Ranganathittu, a beautiful bird sanctuary, en-route Mysore, is a birder’s, a bird photographer’s and any nature enthusiast’s paradise. Being very easible accessible from Bangalore, this place is ideal for a quick weekend getaway.
I used to be a regular at Ranganathittu many years back. Somehow, over the recent past, this place had fallen off my radar! It is not that I had grown out of the place or anything of that sort, just that, amidst the melee of many other things, a plan to visit Ranganathittu never materialised.
A look back at a couple of images from my last trip there, back in 2016! Yes, it had been that long 😅
For sometime now, I had been quite intrigued by the camera gear from the OM system (formerly Olympus), a MFT (Micro Four Thirds) sensor based mirrorless system. I was drawn by the gear’s rugged build quality, compact profile and light weight. I was looking forward to an opportunity to try them out.
Finally got my hands on one in December of 2025.
[Thanks Ravindra & Gokul from OM for all the support]
With OM in hand, I was thinking about a place to visit to test it out and Ranganathittu hit my mind. My good friend Nagesh Murthy sir, agreed to accompany me as well and the plan was in place.
Note: This post is going to be more about my experience of using the new camera system and a look at the results. Detailed review of the gear will be out soon.
The combination that I picked up was the OM1 Mark2 camera body and the M.Zuiko 300mm f/4 IS Pro lens. First time I held this combo, I was amazed at how compact and light it was! Being MFT, the effective focal length of this 300mm lens in Full Frame terms would be 600mm ( basically 2x ). 600mm reach in such a package!, was a big win in my mind.
We landed up at Ranganathittu as early birds do, well ahead of time. While waiting for the ticket counters to open, I suddenly noticed a quick movement among the thickets close to the parking area. It was December, cloudy and early in the morning too, light was still quite low.
From the movement, it was clear in my mind that it was a cat. However my mind was all on leopards, that would be something, greed, I agree 😃
The animal quickly disappeared into the bushes. From a quick estimate of the size that I could gather, I thought a leopard cub perhaps 😉
Slowly moved ahead to notice that it was a cat for sure, but a house cat which had just caught something. A cat, nevertheless, I can take it 😃
OM did a great job with the ISO handling too, This was at ISO 2000 and am quite happy with the results. I was a bit hesitant to go beyond that, but in retrospect I feel that my concern was unwarranted. OM does handle high ISOs pretty well if you know what you are doing and get your basics right.
The ticket counters were open by then and we got in.
Waiting at the deck for our boat to be ready, we noticed that the Spot-billed Pelicans were already up and about.
Couple of Pelicans were scooping up water too. Though I realised that this time of the year was more of an early nesting time for the birds and they were all busy collecting material to build their nests.
With no chicks yet to demand water to drink and the weather being cold as well, the scooping action wasn’t there as much as one would otherwise see in Ranganathittu. I presume there would be more later in the day perhaps, as things get much warmer.
The OM1 Mark2 was fabulous in bird-eye tracking. We hadn’t yet started our boat ride, was still early in the morning and light was low as yet.
Paired with the 300mm prime lens, the focus grabbing was pretty instantaneous and the tracking was spot on. Nearly every image in the sequence was tack sharp. Big thumbs up there for sure. Once again, the ISO handling was good as well.
And being lightweight, the combo caters very well to hand-held shooting, very helpful for tracking birds in flight.
We got on our boat and headed on.
Ranganathittu is truly an amazing place. Lovely, serene ambience, peaceful boat rides and plentiful bird activity around, create wonderful photography opportunities. Damn! how much I missed this place!, should have visited more often.
[A tip: Choose a photography specific boat ride, slightly more expensive than a regular one, but well worth it. And if you can be there on a weekday, even better with lesser crowd]
Pelicans were quite busy landing on the water, collecting fallen tree branches/twigs to carry back and construct their nests.
What massive birds these Pelicans are!
Eurasian Spoonbills were busy with their morning ablutions, having a quick bath and a drink.
Squabbling at times too…, what wonderful hairdo, right 😅
As we moved on, we came by the regular residents of Ranganathittu.
OM definitely handles very well in constricted spaces like a boat. It is easy to manoeuvre owing to its compact form factor and lighter weight. I loved that.
I never got tired of hand-holding this all through the boat ride and was able to get to lower or higher positions as needed without any qualms by leveraging the tilting LCD and wonderful Live View shooting.
Back to the Pelicans. Had a wonderful time with these birds. Wonderful opportunities of them in action.
Some lovely portraits and close ups too…
It wasn’t just the Pelicans which were busy collecting nesting material, Cormorants weren’t to be left behind…
Have to say that I had a wonderful time at Ranganathittu with the OM gear. To be honest, going in, I was a bit skeptical about the quality of the results that might come out of the OM camera combo when compared to a Full Frame. After using it though, I have to admit that I was completely wrong about my trepidations.
Fantastic, tack sharp results. Wonderful handling, so compact and light weight. For a person like me who likes to do hand-held shooting most of the time ( I am too lazy to lug around a tripod ), the OM combo worked great. I felt that I could sling it on me and keep going all day without fatigue.
I agree that it is not all positives alone with the OM. There are a few cons, as does any camera system out there. May be will go deeper into them in my detailed review post. No system is perfect, right. It is about knowing the shortcomings and working around them that fetches the best results.
To summarise in one sentence, I loved the OM gear, might have a convert on hand, let’s see 😉
Look forward to trying the OM setup again at a different location soon.
Hope you enjoyed the post. Please do share your thoughts by dropping in a comment below.
See you on the next one.
No comments yet!