Compact Cameras and Pelagics

Hi everyone, If you’re not interested in cameras and photography then perhaps skip this posting. I have finally made time to process my photos from the December pelagic from Portland, Victoria. The pictures can be found here: http://paul.angrybluecat.com/Trips-and-Locations/2014/Portland-Pelagic-Dec-2 014/ These photos were all shot with the Nikon 1 compact (mirrorless) system rather than my usual Nikon D800 with 500mm and 300mm lens. I have a number of Nikon 1 bodies, but in this case I chose the Nikon 1 V2. I don’t have the latest V3 body, so I am unable to offer any comparisons currently. I used two lenses – the wide images were made with the 6-13mm lens (effectively 16.2-35.1mm) and the long shots were taken with the new 70-300mm lens (effectively 189-810mm). First, the positives. The Nikon 1 is incredibly light, even with the 70-300mm lens. With the V2 body, the 70-300mm lens is well balanced and is definitely not front-heavy. The 6-13mm lens is fun and is certainly more than wide enough for most purposes. The 70-300mm lens is simply spectacular. It is everything you could want in a telephoto zoom. At its full extent (effectively 810mm) it is brilliant for bird photography. I find the Nikon 1’s electronic viewfinder clear and responsive. If you attempt to manually focus the EVF automatically zooms to assist with focussing. Perhaps the single best feature of the camera, though, is it’s incredibly high frame rate – up to 60 frames per second! I shot the pelagic using the 15 frame per second mode because it allowed continuous autofocus. At rates of 15 frames per second and above the camera uses a silent electronic shutter rather than a mechanical one. Now the negatives. The camera uses a “CX” size sensor, which is quite small – I find the images quite noisy, even at relatively low ISOs. Whilst the 6-13mm lens is, of course, very wide, it actually has quite a lot of distortion, increasing towards the edge of the frame. I’m sure that this could be corrected in Photoshop or Lightroom – however, the standard lens correction provided with Lightroom does not do this. The vibration reduction in the 70-300mm lens is good, but certainly not up to being on a moving boat at the full extension – if you check my photos, very few were shot at 300mm (810mm) – hardly a surprise, really. Whilst the rig is quite sophisticated, the user interface in the camera are rather basic – much closer to a point-and-shoot than a DSLR. For instance, there is no histogram function, no focus peaking display for manual focus, no advanced functionality whatsoever. Autofocus is quite fast (not incredibly snappy, but workable). The autofocus was easily confused by the waves, meaning that many images were out of focus (with lovely, sharply focussed sea!) To my eye the images from this camera are slightly soft and (not surprisingly) lacking in fine detail when compared to the shots I would have achieved with the D800 and 500mm lens. I shot entirely in RAW, so I can’t comment on the relative quality of JPEG images from the camera. Because the camera is a Nikon, Lightroom and Photoshop support the RAW format completely and all post-processing functionality is available in those two applications. With my D800 and 500mm lens, I tend to set the camera to 1/1250 and f/8 for pelagics. I use f/8 to attempt to get sufficient depth of field to ensure that the whole bird is sharp (not always possible). With the much smaller sensor in the Nikon 1 I left the camera in Aperture Priority mode, set it to f/5.6 and left it there all day – relying on the fact that I would have much greater depth of field than the DSLR would have at f/8. In terms of comparison with other cameras, the Canon SX50 and SX60 come to mind – whilst they’re not exchangeable lens cameras like the Nikon 1, they are comparable in other ways, not the least that quite a few birders have one or the other of these cameras. Firstly, both Canons exceed the maximum zoom of the Nikon – the SX50 has a 1200mm equivalent and the SX60 has a 1360mm equivalent (compared with 810mm using my 70-300mm lens on the Nikon). I don’t think that this would make the slightest difference on a pelagic though, especially as I couldn’t use my camera at its maximum zoom. I would suspect that the optics in the Nikon 1 lenses that I was using, especially the 70-300mm would well exceed the quality available from either of the Canons (especially as the 70-300mm lens is built to the same standards as the best Nikon DSLR lens and has the advanced coating common to all other Nikon “N” lenses. The sensor size in the Canons is considerably smaller than in the Nikon, so would be considerably noisier. All in all, I think that for birders not wanting to expend many thousands of dollars for a DSLR and long lens, this setup is pretty good. The setup is lightweight so would suit someone not wanting to lug many kilograms around. Paul Dodd Docklands, Victoria