Made a visit to the Jurong Bird Park in Singapore. My weapon of choice: the Panasonic GX85 (also known as GX80 in Europe) and just one lens – the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8.
1. Critically Sharp Wide Open
Yes, I have a sharpness fetish and of all the lenses I own, I would say that only the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 is critical sharp wide open (i.e. at its maximum aperture setting of f/2.8). Almost all the images I’ve included below were shot at f/2.8.
2. Motion Blur
With the in-body stabilization of the Panasonic GX85 (GX80) working together with the in-lens stabilization of the Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 to give Dual Stabilization, motion blur due to camera shake was essentially non-existent even at the 100mm telephoto end.
I did get a few bad shots due to too low a shutter speed resulting in motion blur of the subject – many birds just can’t keep still even if they’re not flying. Best to have a shutter speed of 1/500 seconds where possible to eliminate that.
3. Point Focus
At f/2.8, especially at the telephoto end, even a small bird won’t be entirely in focus. So point focus was necessary on the eye of the bird. I believe that for most Panasonic cameras, you can’t have point focus in auto mode, so I choose Aperture-priority at f/2.8 (see above), and put the cross-hairs of the point focus on the eye of the bird.
Ok, so here’s some of the shots from my trip to the Bird Park:
Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8 ~US$750 / C$970 / £820
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On another occasion, I decided to “go long”. So I brought along the Panasonic Leica 100-400mm. Like the 35-100mm f/2.8, it works with my GX85 (GX80) for Dual Image Stabilization. Certainly needed at the tele focal lengths necessary at the bird park.
Almost the same settings use as for the 35-100mm f/2.8. Point focus and spot metering. Just try to lean the lens against something when going really tele since I didn’t use a tripod. And yes, the extra reach of the 100-400mm was much appreciated for the small and often distant birds.
Ok, so here’re the shots I took using the Panasonic Leica 100-400mm:
Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic Leica 100-400mm f/4.0-6.3 ~US$1,236 / C$1,566 / £1,160
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Tele lenses are great for zooming in for close-ups of the birds, but difficult if you want to include friends or family in the shot as they cannot take wide shots. So on the next occasion, I brought my Panasonic 14-140mm ultra-zoom lens. At the wide end, 14mm is wide enough to include people in the shot. At the tele end, 140mm stretches even further than the Panasonic 35-100mm that I previously used above.
Shooting birds at a bird park presents some challenges. Some of them are behind glass, which makes photos a bit soft:
Then again, some of them are in cages, where I needed to use manual focus or the camera would automatically focus on the cage and not the bird:
But back to the 14-140mm lens. When I initially got the lens, I thought it wasn’t a particularly sharp lens. But now, although I haven’t really done controlled tests, I’m convinced that many of the shots I thought were not sharp were actually due to motion-blur i.e. movement of the camera.
Main reason I think so now is that I used to only have the Panasonic GM1 and GF9 camera bodies which did not have in-body sensor stabilization. But when I use the 14-140mm on my newer Panasonic GX85 (GX80), both the in-body stabilization of the GX85 combine with the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) of the lens to give what Panasonic calls Dual I.S. Hope you agree that the following shots, some taken at the full 140mm are really quite sharp.
The Panasonic 14-140mm is not only versatile with its 14-140mm focal range, the image quality from this lens leaves little to be desired. Although I have lenses like the Panasonic Leica 12-60mm which is even more critically sharp, the Panasonic 14-140mm is still my #1 travel lens mainly because of its versatility while giving up very little in terms of image quality.
Finally, I also got lucky with a critically sharp panning shot during one of the shows while I was there with this lens:
Panasonic GX85/GX80 ~US$490 / C$740 / £520
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Panasonic 14-140mm f/3.5-5.6 ~US$480 / C$585 / £400
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