The amazing and colorful birds of Africa

I have been back from Africa for more than 2 weeks now and have not really blogged much. I have spent the last 19 days trying to play catch up after being gone for the last 2 1/2 months. And of course the Canon R3 was officially announced, so I have had a lot of people asking questions about my use of the new camera at the Olympics. But...now I am back at it, and wanted to share something different with you all. 

When people think of photographing wildlife in Africa, they generally think of the big animals. They think about capturing photos of the elephant, the big cats, rhinos and so much more. And sure, I am not that different, but when you go to Africa you need to see the beauty in the smaller things too. In that spirit, todays blog post is all about the amazing birds that you find in Africa. Because, unlike the birds near my house, the birds in Africa are more colorful and more dynamic and worthy of photographing for sure.

Here are many of my favorite bird photos from the trip mostly in chronological order.

One of my favorite birds in Tanzania is the Superb Starling. The colors of this bird always amaze me.  And they are all over the place, so getting a good photo of this starling is really easy.

I swear that this one was giving me the "evil eye"!

Another favorite bird in Tanzania is the Lilac Breasted Roller, and you can see how it earned it's name. 

Here is a photo of the LBR in flight.

It is not uncommon to see the Ox Peckers freeloading off of larger animals...

...and they were not the only birds hopping on for a ride. We saw this bird hanging out on the back of this hippo which was eating along the shoreline of the Chobe River in Botswana.

The hippos actually made for good landing pads for many species of birds.

It is quite common to see raptors throughout the continent.

I took this photo mainly because of the environment behind the bird...

We saw this King Fisher hovering over a small river, looking for its next meal. All of us shooting with the new Canon R5 and R6 were amazed at how well the subject tracking followed the bird perfectly. We were getting shots that normally would be almost impossible to capture.

This is a Hornbill but they call this bird the flying chili pepper.

And this type of hornbill is nicknamed the flying banana.

The colors are not just in the feathers, and are commonly found in the beaks as well.

Even the vultures have colorful faces.

Like I said before, the ability of the Canon R5 to track birds in flight was nothing short of astounding. My take rate was at least 10 times better than with any of Canon's DSLR cameras. 

There is something majestic about watching these large birds in flight.

I really liked the way that this bird matched the coloring and patterns in the wood.

They call this bird the "Jesus bird" since, with its really large feet, it appears to walk on water.

More great colors....

...and interesting patterns.

This is another favorite bird of mine. This is one of the Bee Eaters that you find in central and southern Africa.

Whenever we saw Fish Eagles near the shoreline of the Chobe River, we would pull the boat close to the shore and wait for the eagle to take flight.

If other birds were taking off in the area, we capture photos of them as well.

This bird is a skimmer, aptly named since it would fly close to the water and skim for small fish.

You can see the trail behind the bird as its beak skimmed the water.

I caught this skimmer taking off from the shallow water. I really liked this photo because of the water coming off the feet, but also the curve of the sand and the shadow which is cast behind the bird.

I was talking to one of the other photo guides on another boat as we watched the skimmers in action.  We challenged each other to capture a clean motion pan of these birds skimming at 1/40th sec. It took a while but I got one! 

More take-offs.

This spoon bill was walking on the shoreline in front of our boat as we took photos. It almost looks like it is watching us as closely as we were watching it.

Here is another species of Bee Eater. I don't remember ever seeing this color bee eater before, but loved it!

Check out the colors on this King Fisher. Simply awesome.

We saw this bird hanging out in a tree and I decided to teach the group how to shoot and zoom at the same time to get a cool effect like this.

Look, there is snow on the rocks in Botswana. Oh wait, that is not snow. :)

At one point, we pulled our boat close to the shore because we saw a fish eagle on a rock. As we pulled closer, the eagle took off and we saw that it had a large catfish in it's tallons.

I took numerous photos as it flew off with it's catch. I really liked this one with the eagle's eye showing through it's wing.

On the opposite shore, we spotted the eagle's partner. We crossed the river and captured images of that eagle flying off. It was facing directly into the diffused light which lit the bird beautifully.

We saw this bird which was showing off its fresh catch. It stood in this position for a long time, giving us all ample time to grab a photo with the fish in full view. The look on the face of the ill-fated fish is priceless.

We even got some nice profile shots.

It was our last day on the Chobe River when we came across these two bee eaters hanging out together. 

We would typically be on the water until sunset. And on our final evening, we saw this bird drying its wings in the last bit of daylight.

And then the sun set and we were back to the lodge to download all our photos and to enjoy an amazing meal. 

I hope you enjoyed seeing these photos and seeing some of the smaller, but no less magnificent wildlife from Africa.  I ca assure you that all of us had a great time capturing the images.

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If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
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Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

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Finally - my real world review of the new Canon R3 camera!

The first time I got my hands on the Canon R3 (pre-production) camera was in the weeks before I headed out to Tokyo to photograph the Olympic Games. I was allowed to show a photo of me holding the camera, but I was not allowed to show any more images of the camera or say much more than what I posted. Yes, it was a tease, but I was bound by the NDA I signed with Canon.

Now the camera has been officially announced and I can talk freely. Normally I would have pre-written this blog and posted on the day of Canon's announcement, but I was flying back from spending a month in Africa and did not have a chance to do so. So...let me tell you about my experience with the Canon R3.

First impression

On that day back in early July, I was waiting anxiously for the FedEx box to arrive and could not wait to rip it open to see the R3 in person. The first thing I noticed was that the camera was noticeably smaller and lighter than the Canon 1DX MKIII. I even put it next to the 1DX to confirm my first thoughts. I was also happy to see that it used the same batteries as the Canon 1D series. 

Having used the Canon R5 and Canon R6 for some time, all the buttons and dials were in familiar places, so using the camera seemed easy. The one noticeable difference was the over-sized eye piece, which was made larger to support the new eye control. More on that later...

I played with the camera and took a bunch of test photos. I had a lot of questions about the setup, and had numerous calls with the technical people at Canon to fully understand the new features and to fine-tune the camera for what I wanted. My goal was to set up the camera for optimal shooting at the Olympics, with dual back-button focus and having the eye-control trained for my pupil. As it turned out, I ended up using a newer version of the Canon R3 in Tokyo and had to retrain that camera, but I made notes of everything I had changed at home, so it was easy to make those adjustments at the Olympics.

Real-world use at the Olympics

I went to Tokyo with two Canon R5 cameras, a bunch of lenses, lots of ProGrade Digital memory cards, and knew that I would be getting an R3 when I arrived at the Games. My original plan was to shoot with the Canon R5 cameras as my primary cameras, and use the Canon R3 as my "test camera" for those times when I was not contractually obligated to shoot for Team USA.  But that changed almost immediately! I started using the Canon R3 at the Opening Ceremony and never stopped. The Canon R5 cameras basically sat in my camera bags for most of the Olympics.

The Canon R3 is blazing fast, with the ability to capture up to 30 frames per second. This may not be needed by all photographers, but at the Olympics it was amazing. 

This fast frame rate allowed me to capture the peak of action much easier than in Olympics past.

I love that the Canon R3 is silent when shooting since it is a mirrorless camera, but I also really appreciated that Canon added a simulated shutter sound, that can be turned on and off. As a long-time DSLR shooter, I have grown accustomed to hearing my shutter speed. It was a welcome feature during these games.

I did not always use the fastest setting, as it was not needed for all photos. For this multi-exposure shot, I wanted a slightly slower burst rate, so that the images did not stack up on each other too closely.

But...when I needed to capture that key moment, the Canon R3 came through beautifully.

Johnny Hooper is known for his strength in the pool, and I captured this image of him rising high out of the water during the men's last game. Having a super fast frame rate allowed me to grab that one image at the top of his shot, with his body highest out of the water. That same fast frame rate also meant that I had a lot more images to go through after each game. I still remember the first time I shot a water polo game, downloaded the photos in the press room, and saw that I had bursted out 2600 images during the one hour game. Yikes! Being under such a tight deadline, this added a new wrinkle into my workflow, but the better images made up for the slight delay in culling speed. 

The most asked question "What is the resolution?"

The most asked question for the last two months was "Can you tell us how many megapixels the camera is?" And of course I could not. But as many of you saw, there were numerous photography sites that grabbed my photos, dissected them and determined that the camera is 24MP. Is that enough? For most of my photography, this is plenty of resolution.  USA Water Polo currently has large billboards in Southern California using one of my images from the Tokyo Olympics, and it was taken at 24MP. Heck, I remember using 4MP cameras in the past and having those images enlarged to 4' by 8' at trade shows. Do I wish for more megapixels in the Canon R3? Yeah, maybe a little more would be nice. But I really did not need more for what I was shooting and I was not cropping much. I can tell you that in Africa I was using two Canon R5 cameras and loved the ability to shoot small birds, crop in on the images, and still have good sized files to print.

Focus speed and eye-control

In the last couple of days, I have had many people ask me about the focus speed and eye-control of the Canon R3 and their overall effectiveness. I can tell you that the focus speed of the R3 was top-notch, giving me a very high percentage of "keepers" from each event. When shooting the fast action of the Olympics, it is a tall order to ask for all images to be tack sharp. This new camera did an amazing job of locking focus. 

I used eye-detection for some of the sports, but also chose to go "old school" and use a single point back-button focus for many of the events. There were many times when I would not be facing the athletes head on, or I had so many people in the frame that the camera did not know who to focus on. This is where the eye-control would be most welcome, and I had high hopes to use this at the Games. But I was using a pre-production camera and the eye-control did not seem fast enough at the time for this action. I should have tried it more, but since I was under pressure to get my photos every day, I chose to turn it off most of the time. With that said, I think that the eye-control will be awesome for my event photography, allowing me to lock focus on my chosen subjects for portraits, weddings, bar mitzvah or corporate events. 

My challenges with the Canon R3

Honestly, there are not many things to pick on with this new camera. But you know me, and you know that I am really demanding with my camera gear. The one thing that I did not like about the Canon R3 is that Canon chose to have one CFexpress card slot and one SD card slot. I always write RAW images to both cards when I am shooting (for redundancy), and since the SD card is so much slower than the CFexpress card, I have numerous times when I filled the camera buffer and missed some great shots. For the USA Water Polo women's gold medal game, I decided to pull the SD card and shoot to just the CFexpress card. I could not risk having buffer issues during this key game!

I should mention that I shot the entire Olympics in RAW+JPEG mode, since I could not easily open a Canon R3 RAW file and had to work with the JPEGs for the whole Games. I wanted to capture the RAW files, since I plan on re-editing the best photos from the RAW files in the weeks to come, once Adobe has added the R3 to Adobe Camera RAW. Shooting RAW+JPEG really slows things down, and I don't plan on shooting that way in the future. 

Overall impression of the camera

Not everyone needs a camera that performs at the level of the Canon R3, but for those of us who need to fire off 30 frames per second, need the super fast focus speeds, and want the very best, this camera is awesome. Ever since using the Canon R5 and Canon R6 for my photography, I knew that mirrorless was the way to go. The new Canon R3 brings all the power of the Canon 1D series to the mirrorless world, and that is a welcome addition to the Canon line-up. Canon may not like me saying this, but for anyone looking to purchase a Canon 1DX MKIII, I would recommend going with the Canon R3. I think that the R series is the future for Canon, with all the new lenses coming out for these new bodies, and the camera just performs better in so many respects.

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Subscribe to the Jeff Cable Photography Blog by clicking HERE!
__________________________________________________________________________
If you are interested in purchasing ANY equipment, please click here to go to B&H Photo, as I get a referral from them if you enter this way. It does not change the cost to you in any way, but it helps me keep this blog up and running.
__________________________________________________________________________
Check out my upcoming photo tours to amazing places around the world. I have photo tours to Africa, Costa Rica, Cuba, Europe, Asia, India and more. And Canon will loan you any gear you want for FREE for any of my tours. 

__________________________________________________________________________