Birding and Bird Photography in Chiang Dao

I went to Chiang Dao last weekend. Nut was away on a camping trip with two girlfriends so my weekend was free. Chiang Dao is only about 60 miles north of Chiang Mai so it's an easy drive on the motorcycle. I've gotten much more involved with birdwatching and photography since my last post so I decided to return to the little resort we visited back in November, Malee's Nature Lover's Bungalows, to see if I could capture some more bird photos. I had planned to stay only overnight but it's such an idyllic locale and proved to be so "birdy" that I extended my stay to three nights.  It's located in the shadow of Doi Luang, a mountain that rises to 7,138 ft making it Thailand's 3rd highest peak, and on the edge of the lush rainforest that makes up Doi Luang National Park. Malee's is well known in the local birding community and the Doi Luang area as a whole draws birding enthusiasts from all over the globe. I got acquainted with several birders while I was there.
Check-in at Malee's is noon so after a pleasant drive by motorcycle I arrived late in the day, too late for birding I thought. As I was shuttling my gear to the bungalow I immediately encountered John Williams, a fellow Chiang Mai resident and ex-pat from the U.K., who was sitting in a lawn chair pointing a long-lensed camera at one of Malee's flowering trees. I asked him what he was seeing and he replied, "sunbirds". I dropped my bags on the spot and ran back to the bike to fetch my camera and binocs. Thus began my first real birding holiday. I'm hooked on birding now and if past experience is any guide, this will be only the first of many. Here's what John was looking at:

Olive-backed Sunbird (male) - Malee's Garden
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 800

Olive-backed Sunbird (male) - Malee's Garden
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 1000

Later, John pointed out a nest that was being built by a female Olive-backed Sunbird. It was directly opposite the open-air dining room at Malee's. I pulled up a chair, set my camera up on a tripod and snapped a few photos. The tiny bird darted back and forth carrying bits of leaf and some sort of threadlike material that she used to tie everything together. Sunbirds are really small, maybe 3 in long, and they move quickly when feeding or, in this case, nest building.

An Olive-backed Sunbird builds her nest
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm f/6.3, 1/2000 sec, ISO 3200

An Olive-backed Sunbird builds her nest
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm f/6.3, 1/1600 sec, ISO 1600

In my last post, I outlined my reasons for wanting to move to a better camera and a higher quality telephoto lens. In December, I bought a Canon 70-200mm L f/4 telephoto lens and it's a beauty. It's considered a must-have lens for serious photographers. It takes super-sharp photos, has a very fast autofocus system and incredible image stabilization. I used it for a month before discovering that for shooting small songbirds it simply wasn't up to the task. I loved the lens when I rented one in Eugene last fall but my test shots there were of herons and other large birds, not tiny songbirds. The lens cost about $1000 USD so you can imagine my dismay when I realized that 200mm is the absolute lowest focal length you can get away with for songbird photography. After reading many reviews and watching several Youtube videos extolling the virtues of the Tamron 100-400mm lens, I screwed up my courage and ordered it. Now with a few weeks of experience behind me I can say that I am totally happy with it. It cost (only) $800 USD new. The comparable new Canon EF 100-400mm L lens will set you back $1700 USD. Luckily, I can probably recoup most of the cost of the Canon lens by selling it on eBay. By the way, I sold my little EFM 55-200mm lens for the M-mount EOS M50 here in Chiang Mai. I sold it for exactly what I paid for it.
I also bought a Canon EOS R, a recently introduced mirrorless full-frame camera that uses Canon's new RF mount. It comes with an RF-EF adapter so people can use the high-quality EF lenses that Canon has been making for many years and that I use with the Tamron. The few RF lenses currently available from Canon are super high-quality and extremely expensive so I'll be mostly using EF lenses with it. The "R" is a fine camera and has many features my M50 lacked. All the photos in this post were shot with the EOS R and the Tamron.

Below is the bird that got me hooked into bird photography, the lovely Blue-winged Leafbird. When Nut & I visited Chiang Dao back in November I got an image of this bird with my M50. It was a nice image but it left me wanting photos with more visible detail, more resolution. If you open this image by clicking on it you'll be able to see individual feathers. That's the kind of resolution I was wanting.

Blue-winged Leafbird - Malee's Garden
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm f/6.3, 1/640 sec, ISO 1000

Another bird that I first posted on my Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/AlaskaDave) was the female White-rumped Shama. When I posted it I hadn't yet bought any bird books so had no idea what species it was. Some helpful friends later ID'ed it for me. When I looked it up on ebird (ebird.org) and saw how pretty the male was, I immediately returned to the Huay Kaew Arboretum to the same spot where I had encountered the female. My hope was that her mate might show up at some point. I did see the female several more times but never a male.
On my second day at Chiang Dao, I drove my motorcycle to a nearby temple and just as I pulled into the parking area I spotted a small, dark bird sitting on a fencepost. I parked a few meters away and grabbed my binocs out of the top box. And there he was, a handsome male White-rumped Shama! His beautiful orange breast contrasted vividly with an indigo blue body. He was in deep shade so these first few images were very dark and were shot at too high an ISO (I use the Auto-ISO feature on my "R", more below), consequently they were quite noisy. My experience at the Arboretum taught me that Shamas are creatures of habit and aren't particularly shy. So I returned the next day, spotted one near a temple outbuilding and was able to get some good images even though he was in the shade (again). Turns out there are several male Shamas living in the area, and all of them apparently prefer shady surroundings. In all, I saw four males but no females.

Male White-rumped Shama
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm, F/6/3, 1/100 sec, ISO 800

Male White-rumped Shama
Canon EOS R, Tamron 100-400mm @400mm, F/6/3, 1/60 sec, ISO1200

Here's a photo of the Arboretum female for comparison. I was quite close to her, only six or seven meters away, so the Canon 70-200mm lens worked perfectly for this shot.

Female White-rumped Shama - Huay Kaew Arboretum
Canon EOS M50, Canon 70-200mm @200mm, f/6.3, 1/160 sec, ISO 4000

I got a couple more good photos while at Malee's. The Purple Sunbird was in my sights only briefly so my image isn't as good as I'd hoped for. I almost ignored the Puff-throated Bulbul because bulbuls are a dime a dozen in my neighborhood and I've already gotten fussy about my avian subjects. I don't generally photograph pigeons, doves or mynas either — too common. However, there was something different about these bulbuls, a different color, or something else I couldn't quite put my finger on.  So I took a few photos and I'm glad I did.

Purple Sunbird - Malee's Garden
Canon EOS R Tamron100-400mm @400mm f/6.3 , 1/1600 sec, ISO 2500

Puff-throated Bulbul
Canon EOS R Tamron100-400mm @400mm f/6.3, 1/320 sec, ISO 1600

Last November when I began birding in Thailand all the birds, with the exception of a few of the more common ones, were completely unknown to me. Now I'm much more familiar with the local birds and can recognize a few of them by their songs or flight patterns. Friends even ask about a bird they noticed that had a certain color pattern or that had long legs and frequents rice paddies. Sometimes, to my considerable surprise, I'm actually able to identify the bird for them.

Birding gets me out of the house early almost every day. I wake at 5 or 6 am, excited to get up and begin the day. I make a pot of tea, write in my Journal, answer mail, and decide where I'll go at first light. Then I pack all my junk, my camera and lenses, binocs, some water and snacks into the top-box on the Honda, and take off for my morning outing. Chiang Mai is a huge city. It's got a lot going for it from an ex-pat's point of view but peace and quiet are in short supply. I spend a lot of time at Chiang Mai University's nearby Agricultural Campus which is a quiet and pretty spot only a 10-minute drive from home. Its ponds, orchards and meadows are tranquil and relaxing. I'll have more to say about it and some other local birding spots in my next post. Below is the little shelter on that campus where I most enjoy hanging out. There's a certain bird, a female Siberian Stonechat, that I see every time I'm there. It's almost as though she intentionally comes out to greet me. I'll introduce you to her in a subsequent post as well.

Birdwatching Sala at Chiang Mai University Agricultural Campus

Below is a long-winded discussion of cameras and equipment for bird photography. Although I had been a birdwatcher years ago in Massachusetts I knew nothing about bird photography until last fall. It's cost me a lot of time and money to put together the kit I have now. That's what I cover below. Also, for me, bringing the images into Photoshop and tweaking them there is something I enjoy and look forward to doing. Not everyone is so inclined. Mastering a complex program like Photoshop takes a while — I've been working with it for about 20 years and I'm still an intermediate-level user.  In addition, it ain't cheap — a Photoshop subscription costs $10 a month. But the power it offers for controlling every aspect of your imagery is unparalleled.

Technical Addendum for Bird Nerds and Camera Junkies

If you're at all interested in bird photography, the rest of this post describes what I've learned over the past few months and how I've put it into practice. I gleaned a ton of knowledge from Youtube and the outstanding photographers, Photoshop experts, and reviewers of equipment that have taken the trouble to make instructional videos. Youtube contains a wealth of information about almost anything of interest. While the Internet has failed miserably in its potential to democratize information dissemination it has made learning about photography very pleasurable and entertaining.

The full specification for my new Tamron lens is: 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 Di VC USD. I paid $700 USD for it on eBay to which Thai Customs tacked on $100 for import duty. Like my Canon 70-200mm lens, it has autofocus and image stabilization (Tamron calls it "VC" for Vibration Control). That Canon lens maintained the same f/4 aperture throughout its entire focal range while the Tamron starts out 1/2 stop slower, f/4.5 at 100mm, and goes to f/6.3 at 400mm, making it almost 2 stops slower.  That means that for a given amount of light coming to the lens, the Tamron will require either twice the time (slower shutter speed) or twice the ISO sensitivity to gather the same amount of light as the Canon at the 400mm focal length. Such compromises are necessary to make the lens affordable. However, for some photographers, this one is a deal-breaker.

Constant aperture zooms are expensive to make because they require a huge front element to capture sufficient light. Even the $1600 Canon lens I mentioned before (the 100-400mm), has a variable f/4.5-5.6 aperture making its loss of light one stop less than the Tamron's. But is that worth an $800 difference? I don't think so. Just for comparison, a non-zooming Canon 400mm telephoto having an f/4 aperture comes in at a whopping $7000 USD and one with an f/2.8 aperture at $12,000 USD. Now, that's some serious glass! And some serious coin.

I shoot all my images in what's known as camera RAW while most casual photographers shoot in JPEG mode. Because a RAW image contains the full complement of pixel-based data collected by the sensor during exposure they're large; mine run 20 to 25 MBytes. One problem with JPEGs is that the camera's firmware processes the RAW sensor data internally and in so doing makes compromises to achieve a usable image, which is typically a half to a quarter the size of the RAW file. It does this to make smaller image files and to spare users the chore of processing the data manually. Most people don't want to mess with this additional processing step and besides, the JPEG image is pleasant to look at right out of the camera. However, the firmware discards lots of potentially valuable data during JPEG processing. With RAW I can open an under- or over-exposed image in Photoshop and pull in pixels that would be missing in your JPEG thus effectively rescuing them from the Recycling Bin. There are many other advantages to shooting in RAW. For example, I never concern myself with White Balance because that setting is only needed to tell the camera what it needs to know to produce a pleasing JPEG that will hopefully appear close to the way you saw it. In Photoshop, a RAW file can be adjusted to appear as though it was shot in bright daylight, cloudy skies, or what have you.

These days I shoot in full Manual mode with a single (small) autofocus point. But I didn't always do it that way. Like many people I started out using the built-in modes offered on most cameras, you know, Aperture priority, Shutter priority, or Automatic, and a large auto-focus area. I came to realize that the camera was deciding too many things for me and it was getting them wrong. There are good reasons for using Aperture Priority, which controls Depth-Of- Field, or Shutter Priority to freeze action or sometimes to blur action (but almost none for using full Automatic). However, those auto modes are not very useful in landscape photography or the kind of bird photography I'm doing. I always want the smallest aperture (highest f-number) to maximize Depth-Of-Field (D-O-F) and highest shutter speed to minimize motion blur. These are things one must set intentionally and manually — the camera will not do it that way.
Makers of modern cameras advertise the wide coverage of their autofocus systems and Canon are no exception when extolling the virtues of its EOS R. However unless you're shooting birds in flight, these multi-point focus systems will often focus on the background and miss the tiny bird in front of it. In my bird photography, I place the small square autofocus box on the bird and set my focus there, recomposing and refocusing only when necessary.

Even after carefully setting the focus sometimes the bird moves or my hand doesn't hold the long telephoto steady enough for the image stabilization to counter it. That's why birders use a high-speed continuous shutter for their work. My camera shoots about 5-6 frames/second if I keep the shutter depressed. Chances are good that one or two out of 10 or 20 images will turn out sharp enough to be a keeper. This sort of thing just wasn't possible in the days of film. I use this mode all the time.

Recently I've started using a technique called back-button focusing and I'm just starting to be comfortable with it. By default, most cameras use the shutter button both to obtain focus and measure the exposure when it's pressed halfway. Pressing it all the way down then opens the shutter and exposes the image. To use back-button focusing, you decouple the focusing from the shutter button and put it somewhere else. Most cameras including my "R" have a button called Auto-focus-On (AF-ON) or something similar. After assigning focus to AF-ON, the shutter button merely measures the exposure and opens the shutter. The beauty of this is that once you get the focus set you needn't fool with it again unless the subject moves. Intervening twigs or leaves don't grab focus as they sometimes do when using the standard functionality of the shutter button which refocuses every time you take a shot. It's easy to set up on most cameras and especially on Canon cameras which have touch-activated menu systems that are as easy to use as the menus on your cellphone.

Another feature I use all the time even in Manual Mode is automatic ISO, or Auto-ISO. The ISO is essentially the sensitivity of the camera's sensor to light. It roughly corresponds to what we old-timers used to know as ASA, which was a measure of film speed. Modern cameras can shoot at very high ISOs; mine goes to 102,000, a ridiculously high value that I would never use in practice. Using a higher ISO allows me to use the faster shutter speeds and smaller apertures I want for bird work. The drawback of a too high ISO is increased graininess or electronic noise in the image that results when the imaging sensor is forced to high sensitivity levels.
In the field, you would ideally set the ISO to as low a setting as possible to keep the noise to a minimum and then pick the shutter speed and aperture to get the correct exposure for the conditions. But if you're shooting a bird and it moves from the shade to bright sunlight, you might not have enough time to correct the aperture and/or shutter speed for the new situation. That's where auto-ISO comes in handy.
To begin I set my shutter speed and aperture as high as possible given the current light levels (fast shutter to stop motion, small aperture for high D-O-F), and set the camera on Auto-ISO and this generally works pretty well. If you're not careful though it can result in images that are so grainy as to be unusable. A couple of my photos of the male Shama were shot in very low light and I was so excited to even see the bird I forgot to check the ISO setting my camera had chosen. Later, after I got back to my computer I saw that it had used an ISO of 12,800, much much too high. According to the camera, they were correctly exposed, and indeed they were, but the images were super grainy and completely unusable without some heavy-handed noise removal.

Photoshop has the capability to remove this noise but it's tricky and far from perfect. I bought a piece of software, DenoiseAI, from an outfit called Topaz Labs that does a fantastic job of noise removal. It can be used as a plugin from Photoshop's Filter menu. I run all images shot at ISOs above 400 through TopazDenoiseAI now. The Bulbul image was shot with an ISO of 1600 because it was dark inside the foliage. The image was very grainy but Topaz cleaned it up nicely.