Me and my camera

I’ve been a keen - albeit decidedly unskilled - photographer for many years, and developed a limited amount of knowledge when I bought my first DSLR camera around 15 years ago. At the time, I really wanted it so that I could take pictures of the beautiful marine fish we had in our fishtank. They were too quick-moving for our ’point & shoot’ camera to cope with, and I was frustrated with the huge number of pictures I got in which the frame was either entirely devoid of the target fish or had just a blurry tail at the edge of the shot. The immediacy of the DSLR shutter response, and the ability to determine more about the composition of the photo was a revelation. I started taking my camera with me when I was going out birdwatching, and within the next couple of years had bought two zoom lenses to increase the options I had for both macro and distance photography.

A couple of years ago, I was persuaded that it was time to upgrade my old Canon camera, and eventually decided to treat myself to a beautiful Canon R6 with a fixed aperture lens (600mm, f11). What a joy! I watched a few YouTube videos about bird photography, and set up my new camera following the advice on one of these. I was very uncertain about how well I’d like the new setup - whereas in the past I’d always used the default auto-focus setting of half-compressing the shutter button, now the shutter button isn’t used for autofocus at all but instead I have three buttons on the back of the camera, each with a different autofocus option (eye recognition and tracking, area focus, spot focus). I was astonished how quickly I adapted to this, and how easy I found it to get used to switching between them.

Early last year I bought an additional lens - 35mm, f1.8-f22 - in preparation for our trip to see the Northern Lights. While part of me felt this was a bit unnecessary, I confess I’ve had no regrets whatsoever. Being able to use my own camera while there rather than using one from the tour company meant I was confident with finding my way around the controls and changing the settings as I wanted to, and of course I’ve found plenty of use for the lens since then. It’s a great little macro lens, and offers much better flexibility than the 600mm lens. Being able to get close up and personal with the subjects is often more helpful than having to stand several metres away - although there are of course times when that distance can be helpful either for skittish butterflies, or for photos of flowering trees which are just too far away for the little lens to manage well. And the ability to chose the aperture setting and therefore the focal depth and amount of background blur are wonderful of course.

Yesterday we went for a day out at one of our favourite places - the Hawk Conservancy Trust near Andover in Hampshire. Their flying displays are always an absolute delight, and provide plenty of opportunity for me to practice and improve my bird photography skills! I don’t usually try to take photos of the black kites when they’re out, as there’s too much going on and I find it hard to know where to look. But I’m actually quite pleased with this set of four pictures that I took yesterday, particularly the one which shows how still and level the kite’s head is while the wings and tail show how agile it is in the air.

It’s hard to pick a favourite bird - Bo, the Egyptian Vulture is simply stunning; the Bald Eagles are absolutely beautiful; and little Troy, the Tawny Owl is just adorable. He was in a sleepy mood when we went past him in the early afternoon, but was wide awake for his role in the afternoon display of course.

I'm still coming to grips with many of my camera's features, but am a lot more confident with changing ISO and aperture on this one, as well as shutter speed. I do use autofocus most of the time rather than manual, as I'm often shooting moving subjects and the camera obviously does a far better job than I could! But when I'm trying to focus in on a flower, plant, or lichen behind waving twigs, grasses etc. I do change to manual focus to make sure that the foreground doesn't confuse it and switch the focal point incorrectly - this camera makes it very clear what it's focussed on, so that makes it easy to check that the image will be sharp.

One thing I've particularly appreciated is the ability to preset three custom setups. I've used two so far, for our Northern Lights trip so that I could use the camera during the day as we went on outings, or watched the birds on the feeder by our house. But at night, instead of having to change numerous settings and risk missing something crucial, all I had to do was switch to 'C2' instead of 'C1' and it was all there for me. I haven't yet set up C3, but will probably set that up with my Teen's preferred settings as she doesn't like the back-button focus that I now use. Being able to switch between such totally different settings is fantastically helpful, and will encourage me to keep on trying astrophotography, and maybe even to share my camera occasionally!