George

I'm a beginning birder who has taken 3 years of pictures with a bridge camera, the Nikon B700.  On hikes in the woods I hand-shoot pics of birds in trees at a distance using the "Bird-watching" automatic setting, at the default zoom setting of 800 mm equivalent (at any higher zoom, hand-shake is a problem). When I download the picture off the card onto my computer screen, it's usually still just a small blob in the middle of a field of green, but then very aggressive cropping will usually bring out a very nice picture of the bird, provided the auto-focus actually focused on the bird (three examples below).  That's the problem. So often the focal point is instead on a leaf behind the bird or on a twig in front, and I've tossed so many really great scenes because the leaf is focused but not the bird.  When I'm viewing the shot in the view-finder with the shutter-release button half-pressed, I can't tell whether the focal point is on the bird because the bird is a tiny little dot. And I haven't learned how to manually focus. So that's what I want from this class:  I want to get better gear with an emphasis on focusing, that will allow for sharp images of individual feathers, beaks and eyes with hyper-cropping on shots taken from a good distance.  But gear that still allows for the mobility of walking through the woods...I don't plan to lie in place in one spot for a half-hour waiting for the shot to come. I don't need images for large prints; just emailed or shared JPEG's are fine for me.  But I do want clarity above all.  I want the shot to show me details that I couldn't see with my eyes.  For example, the shot of the tachinid fly below would be so so much better if the focus were just a wee bit sharper. The Nikon B700 bridge camera can take good shots and I've had a lot of fun with it.  Its auto-focus on birds can be very frustrating.