Birds feeding - GH2, with Lumix 100-300, ETC, and slow-mo

[Barry_Green]

Barry, when you said you switched to MF after AFS, did you turn the dial on the left or is there another way to go from AFS to MF ?

Turned the upper-left dial. If there's another way to do it, I haven't bothered to figure out how yet.

[Barry_Green]

Thanks, Barry. I'm sincerely flattered. I have no doubt you would get something that surpasses what I've done here. In my case, it was strictly lots of patience and good luck to have captured this footage. And some lovely glass.

You may want to read my comments on Vimeo about what I went through to get these shots. And I didn't mention the time spent fast-forwarding thru hours of footage looking for the brief times when the birds happened to show up. Of course, the biggest challenge was DoF. I had lots and lots of footage where the bird landed just a hair to the right or left of where he is in these shots and it was unusable. I think this may have been much easier if I'd had the GH2 with ETC to help increase the DoF. Then again, maybe the results wouldn't have been quite as nice.

I would really be interested in any comments you may have about how I might have shot this differently. I have much to learn.

I think it's gorgeous, and I wouldn't see much room for improvement possible. It's fantastic. And yes, one thing I've learned about nature photography is that it's all about patience. I had the opportunity to watch Kevin Railsback work his magic with an HPX300 in Africa, and listen to him talk about how he does what he does, and it's almost entirely about just being there whenever whatever's gonna happen, happens. Yes, trial and error is a large part of it. But the wonderful thing is -- we don't know all that, when we watch it. We don't know that it took you multiple days, and dozens of hours of footage; all we see is a fascinating, riveting sixty seconds (or whatever) of true beauty. You got it. And I'm jealous.

[Lee Saxon]

Were any of these shots without ETC? I'm wondering how much "worse" performance gets for shots with lots of movement like this when you're in regular downscaled mode...

[Barry_Green]

Were any of these shots without ETC? I'm wondering how much "worse" performance gets for shots with lots of movement like this when you're in regular downscaled mode...

Yes, there's a mixture of with/without ETC in there. The super-telephoto is pretty much all ETC, the wider shots are pretty much the same focal length but without ETC. The first shot is ETC, the second shot is the exact same setup, exact same zoom/focal length, but with ETC turned off, etc. The wider shot of the buzzards is with ETC off; all the super-tele shots are with ETC on. The super-slow-mo shots of the buzzards are in 720/60p mode.

[Lee Saxon]

Thanks for the answers, this is very encouraging, the motion looks fabulous on both!

[tflak]

Hesitated to post about this here since it's not strictly GH2 and ETC related. But it is about birds feeding, extreme telephoto, slow-mo and is definitely not for the squeamish. So I hope it may have some interest for folks here.

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread...=1#post2235705

[oceaninchdeep]

Awesome. I too have this camera and lens combination and I love it!

[K.M]

"Yes, there's a mixture of with/without ETC in there. The super-telephoto is pretty much all ETC, the wider shots are pretty much the same focal length but without ETC. The first shot is ETC, the second shot is the exact same setup, exact same zoom/focal length, but with ETC turned off, etc. The wider shot of the buzzards is with ETC off; all the super-tele shots are with ETC on. The super-slow-mo shots of the buzzards are in 720/60p mode."


Just to be clear. Is there resolution degradation when switching from that first to second shot (ETC to normal) ?
And when you say the slo mo in 720/60p mode is that you clicking to Manual Movie, then Record Mode to 720 ?

thanks
K

[dan.carter]

Thanks for the Wild Kingdom action Barry. I'm guessing only one racoon was consumed in the making of your film?

I agree the 100-300 is akin to a telescope. I once took it as my only lens and had to back up 1/4 mile to get a wide shot.

Thanks for sharing.