Woodpeckers | Scott Martin Photography

Canon 5D Mk III

by Scott Martin Photography | Apr 27, 2012 | Birds, Blog, Educational, Sparrows, Woodpeckers

Canon is clearly the global leader in DSLR sales, with $10.5B in sales in 2010 compared to second place Nikon with $2.5B in sales. Sony places a distant third in the pecking order. A number of months ago Canon announced the release of two new camera bodies, the 1Dx and the 5D Mk III, Both of these bodies have full frame sensors, meaning that the size of the electronic sensor is the same as the frame size of the old 35mm SLR film cameras (36x24mm). The vast majority of DSLR’s sold today have smaller sensors, which results in the sensor ‘seeing’ a smaller field of view than would be seen with a 35mm film camera having a lens of equal focal length. The quantification of this phenomenon, called the Crop Factor, is made by determining the ratio between the diagonal length of the reference sensor size and the diagonal length of the smaller sensor. With crop body DSLR’s the crop factor is typically 1.3 or 1.6 for Canon cameras and 1.5 for Nikon cameras. The crop factor allows the photographer to calculate the effective focal length of a lens on a crop body camera compared to that same lens on a full frame camera. For example if a 50mm lens is attached to a DSLR with a 1.5 Crop Factor, the 50mm lens will perform as a 50 x 1.5 or 75mm lens would on a film body.

You may be saying to yourself “Who cares”, however it does make a difference based on the type of photography you do. For example landscape photographers often want to capture as large a field of view as possible and therefore use wide-angle lenses (shorter focal length lenses) to accomplish this. Right away it becomes evident that crop body cameras are a detriment if the widest possible field of view is desired. A 16mm lens effectively becomes a 25.6mm lens on a 1.6 crop body. This is why nature photographers prefer full frame DSLR’s for landscape work. The bird photographer on the other hand finds that the crop body is a great help to getting better shots because of the advantage gained by the crop factor. My 700mm lens effectively becomes an 1120mm lens on a 1.6 crop body.

The problem with photography becomes what to do when buying a camera if you are both a landscape and a bird photographer. There is an easy answer to this question…..buy two cameras, a crop body and a full frame body! Besides, if you are a serious photographer, you really should have some redundancy in you gear. If your only body broke while shooting a wedding it would be a disaster, so a second body is always a good idea.

Anyway, in order to heed my own advice, a Canon 5D Mk III was added to the gear bag a couple of weeks ago and so far its been a pleasure to use and fun to be playing with the first full frame camera since selling my old EOS 630 back in the early nineties. The new 5D Mk III has a 22.4 megapixel sensor and Canon’s new 61 point auto focussing system which is surprisingly fast. It’s ISO range of 50-102,400 is amazing and means this camera almost sees in the dark! Another new perk for me is that the 5D also shoots full HD video which is going to be fun.

The following images are among the first taken with the camera and have not been processed other than converting and resizing the RAW files for display on the web.

Blue Jay

Blue Jay 05

Downy Woodpecker

Downy 05

Junco

Junco 02

Junco 01

Red Winged Blackbird

Red Winged Blackbird 13

Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel 03

And finally a link to a quick video test of a Red Squirrel

As time permits I plan to post a few more detailed tests of the camera, especially ISO comparisons to help determine how high the ISO can be pushed and still get a useable image.

Pileated Woodpecker

by Scott Martin Photography | Feb 8, 2011 | Birds, Blog, Woodpeckers

The Pileated Woodpecker is the largest North American woodpecker with a length of up to twenty inches and wingspan of thirty inches. They are non-migratory and are found in mature forests across North America with a broader range in the east than the west. Their diet is primarily ants which they extract from hollowed trees however they also readily eat suet, sunflower seeds, nuts & fruit. Pileated Woodpeckers are known for the large rectangular holes they drill into trees with amazing speed and power. If you look closely at a Pileated designed hole you will notice that they round off the outer edges of the hole in order for the tree sap to run on the outside of the tree which wards off predators such as snakes. The tree cavities they nest in often have many exit holes (up to sixteen) which provides multiple escape routes should a predator enter the nest (which is very possible due to the size of the holes created by a Pileated Woodpecker). Pileated Woodpeckers are quite territorial and each monogamous pair require a large territory of up to forty acres, so its not often you see more than two adults at the same time. It is estimated that the North American population of Pileated Woodpeckers is 930,000. It is amazing we dont see them more often.

The Pileated Woodpecker in this post is an adult female and is the first and only Pileated Woodpecker I’ve ever photographed. It was only in sight for about thirty seconds and only provided a nice profile for a second or two. Unfortunately it was shot when it was very overcast, resulting in a blown out white sky. Normally I would just delete a shot like that however as it was my first Pileated Woodpecker I just couldn’t do it! In an attempt to salvage the shot so I could post it here, I changed the sky in the background. This brings up a whole other ‘issue’ that is much talked about in nature photography circles, namely how much post processing is acceptable? The views on this topic are many and varied so if you would like to express an opinion regarding image manipulation please click here to go to the discussion section of my Facebook page.

Pileated Woodpecker 01