Our starlings are just as tame. You can sit anywhere in Central Park and they all show up along with dozens of other birds.

I totally agree with his experience with birds and distances. He is probably getting as close as I am, but I have the extra resolution and larger frame size for cropping. He uses greater magnification, lower ISOs and a crop sensor.

Sometimes I just can't get close enough, so I turn it into a landscape with a bird in it, like the juvenile little blue heron (not an egret) in the shot below.

His stuff is great - I see mostly static shots - perched or walking about, etc. though the few he has in flight are quite good. You do have to get pretty close for the smaller birds. Most of his stuff is in good strong light, judging from his exposure settings. I wish I could carry and hand hold a 10 lb lens and camera, or add another 7.5 lbs for a Wimberley head and Gitzo Gt3530LSV, and lived in Utah with unfettered access to places like he has. Yes, I am jealous. I live a mile from NYC, so I shoot what I can.

The Yellow Warbler shot is pretty good for a 50% crop on a 7D. He mentioned he wouldn't go any tighter because of loss of detail.

Regarding cropping by comparison, I had no trouble cropping the painted bunting from 36mp to 5.8 mp, or to 16%. It was shot at Prospect Park in Brooklyn, NY, with a D800, 1/200, F4 ISO 1600, 600mm F4 on a tripod. Light was dreadful NYC heavy overcast, and this little guy was deep in the bushes. He does make my case about the "croppability" of a high mp, full frame camera, and at the same time he makes a strong case for longer lenses, teleconverters and crop sensor cameras. I think I still get similar or better results. His 10 mp warbler clearly lacks the detail of my 5.8 mp bunting, don't you agree?

It depends where you are looking to be fair if you look at the feet his warbler's feet are more in focus than your bunting. It's hard to do a full comparison since the warbler is only at web resolution. The Out of Focus area's on your bunting are getting a little glassy. the red chest of the bunting is about The same sharpness as the yellow chest of the warbler. It's hard to compare, i'm looking at 700x900 on his image and 600x700 for your image. both of the images have more detail behind them but i can't resolve them so how can i judge fairly? your bird seems to be leaning towards the camera so the head is pretty sharp...

They are both good shots to be fair.

It looks like Sharron Crocker has you both beat.

I agree. That is why people are influenced by the smaller angle of view for the same lens on the DX camera into believing they are actually getting more reach. But the image taken with the same lens by the FX camera is still going to be the same image, just including information peripheral to the main subject. It may LOOK smaller when you compare the images as they come out of the camera, but further examination will show that the subject was still captured by the same focal length!

Specifying the same megapixel count for each camera is unrealistic because even if the mp count matches, the FF sensor is larger than the DX sensor which is another factor that affects image quality.

Yeah, she is pretty amazing. But she shoots about 50,000 shots a year, and just selects the very very best. I have shot with her and she will come back with 1200 images and has gone through two batteries, while I get about 200-300 images on one battery. Her hard work and perseverance certainly pays off.

My image on download is 1727x2048, and this was downsampled from the 5.8 mp of the original finished image. In it's defense, I was as close as possible, probably around 25-30 ft, at F4 with a 600mm lens. The expectation of any depth of field is nonexistent. The EV was recorded as 7.9 which tells you there wasn't much light. No opportunity to get more shots at higher ISO with smaller fstops. But the all important eye is critically sharp. I guess you had to be there.

Sharron Lee Crocker's bird pictures are amazing. But so are yours! It is strange to see comments about the feet being in/out of focus, etc., especially when under the circumstances you got a great picture using settings that compensated for environmental conditions. [D800, 1/200, F4, ISO 1600, 600mm F4 on a tripod] And the eye being sharp is the most important thing because the rest flows from there. I would compare the situation to doing a macro shot of a critter where the front end is sharp and the back end is not. In that instance, everyone understands about the shallow depth of field!

Thanks for the props, Susan. Yes, Sharron is a meticulous shooter and post processor, and has a very nice sense of composition and style, which all too often is missing in bird photography these days. I have taken a slight turn in my own bird shots, trying to make them a bit more contextual and trying to get eye contact whenever possible. It makes it harder but when you get a good one it feels great.

I prefer the second one because of the context. But it was fun watching this guy checking me out.

Here are several images all shot with a Nikkor 600mm F4.

For the first one I used a 12 mp DX D300, 1/200, F8, ISO 400 and the image is uncropped, full resolution of 4288x2848. Image was done in Lightrom, no noise reduction, sharpening set to 90.

The second with a 12 mp FX D700, 1/1000, F5.6, ISO 800, and the image is cropped from 12mp to 2.9 mp, or to 25% of the original. Lightroom again, sharpening to 90, luminance noise reduction set to 40, no color noise reduction.

The third, with a 36 mp D800, 1/4000, F8, ISO 1250, image cropped from 36mp to 6.5 mp, or 18% of original. Sharpening at 100, luminance noise at 40, no color noise reduction.


Sorry, the original cardinal in the first shot was not available for the next to shots, so he sent in his understudies.

The point here is that The first shot is 12mp uncropped DX, the second is 75% cropped 12 mp FX, and the last is 82% cropped FX from 36mp. Not a world of difference between the detail in each of these images. If I were to crop the DX image to the same degree, I would have golfball-sized noise. And 6.5 mp from the D800 is still more than enough to make a 24x36 print.