Monthly Archives: November 2011
11/10/2011: Not great images of a great bird!
My first day in the Rio Grande Valley was uncharacteristically completely overcast with intermittent rain. Not great weather for photographing birds…and especially limiting for using a Point and Shoot with a spotting scope. High ISO performance has improved on the P&S in the past year, but the light levels at Estero Llano Grande State Park were so low that IS0 800 was just barely getting the job done.
Despite that, I was delighted to find a cooperative Green Kingfisher working one of the deep ditches along the trails at Estero Llano Grande. The Green Kingfisher is my co-favorite bird, along with the American Kestrel. There is something about the tiny Green Kingfisher that just tickles my fancy. So small. So unlikely from an aerodynamic standpoint (how does it propel that massive beak through the air in level flight?). So green. Especially the male, with its contrasting rufous breast band. And it is so active. It perches about 3-4 feet over the water and waits…but its attention span is as small as it is. If nothing shows in the water, it is off to another perch within moments. It flies low, direct, and very fast…like a winged dart with that long sharp beak. Generally you can not get very close either. It seems particularly sensitive to human presence.
Shooting with the Canon SD100HS behind the 15-56x Vario eyepiece on a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope at equivalent fields of view of between 1600mm and 3500mm, even pushing the ISO to 800 was only giving me exposures in the 1/40th second range…far too slow for critically sharp images at those magnifications. I did not have high hopes for the results, but I got a few keepers…especially considering the bird. And, who knows, this may be my only Green Kingfisher for this trip to the Valley, so I have to celebrate it.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. And I had to do some work with the selective saturation tool to eliminate blue shadow lines where the white of the neck meets the green on either side.
11/9/2011: Phoebe. Cape May NJ
Eastern Phoebe is always a common bird in Cape May and most of the North East. They nest in my favorite little stretch of Bridle Path sanctuary in Maine. This one was on the trails behind Cape May Lighthouse State Park.
It was taken with a small Canon SD100HS through the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. Equivalent field of view was in the 1800mm range.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/8/2011: Balancing the Sky.
Sometimes the sky is so big that it dominates the landscape. It takes a foreground full of visual interest and a midground rich in detail to balance it. For me, this shot works. The fine mass of beach grass in the foreground. The details where the creek meets the river. The drift log. Etc. And the contrast between the blue blue sky and the autumn tones of the landscape. It all just works. And yet some will say that it is a picture of nothing…that it lacks a center of focus. To me that just draws me in. I can wander in the image and enjoy it as I would the actual scene.
Canon SX40HS at 24mm equivalent field of view. f4 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/7/2011: Female Green Darner (green variety)
It is Macro Monday on Google+ so I will return to Irvine California for another dragonfly shot. This is a female Green Darner of the green variety (most common…there is a blue variety which I also photographed, but I will save that for another Macro Monday 🙂 This was taken with the Canon SX40HS at full optical zoom plus 2x digital tel-converter for the equivalent field of view of a 1680mm lens…from about 6 feet, handheld. This is a fun camera!
Pulling back a bit to see the whole bug, we have a second shot from the same distance using only the optical zoom for 840mm equivalent.
The Green Darner is one of the largest North American dragonflies and, in my opinion, a stunning bug!
1) f5.8 @ 1/400th @ ISO 100 and 2) f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 100. Program with iContrast. –1/3EV exposure compensation.
Processed for Intensity and Sharpness in Lightroom.
11/6/2011: November Light on Oak Leaves, Happy Sunday!
It is November. In Southern Maine the show of fall maples is long past. People have raked their yards and bagged the leaves, and hopefully they are their way to some composting center. Now we wait for snow.
But there is still a show in town. This is the season of November light and oak leaves. The oaks are slow to turn, tenacious on the trees, and the reds are muted, but before they turn brown (often still on the tree) they go through red to bronze to copper and, when the clear low sun of November lights them, they are, in their own way, as much a wonder as any maple ever hoped to be.
Where they fall in water, the water steeps the tannin out. The leaves go yellow and the water turns tea brown…a rich brew that makes still waters in November highly reflective. Where the leaves lie on the surface they make patterns on a reflected sky.
I especially love the way the light passes through the oak leaves, revealing an inner life, an inner fire, even at the end.
And sometimes you find one almost edge on to the sun, with light on both sides, illuminating unsuspected contours.
November light on oak leaves.
Canon SX40HS. All of these are medium to long zoom shots, to frame the leaves against an out of focus background, in Program with iContrast. ISOs range is from 125 on the lighter leaves to 320 on the last dark leaf, but with the Canon I just let it do its own exposure thing. Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
I don’t think there is much more to say for the Sunday thought. Except maybe: I hope when I am near my end, to be as tenacious as the oak leaves, and that a light as clear as November will be as revealing of my inner life…my inner fire…as this.
11/5/2011: Kinglets Again!
To say Cape May last weekend was crawling with Kinglets would not quite be accurate, but Kinglets were certainly conspicuous in the bushes…well…in the bushes everywhere on the Cape. Yellow-rumped Warblers had them outnumbered, but maybe not by much! It is always a treat to have Kinglets at eye-level and below, where they fall easily under the lens of the camera. I have already published one set of images (Kinglets) taken using the 2x digital converter on the Canon SX40HS for truly intimate views. This is another sequence, taken at the unassisted 840mm full optical zoom setting, which shows the birds more in context of their feeding.
Each of these shots was selected from a burst of 4 or 5 taken when I had the bird in the frame and focused. I have almost as many Kinglet shots on my hard drive as there were Kinglets in Cape May last weekend…but they are all of only 4 different birds 🙂
Canon SX40HS at 840mm equivalent field of view, all at f5.8 @ 1.200th @ ISO 400. Program with iContrast.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/4/2011: Carolina Wren in Cape May
After my last wren gaff (misidentifying a Winter as a House in print!) I am checking this one twice (three times even) but I am pretty confident this is a Carolina Wren…despite the fact that it was making a not familiar sound for a Carolina…and despite the white tips showing on the wing feathers. I assume the feather tips are because the bird was fluffed funny and the call was just one I have not heard, in my very limited experience of Carolinas, before. They don’t get up to Maine so I only see them while traveling. It happens that in the past year I have seen, and photographed, several, but this has been a strange year all around. 🙂
Taken with the Canon SD100HS through the eyepiece of a ZEISS DiaScope 65FL spotting scope. The day was deteriorating fast with heavy cloud cover coming in and a threat of rain, but there was still enough light for 1/100th second at ISO 250, at the equivalent field of view of a 2240mm lens on a full frame DSLR (f6 effective). This is impressive focusing for auto focus on a Point and Shoot.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
And, a snip of video shot with the same setup. On my last Canon I had to fiddle with the control button, but there is a dedicated video button on the 100HS that makes it easy. Hopefully I will remember to hit it more often.
11/3/2011: Catbird, Catbird, calling in a tree.
I was amazed at the number of Catbirds at Magee Marsh this spring, but they are really pretty common anywhere in the east. This bird is at Higgbee Beach in Cape May, in mid-afternoon. Catbirds are another hard-to-photograph-through-the-spotting-scope bird. They are almost always buried in a tangle of brush and branches and pretty constantly on the move. Which is were the second camera comes into play. This bird was just curious enough about what I was doing to sit up look for a few seconds, and I was able to get on him. This is the Canon SX40HS at full optical zoom plus 1.5x digital extender for the equivalent field of view of a 1260mm lens on a full frame DSLR. 1/200th @ f5.8 @ ISO 160…so pretty good light, as the detail in the breast feathers testifies.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/2/2011: Mouse with wings (Winter Wren)
The Winter Wren has always impressed me as a mouse with wings. It scuttles through brush piles like a mouse. It tunnels through standing grass like a mouse. It even, when glimpsed from the coroner of your eye (unfortunately the most common view) looks like a mouse…until it flicks those wings and flies. (Okay it is a little beaky for a mouse, but you get the idea.)
Catching one, as they used to say “on film”…I guess that would be “on sensor” today, is not easy. They are in constant motion. I was delighted then to find one hoping around in a brush pile (typical) by the back pond on trails behind Lighthouse State Park in Cape May. I would never have attempted digiscoping a Winter Wren, but with the long zoom on the Canon SX40HS, wren shots are more possible. Above is at 840mm equivalent optical zoom plus 1.5x digital extender for 1260mm equivalent field of view. f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
Another view of the same bird, this time without the 1.5x digital extender. I might note that I am shooting in continuous mode, at around 3 fps with a fast Class 10 SD card, so these images are selected out of bursts of several shots.
840mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/500th @ ISO 200.
And finally another bird in even more difficult circumstances (for photography).
840mm equivalent, f5.8 @ 1/200th @ ISO 800. Clearly this shot was a challenge for the focus system as well as the exposure system. And the image quality at ISO 800 is impressive. I am having a lot of fun with the Canon SX40HS.
All lightly processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness.
11/1/2011: Fawn, Cape May NJ
I evidently don’t spend enough time, or the right time, in the woods to see many deer. Though I am out birding a lot of days, my deer encounters are rare. But then, that makes every one of them special, and makes the days when they occur.
This fawn was feeding beside the boardwalk in Lighthouse State Park in Cape May, and was relatively unbothered to have me looking at it. As I approached it ambled back deeper into the brush, where it was joined by its mother and another fawn. Mom did not seem much more bothered by me than the fawns were, but she did lead them slowly deeper into the brush until I lost sight. All very leisurely and neighborly…nothing to make a fuss about.
The light was not great. This shot is at 1/80th at ISO 800, but the Canon SX40HS handles the higher ISO very well. f5.8 at about 800mm equivalent field of view.
Processed in Lightroom for Intensity and Sharpness. Some custom color balancing was necessary to get the deer in the shadows the right color (I have another shot taken in full light for reference). Cropped on the right for composition.