Posts in Category: PhotoScoped
10/23/2009
Anhinga: Green Cay Wetlands
There were several birds in this tree. A Red-shouldered Hawk at the top. White Ibis lower, and this Anhinga in the lowest branches. And it is such a great tree! You can see from the abundance of white-wash that the birds really really like it. The tree and the background are as important in the image, for me, as the bird itself.
The challenge of the Anhinga is the range of contrast between the silvery white of the wing patterns, through jet black, to the gold of the throat. The fur-like feathers on the upper breast and throat provide a real test for the resolution of your system.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 40x (field of view of a 1600mm lens on a full frame DSLR). 1/380th @ ISO 100. Metered at about f5.0.
Just my basic added Clarity and the Sharpen landscapes preset in Lightroom. Only a touch of Vibrance.
From Green Cay, FL.
10/21/2009
Crick in the Neck: Great Egret
The Great Egret gets its neck into some of the most strange and wonderful convolutions imaginable…or unimaginable…as the case may be. It makes my neck hurt just looking. This fellow was actively feeding below the boardwalk at Green Cay Wetlands in Palm Co. Florida. I got a few shots pulled back to the wide end of the zoom on the Zeiss PhotoScope, and then zoomed in on the head and neck for a series of close-ups. The eye itself is captivating.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 40x (field of view to match a 1600mm lens on a full frame DSLR). 1/210th @ ISO 10o. Metered at approximately f5.6. Programmed auto.
In Lightroom, only my basic added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape preset.
And, for comparison: The big picture.
The Big Picture: Great Egret Feeding
From the Green Cay, FL gallery on WideEyedInWonder.
10/19/2009
Black-bellied Whistling Duck Family
At a place like Green Cay Wetlands in Palm County FL, when you see a group of photographers gathered in one spot, you are well advised to join them. They are working something. On this day the draw was this family of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. It was hard to count, since they were actively feeding and never still, but it looked to be 9 or 10 chicks, clearly of a single hatching, since they were identical in size.
The Zeiss PhotoScope I am testing has a zoom range that provides the same field of view as a 600mm-1800mm zoom on a full frame DSLR. For this shot I was at the wide end of the range.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 600mm equivalent. 1/180th @ ISO 100. Effectively metered at f4.5. (f2.4 physical at the true 93mm focal length).
Cropped from the bottom in Lightroom to improve composition. Added Clarity and just at tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
For comparison here is an image of a single chick taken at the 1800mm end of the zoom on the PhotoScope. I attempted a lot of these…but most were blurred by the rapid motion of the chicks.
Black-bellied Whistling Duck Chick
1/130th at ISO 100. Effective metered f-stop f6.0 (f3.4 physical at the 293mm true focal length of the PhotoScope).
10/15/2009
The Wing!
Great Egret preening. The stretch of that amazing wing, and the birds head reaching under, is what the shot is all about.
Not an easy shot: timing had to be right…but so did exposure. My first shot was correctly exposed for the whole scene, but that left the bird’s white plumage totally blown. I was able to quickly dial down the Exposure Compensation using the PhotoScope’s on screen access to common menu functions, and have time for a second shot. This one is correctly exposed for the bird…catching the full range of whites. Even a tiny bit more exposure and the whites along the back would go to hot, but it left the background, in the original, too dark. It took some work in Lightroom with Fill Light and Exposure curves to achieve an acceptable balance…not ideal background yet, but getting there. Unfortunately the noise in the dark areas of the image made it impossible to bring the background up more. I could selectively reduce noise, but it would take considerable work in this complex shot with masking tools in Photoshop. [actually, see ps. below…]
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at about 1200mm. 1/320th @ ISO 100. Programed auto with -1EV exposure compensation. Approximate effective aperture of f5.0.
Besides the work in Lightroom with Fill Light and Curves mentioned above, added Clarity and Vibrance, and Sharpen landscape. Cropped slightly from the left to improve composition.
From Green Cay, FL.
ps.
Last night I decided to take the image into Photoshop Elements 7.0 and see what more I could do. PE7 has an auto masking tool called magic extractor, designed to cut a foreground object out of its background. Essentially you draw on the background with one color and on the foreground object with another, and the software does an amazingly accurate job of cutting out the background.
If you make a new layer and apply the magic extractor to isolate a foreground object…a bird, as in the image above…you can do anything you want to the base layer, and background, without affecting the bird. In this case I brightened the base layer, applied heavy noise reduction, and then used the smart blur filter on it to smooth the tones even more. Because the bird is safe on a layer above the base layer, none of these changes changed it.
I did select the layer with the bird, and brightened that just slightly.
I then flattened the image (combined layers) and save the resulting image as a new file. This is the edited image. What do you think?
Edited Egret
10/13/2009
Looking At You!
We went back to the pond behind the amphitheater on Jekyll Island for our digiscoping workshop, since, as they say, the pickings were easy there. Lots and lots of immature Yellow-crowned Night Herons perched out in the early sun. I was tucked back in the shade of the trees on the bank, but this youngster must have seen the glint of the light in my objective lens. I certainly saw the glint of light in his eye.
Zeiss PhotoScope at about 1400mm equivalent. 1/130th @ ISO 200. Approximately f5.0. Programed auto.
A touch of Recovery in Lightroom for the feather highlights. Added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset. Cropped from the right for composition.
From Colonial Coast 09.
10/12/2009
- Angel Unaware
- Young Demons
Even though it is, without a doubt, an unjust and inaccurate stereotype combined with some distorted form of anthropomorphism, I could not resist the juxtaposition of these two images from the Disiscoping workshop we did yesterday morning. The first is a Great Egret, preening. The wing, of course, suggests an angel, but the sparkley blue water background does its part too. The second is two Immature Turkey Vultures and a Black Vulture (top with wings spread), very likely cooling and drying in the early sun.
Neither was an easy shot. The light was behind the egret and strongly to the side of the vultures. I used some Exposure Compensation on the Egret (+1EV) to lighten the body of the bird. Center weighted exposure was all that was needed for the vultures. The vultures stood still enough, holding this pose for several moments while I took a number of exposures. The egret, on the other hand, was actively preening and I had only one chance at this wing stretch (as we call this pose in digiscoping circles…because of the challenge of catching it, the wing stretch is kind of a trophy image for most digiscopers).
Both were taken with the Zeiss PhotoScope: egret at about 1400mm equivalent and vultures at 1800mm, @ 1/1050th @ ISO 10o and 1/75th @ ISO 200. Both were taken at the widest aperture of the scope, which would have been approximately F4.7 and F5.6. Programed auto, with Exposure Compensation for the egret.
Both received Clarity, Vibrance, and Sharpening adjustments in Lightroom. The egret was cropped from the right for composition.
From Colonial Coast 09.
10/11/2009
Youngens (Yellow-crowned Night Herons)
Happy Sunday!
Two young Yellow-crowned Night Herons among at least 50 sharing a roost on the pond behind the Jekyll Island amphitheater. I’ve never seen so many Yellow-crowned…I have, in fact, rarely seen so many herons of one kind anywhere.
I was shooting closer birds with the PhotoScope when I saw this pair and zoomed back for double portrait. I like the attitude these guys are displaying and attempted to frame the shot to convey some of the tension in their posture…which was in marked contrast to the rest of the brood, who were in various stages of lounge around the pond.
Zeiss PhotoScope at 1200mm equivalent. 1/35th second at ISO 200 and about f4.7. Programed auto.
In Lightroom I used mild Recovery for feather highlights, moved the blackpoint to the right just slightly, added Clarity and just a small amount of Vibrance, and used the Sharpen landscape preset.
From Colonial Coast 09.
10/10/2009
Northern Cardinal in the South
The Cardinals I have seen in Georgia have not seemed as red as the Cardinals I see in Maine, or in Arizona. This might reflect a real regional variation, or it might be because I only visit Georgia in October, or it might be my imagination. At any rate, this is one of several specimens visiting a feeding station at the Jekyll Island Campground on Jekyll Island Georgia. It was taken in very low light under a solid canopy of heavy foliage, with the new Zeiss PhotoScope (a 15-45x wide-field spotting scope with a sophisticated, fully integrated, 7 mp digital camera…operating as 600 f4 to 1800 f5.6 equivalent telephoto). In this light I set the ISO to 200 and, even so, was only getting shutter speeds in 1/10th to 1/4 second range. In order to get shots where the motion of the bird did not destroy the image I set the camera on series capture, which takes a burst of 5 shots in very rapid sequence with a single push of the shutter release. I should also say that the PhotoScope has a wireless remote, so when you press the shutter release there is no camera motion, and that it has Auto Focus Assist, that adjusts fine focus as you shoot. All of this advanced tech allowed me to get some very satisfying images in a situation that was, at best, marginal for any kind of photography.
This shot was taken at about 1800mm equivalent at 1/4 second @ ISO 200. The aperture would have been about f5.6.
In Lightroom I moved the blackpoint slightly right, added Clarity and just a bit of Vibrance in the Presence panel, and used the Sharpen landscape preset. I also adjusted the white balance slightly, as the Auto Clouds setting I used on the PhotoScope had it just a bit too warm.
From Colonial Coast 09.