Wildlife Photography Outing With The X-T2; Mostly Successful With One Failure

Wild ponies in Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Assateague Island, VA (click to enlarge)
Fuji X-T2, 100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 186.1mm; 1/125th sec. @ f/10; ISO 640

Late each year a few buddies and I get together to spend a long weekend at the Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge on the Eastern Shore of Virginia.  Our aim, besides the great camaraderie of good friends sharing the photographic experience, is to photograph migrating waterfowl, shore birds, Bald Eagles and other wildlife as we may see.  Also, traveling to and from the refuge, I wander the back roads of Virginia's Eastern Shore looking for interesting subjects as well.

Bald eagle at sunset (almost a 100% crop) (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/4.5-55.6 lens @ 400mm; 1/500th sec. @ f/5.6;
ISO 800

Over the pasts years, I used everything from a Nikon D300 to D810, an Olympus E-M1 and for the first time this year, a Fuji X-T2.  Since the birds are normally a good distance from anywhere we can photograph, a pretty long tele-photo lens is required.  For my Fuji, I used both the 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6, with and without the 1.4X tele-converter, as well as the 50-140mm f/2.8 lens.  While on the Eastern Shore, Chincoteague and Assateague Islands, I like to wander around as well to see what interesting subjects, other than wildlife, I can find to photograph. 

This year the weather was cold, crisp and the sky was blue with a few cumulus clouds creeping in toward sunset each evening.  Unfortunately, we can't predict when the snow geese and tundra swans will be migrating south.  Some years have yielded literally thousands of snow geese.  This year, like some other years, almost none.  So, we photograph what we can find.

The X-T2 along with the two lenses really were excellent tools.  I didn't get to photograph many birds in flight, but many birds on the ground "fishing."  So, rigorous testing the tracking function didn't happen on this outing.  But what I did photograph, with one exception, were sharp, even wide open, detailed with good color and contrast.  No complaints.  However, let me tell you about the one failure.

There was a kingfisher on a branch on the other side of a canal, about 25-30 yards away from where I could position myself.  The bird was sitting on a branch and watching the water below.  The bird would alight from the branch, dive into the water, then return to the same branch with a small fish.  It would do this over and over.  At first I tried to photograph this at 400mm f/5.6 handheld at 1/2000th second.  Unhappy with the results, I returned the next day and photographed the same bird in the same location at 1/2000th sec. but the camera and lens locked down on a large Induro tripod.  Out of the 50 or more images I made of the bird, only a few were in sharp focus.  It didn't matter if I was handholding the camera and lens, with or without image stabilization, or if the camera was locked down on a tripod, with or without the image stabilization.  What the heck was going on?

100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; 1/500th sec.
@f/5.6; ISO 400 (click to enlarge)
(Image shows 25% of original image)

After returning home and looking at my images on my large desktop monitor, the only conclusion I could draw was that the bird was too small a target from the distance I was forced to photograph with little contrast among its dark blue feathers.  Otherwise, I can't explain why that was the only subject on which I couldn't consistently make numerous sharp images.  I may have been asking too much of the AF system.  I not sure any camera's AF system at this point in time would have done better.

I will address the issue and include samples of the images in my next post.  For this post, I have included representative samples of the waterfowl, wildlife and other subjects from the weekend trip.

I didn't make any spectacular images, but getting out to photograph with your best friends for a long weekend in and of itself makes a successful outing, irregardless of the images that were made or missed.  All of these images posted today were handheld.  

I'm really pleased on how the X-T2 handled the variety of situations I encountered. Additionally, the 100-400mm and 50-150mm lenses were stellar.  With the one exception, which I think I can explain, the focus was fast, images are sharp, contrasty, highly detailed and even highly cropped images stand up very well.  I couldn't ask for more.

Sunset of Assateague Island, Virginia (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 352.9mm; !/500th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Egrets roosting in a pine tree (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; !/640th sec. @ f/8; ISO 400

Winter beach in Cape Charles, Virginia (click to enlarge)
16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 36.5mm; 1/480th sec. @ f/8; ISO 800

Fishing (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; !/220th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400

Watching and fishing (click to enlarge)
50-140mm f/2.8 lens @ 80.4mm; 1/900th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Derelict, Chincoteague Island, Virginia (click to enlarge)
50-140mm f/2.8 lens @ 74.4mm; 1/640th sec. @ f/8; ISO 200

Work boat and crab pots, Oyster, Virginia (click to enlarge)
16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 31.1mm; 1/280th sec. @ f/16; ISO 200

100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; !/125th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400
(click to enlarge)

Wild pony, Chincoteague National Wildlife Refuge, Assateague Island, Virginia (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; 1/500th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400

Winter beach in Cape Charles, Virginia (click to enlarge)
16-55mm f/2.8 lens @ 55mm; 1/350th sec. @ f/11; ISO 800

Egrets rooting in a pine tree (click to enlarge)
100-400mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 323.2mm; !/500th sec. @ f/8; ISO 400

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!

Dennis A. Mook

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