Canon Showcase Latest images with Canon SX-720 superzoom.

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dalethorn

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Today's new images with this marvelous little superzoom (960 mm eq.) camera are:
1) A closer take of a redwing blackbird calling for a mate.
2) A blue and red jet, where the blue skin is fading into a similarly blue sky in places.
3) Church steeples, customs house, and shipping facilities across the harbor, ~2 miles distant.
4) Tugboat - this one has too much blue from the sky and water, which I will try to fix later.

Generally, the image quality can be about as good at the long end of the zoom as elsewhere, but the significant difference here is the distances - the farther the objects are from the camera (hundreds of yards to miles) the worse they get, mostly due to atmospheric distortion.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/80 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Redwing_Blackbird12_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/80 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Jet27_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/320 handheld, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor38_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/320 handheld, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor39_s.jpg
 
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Today's new images with the marvelous little Canon pocket superzoom:
1) A better Moon image. Exposure is very critical when shooting the Moon directly, to prevent highlight clipping. For me, the Moon is more of a camera/lens/sensor test than a desire to have yet another photo of the usual craters etc. As far as I can tell, this camera's lens resolution far exceeds what the sensor can capture.
2) A view of a street from the roof of the Charleston Ashley-Rutledge parking deck. I've taken many similar 'street' photos, but kept very few. This one's charm was the telephone and electric wires viewed from the top, looking like a rope bridge.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/160 second, ISO 80.
Astro_Planet_Moon_Sx7202_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.3, 1/100 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Charleston_Downtown35_s.jpg
 
Today's new image with the Canon SX-720 pocket superzoom:

1) This 4 second exposure should have been at least 6 seconds, and so I've lost some detail, even on the large overhead suspension cables. Hopefully I can reshoot this in the next few days. Even so, this is better than I expected for such a wide view. There's no cropping of the width, but I resized it from 5184 pixels wide to 2560 wide, to minimize the noise. I wish Canon would have used a 12 mp sensor like Panasonic switched to with the ZS50.

Canon SX720, f4.0, 4 seconds tripod, ISO 80.
Charleston_Bridge30_s.jpg
 
I shot these 2 images of Charleston Harbor from the Mt. Pleasant Pier. The boat people were speeding away, and of the 15 or so images I captured in 2 bursts, this was the only one acceptable to keep. At 1/40 second on a moving target and nearing sunset, I felt lucky. The second, of the WW2 ships and marina, was seconds before sunset, and whereas the long shadows emphasized the overall contrast, the little sensor barely made it anyway.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/40 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor17_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f5.6, 1/125 handheld, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor12_s.jpg
 
Second attempt at this one, with better exposure this time. The SX-720's strength is the optical zoom reach, but this shot is near the wide end of the zoom. I'm practicing how to work around this camera's limitations, to make it useful for more than just the "travel-zoom" genre. Thus far things are progressing very well.

Canon SX720, f4.0, 6 seconds tripod, ISO 80.
Charleston_Bridge30a_s.jpg
 
Three new images: The closest bridge tower is 1/2 mile distant, but the optical zoom is so good that a wealth of detail is available the more you zoom in. The Louis Vuitton window wasn't blocked last night, so I shot this through the outer window. The couple in the park were intended as just a zoom test from about 90 yards distant, but it turned out so well that I kept it in my public park collection.

Canon SX720, f5.0, 8 seconds tripod, ISO 80.
Charleston_Bridge30b_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f4.5, 1/6 sec. braced against window, ISO 80.
Louis_Vuitton14_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/100 handheld, ISO 80.
Mtpleasant_Park36_s.jpg
 
Here was a huge challenge. Nobody I know has gotten this image from the pier across the water about 1/2 mile away. The ~1000 mm effective zoom of the SX720 brought this osprey within reach, with a few caveats. The bird is clearly identifiable, but there is very little detail. The first bursts I shot were from a slightly different angle with trees behind the nest, and they didn't resolve at all. When I moved to where this house was the backdrop, this is what I got. My first crop was from 5200 pixels wide to 2600 wide, which (after processing for color/contrast/sharpness etc.) I then resized to less than 1500 pixels wide. As bad as it is for detail, it's something I never would have gotten otherwise, because I won't schlep a tripod and heavy camera around just to get a photo of a bird. In other words, this was a great success!

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/160 handheld, ISO 80.
Osprey19_s.jpg
 
Two harbor scenes: #1 is a private pier about 1/2 mile from the public pier, and has been out of reach for me until this SX-720 made the scene. Just before sunset. #2 is an office dwelling on the far side of the harbor, 2-plus miles distant (so some distortion and/or fuzziness), just before sunset catching the sun's glow in the windows facing the sun.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/25 sec. handheld braced, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor40_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/8 sec. handheld braced, ISO 80.
Charleston_Harbor41_s.jpg
 
The bird isn't the pretty type, but it helps clean up various droppings (mostly food) from the local park, and it deserves an elegant pose for the interested photographer. The butterfly (or moth if applicable) isn't the usual macro, but was taken from about 20 feet away on full 960 mm zoom. While it's not ideally crisp, at least it's fully in focus.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/200 handheld, ISO 80.
Grackle00_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/200 handheld, ISO 80.
Butterfly08_s.jpg
 
The flower I don't know, but I suspect that a lot of the locals who display these at their homes and gardens have imported them, possibly without proper clearance. Maybe not this flower, but some of them anyway. The plant is growing flat against a wall, and no part sticks out more than an inch from what I saw. I wouldn't even have the photo if it hadn't been for some people walking by, one of whom pointed it out to the other person.

Canon SX720, f3.3, 1/30 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Flower06_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f5.0, 1/50 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Plant00_s.jpg
 
Two images of mockingbirds today. Though not very good quality, I decided to keep them because they were feeding a baby on the ground that had left the nest, but wasn't fully flight-ready. The second image also has an anomaly - my pet birds usually sleep on one foot when perched, but I haven't seen a wild bird who's actively doing anything raise its other foot as this one has.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/30 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Mockingbird00_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/30 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
View attachment 119153
 
The first sunset has some sky, just after the Sun had set. The second image has no sky, just the reflections on the water.

Canon SX720, f5.6, 1/200 handheld, ISO 80.
Sunset00_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/160 handheld, ISO 80.
Sunset00a_s.jpg
 
Fiddler crabs is what these are. The body is about 3/4 inch wide, and fishermen use them for bait if they move fast enough to catch them. Shooting a macro would be impossible since they're very shy and move quickly, so I shot these at full zoom (~1000 mm effective FL) from about 55 feet distance, from the pier down to the mud flat. Still, it was a very heavy crop, so the resolution isn't good.

This crab was moving its claw to the up and down positions alternatively a number of times, as though it were digging a hole. I wish it luck, since a tropical storm has moved in over Charleston and is sitting on top of us, without moving all day. It's going to be extra wet in the crab's house.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/100 handheld, ISO 80.
Crab02_s.jpg


Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/100 handheld, ISO 80.
Crab03_s.jpg
 
On the roof of a 2-story building, a Mockingbird surveys the area in the vicinity of its nest, ready to swoop down and ward off unwanted visitors, including hawks many times its size.

Canon SX720, f6.9, 1/500 handheld, ISO 80.
Mockingbird01_s.jpg
 
Here's one that was marginal in quality that I decided to keep anyway. For some reason, the back and tail seems to be in focus more-or-less, but the head and chest not so much. Since the bird was pretty far away, not likely a DOF issue, so there must have been some motion blur. And the crop was too close.

Canon SX-720, f6.9, 1/25 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Cardinal03_s.jpg
 
A very unusual image here - not an accurate color on this 'needlefish' since it was under the water a few inches, but I managed one keeper frame of several bursts I took that was relatively free of distortions.

Canon SX-720, f6.9, 1/125 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
View attachment 119282
 
The sparrow was underexposed, so it looks a little rough after I processed it. The hole is in a stucco column outside of a hotel, and the sparrows build a nest there each year.

The wasp was after my coffee, and I didn't want to get really close, so I had to do a heavy crop on the image, although it could have been less drastic than what I did here.

Canon SX-720, f6.9, 1/100 sec. handheld, ISO 200.
Sparrow55_s.jpg


Canon SX-720, f3.3, 1/800 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Wasp02_s.jpg
 
This cart was quite distant, and so I used the full 960 mm effective zoom to capture it. The final crop was an additional 10 percent, then I resized it down. Since I don't have member access to this upscale golf club, the long zoom gets me in, with a moderate degree of resolution.

Canon SX-720, f6.9, 1/60 sec. handheld, ISO 80.
Mtpleasant_Golf01_s.jpg
 
This is one of those rare times when the head was still but the body was in motion. It's not a DOF focus issue, since the bird was 150 ft distant and the aperture was f6.9.

iPhone 6s-plus, Zeiss ExoLens, Cortex Camera App, daylight exposure.
Grackle01_s.jpg
 
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