Pigeon In Close

This short article features a small selection of handheld images of a pigeon flying in close, captured with an M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 zoom and MC-20 teleconverter.

I wasn’t planning to do any bird photography on the day that these photographs were created. As a result I had left my M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5-6.3 IS at home.  It was a good thing that I did.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter @ 80mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO-320, Bird Detection AI, cropped to 3560 pixels on the width, subject distance 7.4 metres

That morning, I met a friend at the Royal Botanical Gardens. Our intention was to capture some images of frogs at the featured indoor display. I often use my M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with teleconverters when photographing captive specimens since I like to take advantage of its comparatively short minimum focusing distance.

OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter @ 80mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO-320, Bird Detection AI, cropped to 3018 pixels on the width, subject distance 7.4 metres

We ended up finishing earlier than anticipated at the Royal Botanical Gardens. So, we decided to visit LaSalle Park to see what birds were out. While photographing some swans and ducks a pigeon in flight suddenly appeared in close to me. I fully retracted the barrel of my lens… and tried to frame the bird as best I could. I fired off a very quick, initial Bird AI run.

OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter @ 80mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO-320, Bird Detection AI, cropped to 3156 pixels on the width, subject distance 4.7 metres

A split second later the pigeon was flying in so close that it was almost on top of me. I fired off a second, short Bird AI image burst. As the pigeon banked to its right I missed properly framing a few photographs.

The second, short burst captured some of the best pigeon in flight photos I’ve ever taken. These are shown as the last three images in this article.

OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter @ 80mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO-320, Pro Capture L, Bird Detection AI, cropped to 4088 pixels on the width, subject distance 4.7 metres

If I would have had my M.Zuiko 100-400mm f/5-6.3 IS on my E-M1X that day I would have missed these photographs as I would have had ‘too much lens’ even at the short end of the zoom.

The best photographs from my second Bird AI run captured the pigeon at a distance of only 4.7 metres (~15.4 feet) away from me. This would have been inside the 6 metre to infinity focus limiter setting that I typically use with the M.Zuiko 100-400 mm f/5-6.3 IS zoom… another reason that I would have missed these photographs if I had been using that zoom lens.

OM-D E-M1X + M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with M.Zuiko MC-20 teleconverter @ 80mm, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO-320, Pro Capture L, Bird Detection AI, cropped to 4049 pixels on the width, subject distance 4.7 metres

Most of us who enjoy bird photography tend to extol the virtues of using long focal length lenses. Most of the time we think “the longer the better” when it comes to birding lenses. In this instance the M.Zuiko PRO 40-150mm f/2.8 with the MC-20 teleconverter was the perfect combination to have on my E-M1X.

That lens, coupled with the use of Bird Detection AI Subject Tracking, helped make these images possible, as Bird AI grabbed auto-focus almost immediately.

I hadn’t used this lens/teleconverter combination for bird photography for a number of years… and I had forgotten what a very capable birding combination it is. This experience served as a good reminder to use this combination more often.

Technical Note

Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process. A single auto-focus point was used, along with 18 frames-per-second. Bird Detection AI Subject Tracking was engaged.

For those readers who are interested in calculating equivalent field-of-view, multiply focal lengths for Olympus M4/3 cameras by a factor of 2. This is the 1,262 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.

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