How I Shot That - Thirsty Robin
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| shot with: E. Zuiko 135mm f3.5 - http://amzn.to/2DjNoeZ Beschoi OM-M43 Adapter - http://amzn.to/2DjMU8F Camera Olympus OM-D E-M10ii - http://amzn.to/2Fu1wb8 |
Robins are the bird that herald in the first breath of spring. This little guy came up on the middle of this park path in front of me. All I had was my Olympus OM-D E-M10ii with an old film lens of 135 mm lens stuck on it.
I didn't want to scare off the bird. I backed up slowly a few steps and soon realized I had to get down low. After getting down low, I needed to do two more things on my camera to make sure I was as sharp as I could get. First, I activated focus peaking. Doing that gives an outline around everything that is sharp. Then I used a magnify button to make sure I can see the finer focus points.
The lense I used was an adapted lens. It wasn't originally designed for my camera. It was an old Olympus film lens E.Zuiko 135mm f3.5. The nice thing about it, the lens has a big focus ring on it, and it is so easy to operate when you have any kind of gloves on your hands.
So I got low. But for a while, I think the bird was trying to figure me out... neither of us moved. Then the robin moved closer to the water of this puddle. I just checked my focus one more time and started shooting. Eventually, many times the bird got down to drink. This photo was probably the sharpest I got. But the shot was still cropped in a bit, even with the equivalent full frame focal length of 270mm. That's what you get when you need to step back a few.
Technical detail of this photo: f3.5, ISO 200, 1/640 sec.
