Monthly Archives: October 2011
10/31/2011: Song Sparrows in Action
.
One of the best things about using a Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece of a spotting scope is that you can get really really close. And, with today’s best P&S cameras you have fairly fast continuous shooting, which makes capturing action easier than it ever was. This Song Sparrow was actively feeding with a number of its fellows about 25 feet in front of me…never still for a second. I had to catch it in focus and posed enough for a moderate shutter speed to freeze the action. I shot hundreds of frames in continuous mode, at about 4 frames per second, and sorted out the best when I got home.
The camera I am using, the new Canon Digital ELPH SD100HS, also has a burst mode, which fires at 10 fps for 7 frames before writing to the SD card. I find that 10 fps is actually too fast for birds. You end up with what amounts to 7 identical shots…and since they are all taken in less than a second, the digiscoping rig has no chance for vibrations to settle out…so there is no sharpest frame advantage. 4 fps is just fast enough to capture a sequence of action, or a set to select the sharpest frame from. Here is a 4 frame sequence of another Song Sparrow picking grain.
(If you click the image it will open at Wide Eyed In Wonder and you can view it in larger sizes using the size controls at the top of the window.)
Canon Digital ELPH SD100HS behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of about a 1800mm lens on a full frame DSLR, 1/100th to 1/125 second @ ISO 125. f5.9 effective. Programmed Auto with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/30/2011: Weather Coming, Cape May NJ. Happy Sunday!
Cape May on Friday was all atwitter…migrating birds filled the bushes, feeding frantically, in an attempt to get over the Delaware ahead of the storm. There was a Nor’easter coming up the coast, due to hit the Cape by mid-night. Cape May was also atwitter with birders, making the most of the day of good light and light winds to see as many of those birds as possible before retiring (mostly) to hotel rooms to ride out the storm on Saturday. They stayed in Cape May, since Sunday was predicted to be sunny again, and stands (even from where I set this morning still) to be a great day for birding. There should be unusual numbers of birds (even for Cape May in autumn) backed up by the storm which has now passed away to the north.
All that to introduce this image: the leading edge of the weather front coming ashore. You can see the sharp sheer line where the warm moist air pushes up against the cooler, dryer air over the land. You don’t often see the transition that clearly.
I like this image where the sky dominates the land and the line of the storm is reflected in the line of the dunes…both leading away upstage left beyond the buildings of Cape May itself, just visible on the horizon.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view, f5.6 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 200. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And for the Sunday thought: We often think of weather as being something purely temporal…of this earth. The realm of the spirit we think of as eternally peaceful…every day in heaven will be, we think, 74 degrees, with just enough breeze to cool our faces, and just enough puffy clouds in the blue sky to provide visual interest. But I suspect we are wrong. I suspect there are weather fronts in the spirit, and storms. I mean, what would eternity be without weather? The peace of the spirit is an attitude of the heart that is the same no matter the weather. In that sense we get to practice it right here, right now, in this world. We learn to keep our heads and our hearts up in the wind and the rain, the snow and the sleet, as well as on the peek days of blue skies and puffy clouds. We are all atwitter with the birds on Friday in Cape May, feeding our souls on their slightly frantic beauty…and hunkered down processing images and listening to the storm and watching it out our windows on Saturday as the Nor’easter passes. We might even suit up and go out for a while, just for the experience. And I suspect that is all part of our training for eternity.
10/29/2011: Intimate Ruby-crowned Kinglet
Cape May New Jersey during migration is one of magical places in North America where the birds “stack up.” They do it before and after crossing the great lakes at Magee Marsh in Ohio. and they do it before and after crossing Delaware Bay in New Jersey and Delaware. In the fall going south in Cape May (and going north in spring at Magee Marsh) birds spend 24 hours or more “stoking up” before the crossing…feeding so avidly that they pay little or no attention to human beings. You can get close to birds that are, at normal times, very elusive.
Like this Ruby-crowned Kinglet feeding within 6-8 feet of the boradwalk at Lighthouse State Park. Like most of the birds in Cape May in the fall, this bird was moving continuously, feeding and looking for food, so the primary challenge was getting him in the frame. Well filtered light from an overcast sky, along with the excellent high ISO performance of the Canon SX40HS and its super long zoom, yields images so intimate that you can see my reflection in the bird’s eye.
But what I really enjoy about these images is the Kingletness of the bird…the Kingletality that comes through. This is the bird!
Canon SX40HS at 1680mm equivalent field of view (840mm optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-extender). 1) and 2) f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 640. 3) and 4) f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 320. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. (By the way, you are welcome to pixel peep these images on my Wide Eyed in Wonder site by using the size controls across the top of the page. They hold up well through the largest display sizes…but they break down considerably at full resolution (O or Original in the controls). You can see a lot of digital artifacts and “over” processing…necessary to get any image at all from a tiny Point and Shoot sensor at 1680mm equivalent (twice the optical zoom) and in low light. I am not a pixel peeper, and as long as the Canon SX40HS can produce images like these for viewing at normal resolutions, I find its size and flexibility, when compared to a DSLR rig, to be worth the hit in absolute image quality. But that is just me.)
10/28/2011: Fall Yellow-rumped Warblers, Cape May NJ
As I have mentioned, I get to experience most seasons several times each year. Fall color is about gone in Maine (it snowed last night), but I am in Cape May, New Jersey today, and fall color is just about at peak. But Fall in Cape May means warblers, and the end of October means Yellow-rumped Warblers…in such abundance you can not believe. I stopped to take a photo of a pond in the rain and the woods were full of Yellow-rumps. I walked the boardwalk at Lighthouse State Park, and the bushes and scrub pines were full of Yellow-rumps. I stood at a corner of the boardwalk with my scope and camera at the ready and watched 30 or more YRWs feed…probably more as they were moving through pretty fast. It is a pretty amazing show.
Of course what they are all doing in Cape May NJ is stoking up for the Delaware River crossing and the journey south. While I try to catch the warblers posing, most of the time they are actively feeding. Yesterday it was coming on to rain too, so they were especially busy, and the light was pretty dim…high ISO territory.
The first two images are take with a Canon Powershot SD100HS Point and Shoot camera behind the eyepiece on a 65mm ZEISS DiaScope FL spotting scope. The last shot is with the Canon SX40HS at full zoom and 1.5x digital tel-extender.
1) 1680mm equivalent field of view, 1/100th @ ISO 320, f5.9 effective. 2) 1680mm, 1/100th @ ISO 800, f5.9 effective. 3) 1260mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. All in Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/27/2011: Biology Lesson: Green Darners
The mating wheel of the Green Darner Dragonfly.
Which leads inevitably to this: the female depositing eggs, with the male still attached.
San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge, Irvine CA.
Canon SX40HS at 1) 780mm equivalent field of view, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 200, 2) 780mm, f5.8 @ 1/320th @ ISO 200, 3) 840mm plus 1.5 digital tel=extender for 1260mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 250. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/26/2011: The stare of the Kestrel
I worked around this female American Kestrel at San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge in Irvine CA for the better part of 20 minutes. She was very aware of my presence and clearly wondered just what I was doing circling her tree, but she was not worried enough to fly away. I left before she did.
It was miserable light for photography. The bird was on a bare branch against a relatively bright foggy sky (the famous CA Marine Layer), but I had to try. My best shots are at relatively high power, where the bird filled more of the frame, but all required processing for edge flare and purple shadows. Small digital sensors really strain with backlight…and of course, under the Marine Layer, there was not as much light as I might have liked…the ISO values were elevated…and that seems to compound the flare and purple problem.
Still, I got a few keepers. And it is a Kestrel. One of my two favorite birds (the other is the Green Kingfisher). Any encounter with a Kestrel is worth memorializing.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL. Program. 1) 4000mm equivalent field of view, 1/125th @ ISO 320. f11 effective. 2) 2000mm equivalent, 1/200th @ ISO 160, f5.5 effective. 3) 4000mm equivalent, 1/125th @ ISO 180, f11 effective. (The exposure varied quite a bit shot to shot at the highest power, depending on the position of the bird in the frame. I had to equalize brightness in Lightroom.)
Processed for Clarity and Sharpness in Lightroom. 3) received considerable fill light and brightening to bring up the exposure.
10/25/2011: Coy. Great Blue Heron
Great Blue Herons are actually easier to photograph when hunting than when preening. When hunting they freeze for moments at a time, waiting perfectly still for a glimpse of prey below the surface of the water. When preening they are in constant motion. Still, you take what you can get. This bird was preening in one of the far back ponds at San Joaquin National Wildlife Refuge in Irvine CA last week while I was setting up for the ZEISS / Sea and Sage Audubon Point & Shoot for Wildlife workshop. The light was subdued…fog in the air and a heavy Marine Layer (fog) above to filter the sun.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the 15-56x Vario Eyepiece on the ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope for the equivalent field of view of a 3000mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/200th @ ISO 160. f8 effective, limited by the scope.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
10/24/2011: Another Green Darner Tel-macro
Like I said a few days ago, the Green Darners are out in force in Orange County California. Here is another telephoto macro. This individual female had green where the previous female was mostly turquoise. I do not yet know enough about dragonflies yet to know what makes the difference.
Canon SX40HS at 840mm optical equivalent field of view plus 2x digital tel-extender for 1680mm equivalent. f5.8 @ 1/320th @ ISO 160. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
10/23/2011: Egret in Filtered Light. Happy Sunday
Happy Sunday! I am in California for a few days, doing a Point and Shoot for Wildlife workshop at Sea and Sage Audubon, so I spent the morning on Friday exploring likely places for shooting at San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary, where Sea and Sage are headquartered. San Joaquin is one of those rare city bound NWRs, sitting between Irvine, Costa Mesa, and Laguna Beach. You can see the city around you from any point on the refuge.
San Joaquin is also well under the Marine Layer in the morning, so most of my explore was done in light fog under a completely featureless overcast (denser fog). To say that the light was well filtered is understatement. The light was as near to non-directional as is possible in nature. (The environmental image above was taken near noon, when the Marine Layer had finally burned off.) This is less than ideal when shooting birds at a distance, and near disaster when shooting against the sky, but for big white birds on the ground and fairly close it is actually pretty much ideal. This soft light is the only kind of light that really brings out the more subtle modeling in an Egret while maintaining a natural look to the surroundings.
Nikon Coolpix P300 behind the Vario eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL for the equivalent field of view of a 1400mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/800th @ ISO 160. f4.5 effective (limited by the camera). Program.
Processed in Lightroom for Clarity and Sharpness.
(Environmental shot at 24mm on the Canon SX40HS.)
And for the Sunday thought: we sometimes think life would be better if all the days were sunny…Southern California sunny…but even living in paradise, it can take a day of foggy air and and soft, filtered light to being out the more subtle details that we might otherwise miss. True for the photographer who is perhaps hypersensitive to the light…and true for anyone with eyes. True in what passes for normal life, and true in the life of the spirit. Sometimes it takes those spiritual fogs…those spiritual Marine Layers closing the spiritual sky and filtering the light…to let us see the more subtle details close to us.
10/22/2011: Female Green Darner, Irvine CA
I believe this is a female Green Darner Dragonfly. Green Darners were patrolling the pond edges and paths at the San Joaquin Wildlife Sanctuary in Irvine California in great numbers…and unlike the Green Darners I tried to photograph in Ohio and Maine, these were actually lighting on occasion and still long enough for me to get some shots.
This shot is pretty amazing to me. It is the Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent with 2x digital tel-extender engaged, for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens on a full frame DSLR…handheld at about 4.5 feet. f5.8 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Talk about your telephoto macro! Totally impressive!
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.