Nikons lightest,cheapest easyest to use birding set up?

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straycat

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please feel free to give CONSRTUCTIVE criticism and your findings with this set up.

last night at a gig my friend said he was selling his D7000 as its too big :thinking:

so hes lent it to me i have a D700 and D3s, but i want more reach and may buy it or a D300s.

i used it today so still getting used to it,i set it as close to my regular settings as i could.

with a TC1.4 and 300mm F4 boy does it feel light after my other combos.

but i am not convinced at the quality.


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considering it's only APS-C camera, it won't deliver D3s level results, particularly at 100% crop. ISO3200 is a bit optimistic with it, try to stick to no more than 800 if you can. Some shots were taken at 1/4000s so it seems like you could readjust your ISO easily.
make sure your focus is spot on. I can't imagine anything better than 300/4, unless you can afford to get 500mm prime or 300/2.8 at least.

Of course you could just get Canon 5DIII, 1DIV and 400mm f/5.6L or another lens. You know you want to.
 
How heavily are these cropped? At 3200 the D7000 does display a fair bit of (controlled) noise but these look a bit noisier than expected.

By all accounts the 1.4x TC is a corker and I know from experience how sharp the 300mm f/4 is, but obviously focussing is key to good shots and if you are cropping in PP, then any focus issues will be exaggerated.

I suppose that only you can decide what compromise you are willing to make.
 
someone else said you want a canon to me today on the resreve i smiled and kept quiet...:lol:

yes i think i will try iso 1600 as a max my normal speed is 1250 but wanted to see what it would do at 4,000
and go back to relese rather than focus


it does look like canon has more pro orintated DX cameras, i will deny i said that though in a court of law...:lol:
 
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I have tried many set-ups for birding, including canon...found that there was more noise with canon, but still very good photos...I found that nikon cameras seem to have a better build..cannot say about canon pro models....the d7000 & 300f4 with converter , are the best set up that i have used, I have had sigma 500mm lens... 300 2.8 lenses in nikon & sigma, all tried with converters,but too heavy on long walks...also I have tried nikon full frame cameras
but need the extra reach on a crop camera...I do miss my D2xs a great camera...:thumbs:..mark
 
Are you shooting jpeg or raw?

Are you cropping the images?

Are you using any noise removal software?

Are you sharpening the images before posting?
 
It does look like those images would clean up nicely.

Referring to your title, I'm still quite keen to see results from using a V1 with a moderate telephoto. I'm in no way a birder but I've heard a few people are playing with this sort of set up and I'm fascinated to see the results.
 
This exactly my birding setup. Should be better than this. As already said, we don't know how much of a crop these are, and how crap the light was (why such a high ISO ?). Shooting the combo at wide open or near, I guess that the light had to be bad for that ISO.
Also - I assume that the lens combo (not just the 300mm) has been dialled in on micro-adjust ?

Hope you get it sorted.
 
I don't use Ninon so cannot comment on the exact set up but have used the equivalent Canon set up and think it is fine for birds (if you can get close enough, with birds you almost always want more reach no matter what lens you use). For me these photos are lacking the fine detail which I would expect to see. I doesn't look like it is caused by noise so much as by noise reduction (in camera NR?), which should be sortable.
 
As an example (click the thumbnails)

D300 + 300f4 AF-S + 1.7TC @ 3200 ISO, f7.1 (almost wide open)

Not too shabby



 
gad-westy said:
It does look like those images would clean up nicely.

Referring to your title, I'm still quite keen to see results from using a V1 with a moderate telephoto. I'm in no way a birder but I've heard a few people are playing with this sort of set up and I'm fascinated to see the results.
Click to expand...

still playing about with V1...but very happy with 300mm f4 on it and also with scope set-up (digiscoping) at very long distances...the electronic view finder on V1 is excellent, I use manual focus & remote release on spotting scope, the hardest part is keeping the tripod still for the longest shots...but think that this will be a killer combo...
Jackdaws on pot..approx 50mts (spotting scope & v1)

barcode at approx 60ft (spotting scope & v1)

Goldfinch, Nikon V1 & 300mm f4 approx 40ft..
 
mark richards said:
still playing about with V1...but very happy with 300mm f4 on it and also with scope set-up (digiscoping) at very long distances...the electronic view finder on V1 is excellent, I use manual focus & remote release on spotting scope, the hardest part is keeping the tripod still for the longest shots...but think that this will be a killer combo...
Jackdaws on pot..approx 50mts (spotting scope & v1)

barcode at approx 60ft (spotting scope & v1)

Goldfinch, Nikon V1 & 300mm f4 approx 40ft..
Click to expand...

Impressive. Any post shot cropping done on these? I guess you don't need to do much when you have 800mm+ equivalent focal length.
 
i have decided to give it back and stick with my D3s.

though i am not a pixel peeper i can see the differance and as most of the pros say they prefer quality over reach. :)
 
Yeah they do look a bit soft. Not sure its the camera though. I would be tempted to go with the smaller d3200 24mp giving you more scope for cropping.
 
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