Vernon Chalmers Photography: Orange-Breasted Sunbird and other Beauties at Kirstenbosch

03 February 2024

Orange-Breasted Sunbird and other Beauties at Kirstenbosch

Orange-Breasted Sunbird, Experimental Images and a few other Species

Orange-Breasted Sunbird, Kirstenbosch

Experimental / Training Session at Kirstenbosch Garden

A few images while experimenting with a different camera / lens set-up during our Saturday visit to Kirstenbosch. I normally use the Canon EOS 70D / EOS 7D Mark II APS-C / crop bodies paired with my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens. For this outing I used the Canon EOS 6D (which I almost exclusive use landscape photography) pared with the same lens, The crop factor of the APS-C bodies provides an additional 1.6x magnification (compared to a Canon Full Frame body) when using the same lens. Both body setups will have their advantages and disadvantages in terms of i.e. reach to subject (due to sensor size), autofocus tracking capability, burst speed, depth of field, dynamic range and physical weight.

These images were captured impromptu during the facilitation of an active student photography training session. Set-up times (for compositions, focal lengths / other settings) where not (always) available.

The three experimental images have a slighter different Lightroom adjustment (than my standard post-processing RAW adjustments) in terms of i.e. exposure, contrast, highlights and shadow properties. This was mainly due to the poor / busy backgrounds of where the images were captured.

Aperture challenge on the butterfly close-up
The butterfly image should have been captured at a smaller aperture than the f/5.6 used - I personally would have liked the back wing to have had more sharpness and definition. Aperture f/8 - f/11 would have assisted with this.

A Full Frame camera with it's larger sensor and pixels generates a shallower depth of field (more blur) using the same aperture (via the same lens) on an APS-C / Crop camera body. In the fast moving morning I left it at f/5.6 (as we were capturing small birds) and the depth of field provided by the larger aperture is visible.

Experimental Insect and Flower Images