Photographing Birdlife with the Nikon Z 6 and 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR lens
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- čas přidán 25. 05. 2024
- ... in which I slap Nikon's latest 180-600mm lens on to Nikon's first generation Z camera to see if this combination can keep up with the waterfowl of Western Australia.
What I hadn't taken into account was the other variable in this combination: Me. Delving deep into the autofocus menus I discover options I never knew existed and find more ways to tweak and twiddle with the settings in the hope of capturing the beauty of wildlife. But will these enhancements actually allow me to capture the majesty of birds in flight?
Camera: Nikon Z 6
Lens: Nikon NIKKOR Z 180-600mm f/5.6-6.3 VR
Location: Herdsman Lake Western Australia
Date: October 2023-April 2024
web: markmcmahon.me
instagram: @patternsinsand - Zábava
I loved your mindset here....CZcams society needs more like you
Not sure if that makes me the antidote or the antithesis of CZcams but I love what I'm doing and really appreciate the feedback. Thanks!
interesting perspective on photography. how many keepers do we need and where do we store them? if we can afford prints, where are we going to display them? if the images are in storage, how can they be easily accessed? the mind boggles!
Thanks for the comment. For me, part of the process is getting to share them on CZcams, rather than having them lurk in the deep dark folders of my hard drive.
There is water in the lake again - Hallelujah 🙌Great video Mark, hopefully I'll run into you down at the lake one of these days.
Thanks. Great to meet a local. Subscribed to your own channel. I'm away in China at the moment so wrangling the great firewall of China, which is limiting my CZcams access but looking forward to coming home to a more watery Herdsman.
The writing wit alone is enough to give this video a Like. 🤣
Thanks, Mark!
Key with AF-C is to use burst mode and shoot several pictures. Sort out the good ones later. The better the AF system of the camera, the more in focus images you'll get in each burst.
Thanks for the advice. I'll try being a bit more liberal in my shot rate. As much as I can criticise the AF system of the camera, it's a great training ground for a novice bird photographer like me and very rewarding when it works.
I loved my Z6 and got memory card after memory card full of tack sharp eyeballs on my wildlife subjects. Just use it like a DSLR with single point for stationary subject and wide area large for moving subjects. Keep the camera in the 6.5 FPS mode. Set a button for 100% magnification and you can get the tricky shots using pinpoint. Also look out for the Z6iii announcement that is due soon.
Thanks, great advice.
"Spangled Drongo" sounds like a local pejorative for Americans.
I'll better not make any pejorative statements for fear of being classified a monotonous lark.
The Lens is a 180-600 f5.6 - 6.3 NOT what you printed
Can't believe I made that mistake. Thanks!
"yes he did".. lol too funny edits... Before AI in recent cameras came, BIF was so hard. And C-AF with tracking sucks on all cameras. You made up for it with the stills.. the corellas on the sticks.
Fortunately they were more accommodating models than some of the other birds!
Nikon still really hasn’t gotten its act together yet…..if they can’t make a great tracking camera for around $2000 they have a problem.
The $2000 body you are thinking of is the Zf if you want to talk about current Nikon. The Z6 is *6 years* old.
@@pseudoryx9284 Hopefully the z6 lll and z5 ll will solve this. Canon has several models under $2000 that track birds very well.
@williamchan8866 yea, the Zf tracking is great but its body form factor is a nightmare when paired with supertelephoto lenses.
Nikon needs something like canon r8 or a high res aps-c like r7. Currently there is nothing for wildlife below Z8.
These are all good points. Nikon has shown that they are now capable of great autofocus and while the technology has certainly trickled down to the ZF, that's a desirable street camera rather than a functional workhorse. The Z 6 is a wonderful camera in so many respects, but the longer we wait for a 3rd gen replacement, the more Nikon will miss out on the middle ground of photographers.