Trogon Photo Tours

August 2021 - In this month's newsletter I discuss using the RF 800F11 Canon lens with the mirrorless Canon R5.  The images are photos taken on this May's Washington Eagles workshop. 

The first time I started using the RF 800 lens a lot on the Washington Eagles workshop was when we had our boat trip out of Friday Harbor on San Juan Island to photograph Orcas, Puffins and other seabirds.  After spending some time with the Orcas we headed over toward Smith Island to concentrate on seabirds.  The birds were too far away to get much with the 100-400 lens so I turned to the RF 800F11.  This Tufted Puffin was photographed with the Canon R5 and 800F11 lens with settings of 1/1250 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +1.0, handheld.  We also photographed Horned Puffin which flew around the boat several times but never landed close enough for a good on the water shot.  I did get some flight shots of it with the 100-400 but pretty small in the frame.  I found the 800F11 difficult to track smaller birds in flight both because of the amount of lens and it doesn't focus really fast. 

Here's a Rhinoceros Auklet photographed a bit later on the same boat trip.  The settings for this shot were Canon R5, 800F11, 1/640 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +1.3, handheld. For these images I was adding a stop or more to get good light on the birds against the bright water they were floating on.  While the 800F11 struggled to photograph these birds in flight, I found it did very well with seabirds which were on the water.  This species which is called an auklet, is now taxonomically considered a puffin.   

Here are a pair of Common Murres photographed with the same settings as the Rhinoceros Auklet. R5 800RF 1/640 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +1.3, handheld.  These birds were in a mixed flock with the auklet from the previous shot.  We did very well on alcids on this boat trip, even getting a pair of Marbled Murrelet in breeding plumage.  

We also photographed some mammals on the trip, Orcas and these Steller's Sea Lions.  We didn't do great on Orcas, preferring to concentrate on seabirds on our one trip, but Ken Archer did really well on his three boat trips during our Orcas and Eagles workshop.  This was taken with the Canon R5, RF 800F11 at 1/640 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  I think the RF 800 is pretty sharp wide open at F11 which is important because at F11 you are already losing a lot of light.  It certainly doesn't compare to a 500 or 600F4 but the image quality is pretty good and at under three pounds (2.77) it makes for an excellent walk around lens as long as there is plenty of light.  I think the image quality compares favorably to similarly priced lenses such as the Sigma or Tamron 150-600 zoom lenses. On these shots I certainly could have boosted the iso to 2000 or so to get a faster shutter speed or more depth of field.  Sometimes I forget how good the R5 is at high iso's but it looked like the images were working out well looking at them on the back of the LCD. 

Here's a California Quail that we photographed at San Juan Island Historical National Park, San Juan Island, Washington.  It was overcast in the late afternoon.  The techs were Canon R5, RF 800F11, 1/500 F11, iso 2000, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  We found this California Quail in a nice setting, the image turned out very nice at iso 2000, I didn't use any noise reduction when finishing the image in photoshop.  I did find when the shutter speed was low with this combo - 1/250 of a second or lower that I did have a difficult time getting sharp images handheld, so I tried to keep my shutter speed about 1/500 or higher and with the good iso performance of the R5 this generally worked out well. 

One of the fun things about photographing the Bald Eagles at Hood Canal is the numerous interactions they have with Great Blue Herons over the fish they are both feeding on.  Typically, the Great Blue Heron will fly off when an eagle flies in trying to steal the heron's catch.  In this case the Great Blue Heron stood its ground, after dropping its fish in the water, it stayed while the young Bald Eagle landed right in front of it and flew off with the fish.  The techs on this shot were Canon R5, 800F11 1/2000 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  The first couple of days of the eagle workshop I photographed the eagles with the Canon 100-400 because I was afraid to miss shots if eagles were fighting with each other close by.  But the last day I used the 800F11 a fair bit and it did allow me to get in close with some of these eagle-heron interactions which typically take place at a bit of a distance.  

Here's a Bald Eagle fishing.  With small birds like auklets and puffins the 800F11had a difficult time acquiring focus quickly enough. However, with large, slower flying birds like eagles it did fine.  The techs on this shot were R5, 800F11, 1/2000 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  In conclusion as long as there is a decent amount of light to work with the Canon RF 800F11 is a good, lightweight handheld option with a long focal length which can be purchased at a reasonable price.  I think I will use it more often in the future.  Ideally when doing walk around photography I would have an R5 attached to each of the RF 800F11 and my 100-400.  That way I would have a lens with a long focal length but also the 100-400 for any birds or animals that were quite close (also I would have a usable lens that way if the light got very low).