I recently purchased a Canon RF 200-800 mm lens, which I thought would be a good for shooting wildlife and birds. The lens offers a great zoom range with a lot of reach at 800 mm. It is not a particularly fast lens as the maximum aperture is f9 at 800 mm. I wanted to see how it would perform fully zoomed out in low light conditions. I decided to test it out during the a recent cold front that brought unseasonable chilly weather to our area. Why chilly weather you ask?
My objective was to test the lens while photographing “smoking blackbirds” at the Neabsco Regional Boardwalk Park in Woodbridge. Blackbirds have a loud, shrill birdsong that requires them to exhale forcefully. With the right weather and lighting conditions, you can capture the blackbird’s breath as they make their birdsong. Cold is the first necessary ingredient. Calm conditions is the second, as it doesn’t take much wind to quickly dissipate their breath. Finally, you need clear skies at sunrise to get backlighting on their breath that will make it stand out in your image. On this morning in early April, it was a brisk 28 degrees, with 70% humidity, calm winds, and clear skies. The Neabsco boardwalk travels across a large tidal wetland and is oriented in a way that gives you good access to photograph blackbirds that are between you and the rising sun. The RF 200-800 was great in providing the necessary reach to get shots of the blackbirds in the marsh. All of the blackbird images in this post were taken fully zoomed at 800 mm, and were further cropped in during processing.
The birds have a tell tale sign for when they are going to sing. They arch their back and fan out their tail feathers during their birdcall. Even so, it happens rather spontaneously. Having continuous pre-capture shooting enabled on my Canon R5 Mk2 camera ensured that I got a good series of shots each time. The direction of the backlighting is also important. Some angles will illuminate their breath better than others, and you have to experiment to find the angles that work best.
With the maximum aperture of f9 when fully zoomed, the bokeh was pretty good when there was some good distance between the bird and the background. If there was brush nearby in the background, its becomes a bit busier, and you have to be mindful of the framing in your composition.
At ISO 800 and a shutter speed of 1/400 sec, I was easily able to capture sharp images using this lens. Topaz DeNoise worked well to clean up noise in the background, however, I did not apply it where the bird’s breath was visible, as I wanted to preserve all the fine details in that part of the image.
All these images were shot handheld with the lens attached to a shoulder sling. I did find it little difficult to keep this lens still for any extended period of time due to its weight and size. Using the boardwalk railing to steady my aim helped out when I started getting wobbly.
I hope you enjoyed these images from my smoking blackbird adventure!
Nature and wildlife photos are just like landscapes, they benefit from good light! I went down to the Neabsco Boardwalk Park at sunrise to see what I could see. There were plenty of critters crawling about, and the marsh vegetation was covered in dew glistening in the first light of the day. 
