Reflecting on the trip - learning points

Our trip to Scotland was great fun, and while it seems churlish to moan about the weather (blue skies every day temperature just below 30C), as photographers it did cause us a few issues.  Whereas I had hoped for leaden skies, summits shrouded in mist and cloud, etc etc we had the odd puffy blue cloud instead.  Unfortunately, this meant that during the day we had very flat high contrast scenery with little detail, making for lacklustre shots.  Evenings produced some lovely vistas though.

The trip also provided an opportunity to observe how four very different photographers interpreted the same situations.  This was not just in technique and equipment chosen, but also in enthusiasm for a subject.  I have to confess to being uninspired enough a couple of times that I didn't bother getting out of the car to take a shot as in my opinion, all I would end up with would be an uninteresting image, rendered so by the very strong midday sun.  To note though, my pals that did make the effort made the best of a bad job and got some nice shots.

One of the highlights of the trip was the opportunity to get close up and personal with a nesting pair of wild Ospreys.  This session provided a lot of food for thought in regard of wildlife photography and equipment.

Iphone photo of Osprey nest top of tree left and
Osprey in tree on the right, the little dot towards the top,
not the dot further up thats a Crow.

The picture on the left was taken from my Iphone to "scene set" and also provide the GPS location for where we were.

So you can see things are pretty small (but not as small as at the nearby RSPB reserve which is really far away!

The birds are sitting in trees on a small island and luckily its easy to get down to the waters edge and set up a tripod and chair.

Cameras trained on the Ospreys

So that's exactly what we did as you can see in the following photo.  We were joined by a couple of other chaps.  Notice how two of us are sitting close, that's me and a buddy that is well into wildlife photography.

It gave us a good opportunity to do a little comparison of the kit we were using and the outcomes.

I was using a Canon 7D, a Sigma 120 - 400mm lens and a no brand 2x converter.  My buddy was using a Canon 5D mk 2, Canon 300mm f2.8l lens and a Canon 2x converter.

If we crudely priced these up then I would guess the 300mm lens alone would far outweigh the cost of my entire setup!  but hey lets not dwell on that!.

So we had the same subject, doing the same things, in the same light from the same spot, the only difference, was kit and photographer.  So how did we fare?  Well in terms of zoom I had the advantage, as I started with 400mm at the long end, with 2x converter giving me 800mm and then a sensor crop factor of 1.6 which meant a massive 1280mm! whereas my buddy had just 600mm.  I also I had the advantage of a far higher frame rate of up to 8 frames per second versus 3.9 of the 5D mkII. 

Of course its not all good, at full zoom, the Sigma 120 - 400 has an aperture of f5.6, add the converter and I lose two "stops" so it becomes f11.  That's pretty dark, and as we were photographing birds I wanted a high shutter speed so had no choice to up the ISO, with all the sensor noise that brings.  Needless to say, my pal didn't need as much ISO though he'd too dropped two stops to f5.6.

The other main difference in this setting is mega-pixels.  7D =18mp and 5D = 21.1mp, so he can throw away 3mp of data in a crop and he'll be at my total image size, if I crop in 3mp I'm down to 15mp and much further and the image could get ragged.

So anyway lets look at the images:

Canon 7D, Sigma 120- 400

This is mine, if you view it full size you'll see its really not sharp.

Exif data:1/1250 @f11 and ISO 400, 800mm











5D mk II, Canon 300 f2,8L

This is the 5D version, really nice and sharp.

Exif data: 1/1600 @ f8, ISO 400, 600mm











So there we have it.  The compromises that manufacturers have to make to bring components down to affordable levels do have an impact when situations become more extreme, like the high zoom levels here.  In more normal situations I'd expect the differences to be less stark.  We were blessed with very good light, if it had been overcast I would have really been in trouble.

Time to start saving!!!!

Ironic Heron

I live on the edge of a nature reserve (Paxton Pits), and one nice byproduct of this, aside from the ability to be in the reserve within two mins walking, is that some of the residents make it out and visit our feeders, or fly over  our house (Geese, swans, gulls, Buzzards, Red Kites etc).  The reserve had a good Heronry when we moved here 20 years ago, which to me seems to have been usurped by Cormorants in recent years.

Still, while walking my dog around the reserve there I found a couple of spots where there is a regularly a Heron hunting, unless of course I have my camera with me, which is pretty pointless with the dog as he scares everything within half a mile.  So I’ve been nipping out when I can, several times a week to try and get a pic of a Grey Heron, either hunting or more likely flying away.

So imagine my surprise when my wife  calls me into the garden saying she thinks a Heron has landed on our neighbours roof (yeah right).  Anyway, I pulled myself away from the football and wandered out with my Canon G11.  Amazingly there actually was a Grey Heron, sitting bold as brass on our neighbour’s roof! 

I took a couple of shots then ran in and dug out my 7D and Sigma 120 400mm lens and ran out again.  The bird decided at that point that it had to go, and flew off over my head and away.  I managed to get a few shots off with the 7D but it was all a bit rushed. 

Feeling really lucky to have seen and photographed it, but I bet it’s not hunting when I look for it tomorrow!

7D Pics here

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Taking remote Photography up a notch!!

Following on from my last post and taking the learning that failure delivers, I decided to change the setup around.  Firstly, I managed to get hold of a suitable log to act as a focal point for the feeding birds.  Using a router I made a "tray" in one end and then positioned it with the final shot in mind, so that the background would be as uncluttered as possible.



Upturned log with a "tray" routed into the top.

Of course just sticking the log out would not guarantee any feathered visitors so I filled the tray with live mealworms which did the trick in a matter of minutes!

The idea of the tray rather than just a pile of food was to keep the food below the surface of the log so it looked clean on the photos (that didn't really work as to get to the good stuff they flicked the other food onto top!) and to stop the mealworms from escaping.

My plan then involved placing the Laser at one side of the log, shining across the "tray" to a light sensor on the other side.  I then planned to focus the camera where the beam crossed the tray so if the beam was broken the camera would trigger and take the shot.

However, trying to mount the laser robustly so that its narrow beam bridged the gap and hit a 4mm target proved impossible.  I need to rethink that one, the sensors are tricky over a couple of inches so this gap was nigh on impossible.  So it was back to the microphone!

So technically the setup was the same as before but now I had a better target, better background and knew that I needed to frame the shot better so that I'd get more usable shots.  I put the camera into Shutter Priority at 1600 to ensure that it would freeze motion, set ISO to 800 so that the camera had enough "headroom" to adjust Aperture to give consistent light levels (to compensate for differing light levels as clouds go past the sun etc).  Then sat back and let it run.

This was my favourite shot, you can see the microphone under the birds tail and the scattered food on the top of the log.

I had good shots of a Robin and a Blackbird too.

In the final analysis, yes its an improvement, but theres still a lot more to be done.  The issues I have at the moment is that as sound is used to trigger, there are a lot of images with nothing going on.  Thats because the microphone picks up birdsong, dogs barking, aeroplanes etc etc and snaps away!   It would also be difficult to argue that the setup wasn't obtrusive and thats not good.

A friend wanted to try the setup at his birdbath but the sound of the water bubbling would constantly trigger the camera, and I didn't fancy getting water in the mic either so we need another solution. 

Watch This Space!!

At Last Sharp Pictures!!

I've often felt that the pictures I've taken on my Canon 7D are not always as sharp as they could be.  Its been noticeable in a number of situations and I've put it down to operator error or wrong settings. 

Its been particlulary annoying when going out with others to do wildlife pictures.  Ok perhaps I can't expect to compete with a Canon 5DS Mk II and a 300mm f2.8 L lens, with my 7D and Sigma 120 - 400mm lens but I'm sure I should be able to get sharp(er) shots more of the time.  The Sigma lens is well regarded and I do get the odd sharp shot but not as often as I should.  In some images I can see that the Auto Focus (AF) point is spot on an animals eye for example but the eye is "soft".

One of the things that was bugging me was that certain shots with the subject close to the ground, showed sharp focus in the foreground going soft on the main subject.  After a bit of judicious Googling, I stumbled on a page from Northlight Images which exactly described my problem and how to fix it.

I'll not replicate here the work on the Northlight website, suffice to say that when I tested my camera/lens combination, the sharp point was indeed in front of the AF point.  Using the 7D's "Micro Adjustment" feature I was able to correct this in the "test" scenario.  I've had a quick go "in the field" and things did seem much much better though low light levels and high ISO's meant things were a little soft all the way through.

Hopefully I'll get out in good light in the next couple of days and see a great improvement.

Watch this space!