Swallow BIFs at close range with the OM-1

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With my older cameras (E-M1ii and D500), photographing swallows at a distance of 15+ feet was doable. Even then, it was a bit hit or miss. Sometimes the E-M1ii would fail to retain focus (or focus at all) and on the D500, focus would snap to the background if I failed to accurately keep up with the bird and I would miss the shots.

This made it very difficult to shoot birds at close range with either camera, let alone swallows! When swallows rapidly closed the distance, turning the D500 to keep up with them was a lot easier if using the marvelous 300mm PF, but its FOV is equivalent to that of a 200mm lens on Micro Four Thirds, so the subject was proportionately smaller (and it doesn't resolve as much detail as the 300mm Pro so cropping was not very helpful).

With the OM-1, things are a lot easier and more consistent. This isn't to say that it's perfect by any means, but the results are very good. Above all, I was astonished at how speedy the focus was, even when swallows were zipping past me as close as 10 feet away.

At least that's my ballpark guess ... 10 feet away! Estimating distances in the moment is difficult - but I can say with confidence that the range at which I can get photos has more than halved!

Here are some shots I got earlier today. These are straight exports from OM Workspace - no post processing whatsoever. I did not crop so that you can get a feel for how close the subjects were. :) Who knows, someone might do some trigonometric calculations based on the lens's angle of view and the size of a violet-green swallow and find that my distance estimate is incorrect. ;) Let's just say that they were close enough to leave me thrilled with this $2200 camera's capabilities.

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This one below was from a sequence of 60+ shots and all seem to be in focus.

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Confusing backgrounds? A lot of times, they aren't a problem!

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The swallow in this photo obviously isn't close, but I'm including it to demonstrate two things: one, how the camera can detect a bird at the very edge of the frame, and two, how well rolling shutter is controlled. On my E-M1ii, the pole would have been tilted to the right in this left-panning shot.

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So it turns out that I am TERRIBLE at estimating distances! 😂

Let's use this image for some math, since it's the largest one in the frame and the swallow isn't flying at a weird angle that makes measurements difficult.

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The length of a violet-green swallow is 12 cm (beak to tail). This swallow is about 280 pixels long. Since the diagonal span of this photo is 1500 pixels (4:3 aspect ratio and 1200 px long), that equates to a diagonal view spanning 64.28 cm.

And this was taken with the Olympus 300mm Pro, which has an angle of view of 4.1 degrees.

Assuming a flat focal plane, I fed these values into this right angle calculator: https://www.omnicalculator.com/math/right-triangle-side-angle

  • a = 32.14 cm (half of 64.28 cm)
  • α = 2.05 degrees (half of 4.1 degrees)

Which means that:
  • b = 29.46 feet

YIKES! So this swallow was 30 feet away, as were the others (35-ish feet away, not 10 feet 🙄). My excuse is that I was looking through the viewfinder and got excited. It takes nothing away from the OM-1. Focus performance at close distances is a lot easier and more consistent, and I am thrilled with its performance.

Now I need to work on improving my 'eyeballing' skills. Sigh ...
 
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