with my lightweight X-T50.
