Crows have been visiting our yard for a couple of years now, a family group that nests nearby. They no longer immediately fly off if I walk out while they are visiting but they won't let me get within 100 feet.

I have this feeder set up to have a nice green background, not the white fence in this photo. But I couldn't get to that spot without the scaring it off. I really had to isolate the crow in post to bring down the stark white fence, otherwise there would be no detail in the wings. They just suck up the light so much.

when i'm in chicago, i sit in the back room at my parents' house and get blue jays out the window with 300mm prime on a full frame nikon:









now that i've mastered 3D tracking on the Z8, hopefully i'll get better shots on the next trip. i'd love to find some crows.

I have only captured a handful of blue jays, mine too through a window where I have my bath and feeder set up. This is my favorite. It reminds me of a what I imagine a Velociraptor would look like. I'm using a Z8 as well, with the 180-600 + TC2 for the 1200mm. Because I shoot a lot of airplanes at 40k ft, especially against the moon, I have had that combo on the camera since I bought it. I keep a 28-300 on my Z6ii for other shots.

....i didn't know you could even do that with a zoom lens. do you notice a lot of image quality loss with the 2x? what about AF speed and accuracy?

i'm using my old 300mm PF and 500mm PF f-mount lenses with the FTZii converter on the z8. i'm looking at picking up the 400mm f/4.5 Z lens soon.

there is a marginal loss of quality, but for the feeder/bath photos I'm shooting through double pane glass which I bet causes most of the detail loss. AF is better than the 200-500 f mount on the z8 and with subject detection, I'm satisfied.

Using primes, I remember Andy telling someone, "we're too old for primes, we need to zoom", lol

...i guess i still have that old school state of mind that primes are sharper. but i know, in recent years, zoom lens image quality rivals that of prime lenses, especially if you get the f/2.8 pro zooms. i don't have any nikon zooms but i bought the 200-600mm sony zoom lens for my A7Cii and it's sharp...and it's not pro glass, nor does it have a fixed aperture throughout the zoom range.

the nikon 400 f/4.5 is next on my list and then the 600 f/6.3

i miss andy.....i showed this shot of mine to peg the other day and said that i think andy would have liked it.

de-whitewashed the fence? Did a great job, the gray is much nicer for background. Very nice!

In PS camera raw, I did a "select subject", then invert the mask, which cuts out the subject, then just bring down the exposure on the background. Then "select subject", and bring up the exposure on the bird because the crows are light sinks, basically no detail they are so dark. There are many ways of doing the same thing, but I find this the easiest. Although, it doesn't always work well.