I saw these ducklings a few days before already, and a few bold ones got quite close to me, unfortunately the bank of that little stream is quite steep and I would have liked a lower perspective.
However, I suspected they might not get as close if I got nearer to the water (which would basically mean going in the water).
Still, the next morning I tried again, and found a handy stone to step onto. My suspicion was proven right however, the ducklings stayed further away this time. The only one who came close was an astonished drake.
I got this photo though, which I quite like, mainly due to the pose of the duckling rising out of the water.
Camera 7D Mark II with Canon EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM. Settings:
f/5.6
400 mm
1/640s
ISO 1600
I didn't go for a faster shutter speed to keep the ISO low in the early morning light, thankfully the ducklings didn't move too quickly.
Post processing in Lightroom CC, OOC the image was exposed a bit high, so I lowered exposure and especially reduced whites and lights rather drastically to reduce the over-exposure of the sun-lit feathers. Still, there a few blown highlights in the breast feathers of two ducklings, but I personally find these acceptable.
Some cropping required, from 20MP down to 10.5MP
If this trend continues, I probably should have no hesitation to get a 400mm prime and a TC at some point, the 100-400mm zoom is versatile, but in my case pretty much nailed to 400 all the time.
Hope you like the photo, if it's not the best from a technical POV, I think the actors in the scene might at least bring a smile to everyone's face.
Robert, this is so cute. They look very much like the ducklings of our black pacific ducks. I know the experience of trying to get that low POV. Sometimes it is much easier said than done. You've done well. The little guy rising out of the water is the icing on the cake for me. Most of the others are turned away and not engaging, but the tall one saved the day. The overexposed feathers don't worry me a great deal. I am a sucker for rim light. The little guy on the far left looks like he has his eye on a bug flying above, I also like the colour of the water around the babies. I'm not keen on the big rocks in the BG, but not much you could have done to avoid them. Maybe you could tone them down a bit?
You certainly did put a smile on my face! Thank you for sharing.
Glennie, thank you very much for your kind words. And indeed, it's the little rising guy that made this photo a keeper for me.
You are probably right about the one on the left watching the bug. All the ducklings were actually quite excited while I was there with a lot of insects buzzing low over the water. It was really a joy to see.
I have replaced the photo now with one where I added a graduated filter in Lightroom, darkening the rocks in the background. It's subtle, and may only be noticeable compared side-by-side. I didn't want to overdo it and make it seem unnatural, but I think the rocks are a little less present now. So thank you for that idea!
Cute ducklings!! Good image for not being able to get close or low. The blown whites are a common problem -- best avoided by shooting in very soft light, but soft is often dim, too. Frustrating. I love thin high clouds.
I might do a pano crop here, to remove some of the rock at the top (and darken it further) and some of the water at the bottom. But since it's already a crop, maybe that's going too far.
Hope you get to spend some time with them -- you may get a better angle with a better BG.
That lens will take a 1.4X TC very well. You're limited to the center focus point but you can often hold focus and recompose. So for now save your money on a 400 prime unless your really need the f/4 or wider. Your lens with a 1.4X is at least 95% as good as the 400 DO II is. I have both -- the DO is a choice for me for astrophotography with a 1.4X and even a 2X, and with the 1DX2 it gives me a little faster AF for birds in flight, with more focus points, and I have center autofocus with the 2X. But until you get to that level, the 100-400 II is an awesome lens.
Hi Diane, thank you for your comments and kind words.
Thin high clouds would be great of course. In their absence, I am at least very fond of the early and late hours of the day.
Unfortunately, I'll be gone for a week, so little chance with these I guess. However, we have a constant stream of new ducklings in the area until at least June, so maybe some other chances will present themselves.
I didn't really consider the 1.4x TC for this lens until now. Especially because I imagine the maximum aperture of f/8 and the resulting single AF point in the centre to be quite limiting.
My plan was therefore to save up to the 400 DO II and use that with the 1.4
Your suggestion makes me think about that plan again…
I may just give it a shot with the TC, if I am unhappy with this camera-lens-TC combination, I can still keep it around for the day when I can afford the more expensive and faster prime.
In the meantime, I did a pano crop as you suggested. Perhaps a rather drastic and cinematic one, but the rocks are pretty much gone. I still like the original crop and will keep it, but it's always interesting to try something else.
I was trying some test shots today with my new 1DX2. Light was low in light rain, so I was interested in looking at AF and high ISO image quality. The lens I grabbed for a test run was the 100-400 II + 1.4X III. This was at ISO 3200 and wide open (f/8) at 1/250 sec. On a tripod at about 12-15 ft. This is with minimal adjustments in LR: Exp -0.6, Shadows +60, Vibrance +12. (The Adobe Std profile is low contrast for that body, thus colors are not very saturated. Easy to increase.) It is a crop directly in LR, just looking at the crop size (toggled with the I key) and stopping just short of the limit here. Exported with no resizing, std sharpening. Also just the default sharpening in LR.
I'm just tossing this out because it's right in front of my face today, as a handy example of the 100-400 + 1.4X. The eye is a little behind the plane of focus in this one. I don't attribute the image quality here to the camera, except that I was able to shoot at a high ISO to get a reasonable shutter speed in the low light. (AF was excellent, as expected, so I will get a higher ratio of sharp images in action situations than I have with the 7D2, but the sharpest ones will be very comparable, with adjustment made for the 7D2 having a couple of stops more noise.)
I've had good luck with focus and recompose with the center focus point limitation.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-07-2016 at 06:45 PM.
That's magnificent, Diane, I didn't think this lens with an extender would have such great image quality. I think I'm sold.
Thank you very much for taking the time to share this photo (I guess it's a bluejay?).
My (very long-term) dream is a combination of 400 DO II and 1DX2, but there is obviously a lot of capability in my current gear for me to explore, and the 1.4X III should fit well in there (for a comparably acceptable price).
Thanks, Robert. It's just an average image for quality. All were comparable except a few where I completely missed focus. I've gotten the same with the 7D2, except more focus misses.
Forgot to say, it's also a great almost-macro lens with the TC with its 3 ft close focus. I've gotten some good dragonflies and butterflies.
It's a Western Scrub Jay. It was grabbing seed I had tossed out and taking it back to a blackberry thicket. Then I saw three juveniles begging for food! Couldn't get close enough for pictures, though.
I've been photographing our new granddaughter and today we decided to document how much her eyelashes have grown since she was born 5 weeks ago. So I grabbed my "macro" lens -- the 100-400 II and put on the 1.4X III. Here is a 100% crop. (Cropped a virtual copy in Lightroom to just under the size limit here and exported with no resizing. Only the default sharpening in LR and about a half stop reduction in exposure. Was just beyond the minimum focus distance.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-13-2016 at 09:56 AM.
Thank you once again, Diane. I got the converter today.
Despite an overcast sky, I immediately checked for the ducklings close to our home to test the converter.
And so far, I feel quite positive about the results.
The main thing I noticed already, first with the ducklings and then some more controlled test shots - with my 7D2, my 100-400 II and this converter, fully extended at 560mm and f/8 is only somewhat sharp. The remedy seems to be to go to f/9 or even f/11. Which of course introduces again more ISO at the needed shutter speed.
This observation is confirmed by the lens comparison tool here.
Still, even at f/8, with minimal cropping viewed on a large monitor, this combination should be perfect for some good photos:
Looking forward to testing this lens with extender more when the weather brightens up again!
Wonderful shot in perfect light!! Much better than full sun. But it is always a challenge to hit best focus and enough shutter speed with a reasonable ISO and DOF.
If those shots are 100% zooms, I would expect better. The chromatic aberration was not corrected in the corner shot, which will help sharpness somewhat. (My LR import setting has it checked for all shots.) Do your own tests (on a tripod of course) and compare Live View AF to standard. (LV reads the image right off the sensor.) If they differ, try microadjustment. Results vary with different copies of both body and lens, but with my 7D2, the FocusTine results (repeatable) for the bare lens were -1 at 100 and +2 at 400. With the TC they were -3 at 100 and +3 at 400. That's probably enough to correct for with closeup subjects but not for birds in flight.
My eyelash shot above is with the new camera for which I haven't had time to do microadjustment, and DOF was extremely small. But it gives an idea of sharpness.
Glad to read you like the shot, Diane!
Thankfully, the ducklings were quite welcoming today and open to my testing of the lens+TC combination.
Here are two 100% crops (with full images linked). The first one is the sharpest duckling I got at 560mm and f/8. When I compared that to the sharpest duckling at 348mm and f/7.1 I was wondering why it was much sharper than the other.
And two 100% crops comparing the very same subject at 560mm with different apertures (no editing besides ticking the remove CA box)
f/8
f/11
Seeing these, I tend to think that this lens with this converter might be better served at the tele end by shooting not fully open, but maybe a bit stopped down.
Nevertheless, I'll do some more testing, and, more importantly, shooting.
These do show a difference but it is surprising in its amount. Was the camera on a tripod? AI servo or one shot? What were the shutter speeds? With the ducks, they would have been moving, even if subtly, and so would the camera and the distance if hand held and in One Shot. Try it with an absolutely still subject like a magazine page with fine print, smoothly taped to a wall in very good light. Compare AF to focusing in Live View. Tripod mandatory. Then you can begin to find the limits of working in the field, which would be movement and focus accuracy.
I'll try the same with mine when I get a few minutes. A quick check showed AF was as good as Live View with the 1DX2 and the bare lens. I don't even remember if I tried it with the TC -- the last week has been an absolute blur, in the best possible way, with a driving trip to Los Angeles to admire our new granddaughter again at a month old, and a bombshell success financing her father's first full-length movie. I'm not sure I'll get back to mundane reality for a while, but I do need to check microadjustments.
Just found a quick example -- taking a break from babies I shot the kids' neighbor's cat, 1DX2 but that shouldn't be a factor. 100-400 II bare at 400, ISO 1600, wide open at f/5.6, hand held, standing, camera not supported other than by my grip, 1/160 sec. Single focus point on the inner corner of his left eye. Cropped to just under the size limit here and exported from LR with std sharpening. No raw adjustments except Highlights to -72. Default sharpening, which is only enough to make up for the softening of the antialias filter. No focus calibration.
DOF obviously very small but it might give an idea of the bare lens wide open. I shot 7-8 (not a burst) and all were this sharp. AI Servo AF.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-14-2016 at 03:05 PM.
These do show a difference but it is surprising in its amount. Was the camera on a tripod? AI servo or one shot? What were the shutter speeds? With the ducks, they would have been moving, even if subtly, and so would the camera and the distance if hand held and in One Shot. Try it with an absolutely still subject like a magazine page with fine print, smoothly taped to a wall in very good light. Compare AF to focusing in Live View. Tripod mandatory. Then you can begin to find the limits of working in the field, which would be movement and focus accuracy.
No tripod, all images shot with AI servo, shutter speeds for the ducks were 1/500s, for the seed 1/1000s with f/8 and 1/640s with f/11 (which is the sharper shot).
I really have to do some testing to find the limits of this combo, but its much more fun to be out in the field shooting moving things…
For now I'll stick with f/9 to be safe when using this lens together with the TC.
The bare lens itself is pretty much perfect, got a photo of our cat at 300mm and 1/30s with f/5 and AI Servo, fantastic sharpness even at ISO 2500.
I'll try the same with mine when I get a few minutes. A quick check showed AF was as good as Live View with the 1DX2 and the bare lens. I don't even remember if I tried it with the TC -- the last week has been an absolute blur, in the best possible way, with a driving trip to Los Angeles to admire our new granddaughter again at a month old, and a bombshell success financing her father's first full-length movie. I'm not sure I'll get back to mundane reality for a while, but I do need to check microadjustments.
Sounds like a wonderful week really, and I can certainly understand not thinking of doing microadjustments!
Thank you also for the photo of that neighbour's cat, the bare lens indeed can be very sharp. I'll keep an eye on its behaviour with the TC.
I think the main issue with your not-so-sharp shots is probably shutter speed. Hand holding is tricky and very slight motion blur can give that softer look. Try some very careful tests on a tripod with a glossy magazine page with fine detail, to see if the issue really is the lens/TC combination, or it is just in its practical limits. Even with IS, fast shutter speeds are critical. You will sometimes get very sharp shots at low SS but not often. Shooting a burst can sometimes get one sharper than the rest.
It is frustrating to find the sweet spot of noise (ISO), DOF and SS, even if AF is accurate.
I just thought of this: when you hold the lens are you keeping your palm under it and not touching the AF ring? It will be much more stable with that holding technique, and with your elbow tight against your side and the body pressed tight against your forehead.
Don't remember if I mentioned this before -- easier to repeat it than to look back.
Cute ducklings for the weekend
Originally Posted by Diane Miller
