Its been 24 hours since I received my 1D Mark III and its been killing me to be stuck in my office. Well today I went out to the local refuge in the middle of the day and tried to see what I could get. I ended up playing cat and mouse with a blue heron... it rained, it was bright sunny, etc... Here are a few of my captures.
Some particulars... these were heavily cropped.... it was very windy... I used the Mark III with 400 f/2.8 on a monopod. Some were with TC1.4 and some with TC1.4/TC2 stacked. I made some levels adjustment for exposure and a hint of USM... otherwise untouched. The color is the way it came from the camera, and I didn't get any of the usual issues with blown parts of the image when shooting in the middle of the day using aperture priority. Another particular... I'm not a bird shooter and haven't shot a bird in probably 9 months.
This is a series I caught right after I got there. These were autofocus. I am not seeing all these autofocus issues I've heard about! These are the sharpest shots at this range I've ever gotten of birds. These are with just the TC1.4, so they are way out there and heavily cropped.
Trying something different, I threw on the stacked TC1.4 / TC2 and if you've ever shot on a monopod in the wind at 1120mm (before the crop factor), you know its not a fun process. So, I tried using Live View and did manual focus. With Live View I could use the 3" LCD to check focus, and magnify it by 5X. With a tripod, I could have really nailed this by cranking it up to 10x, but I'll have to try that next time. The cool part is the bird took off in the middle of this and with the hit of one button you can turn off live view and be back to normal shooting. I think the results speak for themselves. Live View with wildlife will be very useful. Trying to use autofocus on this with the obstructions (grass) in front of the subject, and the touch focus at that focal length would be near impossible. Trying to manual focus in the viewfinder would have also been tough (at least with my eyes).
