I am glad to given a chance to have a unit CANON EOS R3 to have a series of test on Birds/Nature Photography.

As for other camera, I plan to have series of tests which related to Tropical forest birds Photographer concerns eg. ISO performance, AF performance, Raw files dynamics range etc.

After days of basic understanding the camera (actually it is like a upgraded version of my old CANON EOS 1dxm2). I will try share other view of the camera later in other posts, here lets share one of the major concern : AF performance.

For this test, I am using

CANON EOS R3

CANON EF 500mm F4 IS2

CANON 1.4x TC III

Handheld inside car

No feeding, No nesting and no idea what bird flying to/from which directions. Just base on what you see and trying the Camera capability to focus and capture.

Setting

AF area (whole sensor)

AFC, eye-control AF off

Drive mode: H (15fps)

AI Servo (AF-C)

RAW and use DPP straight convert to JPEG and resize.

No CROP

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All of sudden a White-throated Kingfisher flying infront of us, with immediate response I just point the Len toward the bird and lets the camera lock focus on the bird and track … capture the images in ~3-4s

Full series of this testing