Long-tailed Duck

Adult male in basic plumage with just the faintest hint of pre-alternate molt. March 27th 2010 at Barnegat Inlet in NJ. A fairly fresh northerly wind that day making the rock jetty too treacherous (and bird-free) to walk out on very far. This was shot from the concrete walkway. The wind has obvious disadvantages - this bird was bobbing around a lot so the number of sharp images was low. However the advantage is that it blew its long tail up out of the water. The bird was actively feeding - you can see how the wings are held a little away from the body in readiness for diving.

Iceland Gull, Sandy Hook, Feb 10th 2010

This was my first - and so far only - Iceland Gull for 2010, a first winter immature on the bay shore outside the SHBO location. Not overly tame, it nevertheless came close enough to take a shot at after I waited quietly for a while. The downsampled image on here looks a lot softer than the full-size one you'll see if you click on the image. The mostly dark bill (not bicolored) and the patterning on the mantle feathers are pretty strong indicators for this being a first year, which I think is the age of the vast majority of Iceland Gulls I've seen in the NYC-NJ area in winter.

1D Mark IV review

Dpreview.com actually got their act together and reviewed the 1D Mark IV. Dpreview's strong suit is a careful itemization of the features and doing resolution/noise/dynamic range tests. They are largely useless for analysis of how good the autofocus performance is. They didn't manage to review the 1D Mark III, which was somewhat of a stunning omission.

And the conclusions ? The 1D4 is a good camera, images are better than the 1D3, but not quite as much of an improvement as it might have been expected given the increased pixel count. Noise levels at high ISO are pretty good compared to the 1D3. Image resolution is better than the 1D3 but worse than the 5D2. Absolute resolution values from their tests are 2500 lph for the 1D4 and 2700-2800 5D2, 2200 for the 1D3. Sharpened/processed images from RAW appear comparable between the 7D and 1D4, but the latter clearly contain more "pop" in terms of color. There was quite a clear visual difference in sharpness between the 1D3 and 5D2 in both my tests and my general shooting images, but the gap would be very much narrowed with this camera. The Nikon D700 and D3S resolutions are around the same as the 1D3.

Link: dpreview's 1D Mark IV review
and 5d Mark II review for reference.

Expletive deleted

As a "proud" owner of an EOS-1D Mark III I've had some interesting, amusing and downright farcical moments dealing with the autofocus on that camera. I have said that the 1D3 acquires focus faster than any other Canon, but that it acquires AF on the background faster than any other Canon. My relatively ancient Mark II works better for birds in flight since it makes a stab at tracking a Northern Harrier in flight rather than focusing on the treeline faster than a weasel on crystal meth, which is the strong point of the Mark III.

So I had great hopes for the 1D Mark IV since you couldn't imagine Canon messing it all up again. After all, the IV is their flagship SLR body, their ultimate photojournalist machine, and I was starting to look forward to retiring the Mark III and getting a Mark IV or Mark IVs to replace it with.

Imagine, then, my joy at reading this article:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-10048-10484 ;

which suggests that the 1DIV is really just a different breed of cranky to the 1DIII. Somebody just shoot me now. (I actually started checking out Nikon 600mm f4 VRs this afternoon). The 5D2 is sluggish, the 7D is soft, and the 1DIV is cranky. Is there someone in Canon Japan that I should visit to slap some sense into them ?

For what it's worth, I have no doubt that Galbraith's mammoth article reviewing the AF performance on the Mark III:
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_page.asp?cid=7-8740-9068
was right on the money. Roger knows how to point a camera and engage autofocus - he does it for a living, unlike us dilettantes. The 1D3 certainly has its moments but after being somewhat burned on that SLR I'm rather reluctant to drop $5K on another turkey. (The 1D3 focuses just fine on Wild Turkeys, just so long as they aren't moving that fast).

Looks like I'm using the 5D2 again this spring.

Texas - Least Grebe

Least Grebe, from the boardwalk at Estero Llano SP. This one is in basic plumage - ones that I had shot at Sabal Palm as late as Thanksgiving were in alternate plumage. The boardwalk is completely exposed, so only the tamer birds are going to tolerate you here. The puffing up of the rump feathers appears to increase as the bird gets ready to dive - is it expanding its body to store more air before it does ? Other interesting behavior was watching one of these follow a Northern Shoveler and diving into it's "wake" to feed amongst the things it kicked up. I saw this more than once, so it was a conscious bit of opportunism.

Texas - Green Kingfisher

Green Kingfisher at Estero Llano Grande State Park. This was actually photographed from the covered section at the visitor center, so this kingfisher was pretty tame. The only complication was finding the keyhole shot between the obscuring branches. Now that Sabal Palm Preserve in Brownsville is closed off behind the border fence, Estero Llano is taking over as my favorite place to photograph in the Rio Grande Valley. Usual combo of 5D Mark II, 500mm/4L, 1.4x teleconverter and the relatively flimsy Gitzo 1258 that I use when I travel.

At one point Green Kingfisher was my "nemesis bird" - I had looked for it quite a few times and never saw it. I nearly always see multiple birds on winter RGV trips these days.

7D fubar?

And after getting excited about the 7D the other shoe has now formally dropped. It's pretty clear that much of that extra pixellage is wasted with a strong aliasing filter. This is well-illustrated by looking at the DIII/DIV/7D/5D2 comparison down the page at:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EOS-1D-Mark-IV-Digital-SLR-Camera-Review.aspx

Which shows that the 7D is far noisier, and quite a bit softer than the 5D Mark II (unless you ramp up the sharpening, presumably). The 1DIV looks like it might be a little noisier than the 5D2, and perhaps not quite as much raw sharpness, but the results are close.

The results are in line with Darwin Wigget's review of the 7D so there's no reason to think they are erroneous.

Since the tests are done at the same focal length, the sharpness of the characters is a good match for the intrinsic sharpness feather detail would be in the final image. The 7D falls short by a decent margin, especially over the 5D2. The only upside to this is that the high cost of the 1D IV looks a little better if I don't buy the 7D as well - there's no point me getting a camera that has substantially worse image performance than my current one.

I'm also interested in what/if Canon will announce for the 1Ds IV. Although $8K-ish is a lot of money for an SLR, compared to $5K-ish for an SLR that isn't as sharp as the one I even own (1D4) it would look rather more compelling if it did resolve more than my 5D2.