I heaped praise on Canon for its two new mirrorless camera bodies, the R5 and R6 (African Birdlife 9(3): 56-60). The main attraction for birders is the cameras’ excellent autofocus, which manages to track birds against complex backgrounds appreciably better than Canon’s SLR cameras. The mirrorless cameras also enable you to take advantage of the budget RF 600mm and 800mm f11 lenses, which are not available for use with SLR bodies. However, these lenses do have their drawbacks. Most serious photographers will want a lens with the option of having a wider aperture and where the active focus zone covers the full field of view.
You can use existing EF lenses with a small adapter, but Canon is also in the process of releasing mirrorless versions of many of its popular EF-series lenses. So far, the most useful of these for bird photography is the RF 100 500mm zoom. Canon will soon release RF versions of its top prime telephoto lenses: the 300mm and 400mm f2.8 lenses and the 500mm and 600mm f4 lenses, but at prices that are likely to make them unattainable for most southern African birders.
This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of African Birdlife.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of African Birdlife.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
EXPLORING NEW HORIZONS
Keith Barnes, co-author of the new Field Guide to Birds of Greater Southern Africa, chats about the long-neglected birding regions just north of the Kunene and Zambezi, getting back to watching birds and the vulture that changed his life.
footloose IN FYNBOS
The Walker Bay Diversity Trail is a leisurely hike with a multitude of flowers, feathers and flavours along the way.
Living forwards
How photographing birds helps me face adversity
CAPE crusade
The Cape Bird Club/City of Cape Town Birding Big Year Challenge
water & WINGS
WATER IS LIFE. As wildlife photographer Greg du Toit knows better than most.
winter wanderer
as summer becomes a memory in the south, the skies are a little quieter as the migrants have returned to the warming north. But one bird endemic to the southern African region takes its own little winter journey.
when perfect isn't enough
Egg signatures and forgeries in the cuckoo-drongo arms race
Southern SIGHTINGS
The late summer period naturally started quietening down after the midsummer excitement, but there were still some classy rarities on offer for birders all over the subregion. As always, none of the records included here have been adjudicated by any of the subregion's Rarities Committees.
flood impact on wetland birds
One of the features of a warming planet is increasingly erratic rainfall; years of drought followed by devastating floods. Fortunately, many waterbirds are pre-adapted to cope with such extremes, especially in southern Africa where they have evolved to exploit episodic rainfall events in semi-arid and arid regions. But how do waterbirds respond to floods in areas where rainfall - and access to water - is more predictable? Peter Ryan explores the consequences of recent floods on the birds of the Western Cape's Olifants River valley.
a star is born
It’s every producer’s dream to plan a wildlife television series and pick the right characters before filming.
