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Hope it's OK to do two posts in a row Wildcat Canyon RTHA Hunting Series-3499 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon RTHA Hunting Series-3505 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon RTHA Hunting Series-3509 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon RTHA Hunting Series-3513 on Flickr
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Sep 16, 2017 18:14
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| # ? May 16, 2024 07:58 |
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 DSC_5731.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_5724.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_5696.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr
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Sep 16, 2017 18:48
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that blackbird shot is quite nice
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Sep 16, 2017 19:49
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Nice detail. Fart Amplifier posted:
This is tight. I set out this morning to try to find some Black-crested Night-Herons. No luck, but I saw some other stuff:  White-faced Ibises.  Red-winged Blackbird.  Great Blue Heron. The Ibis is a lifer for me, so I'm pretty excited.
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Sep 17, 2017 07:32
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More birds! Wilson's Warbler.  A hummingbird (of some sort).  Bonus: a squirrel who was angry at me. 
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Sep 18, 2017 07:16
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 DSC_6342.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_6325.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_6319.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_6311.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr DSC_6296.jpg by Steven Sarginson, on Flickr
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Sep 23, 2017 22:44
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Wow, those are beautiful. Are you using a strobe or speedlight or something to get that effect?
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Sep 23, 2017 23:05
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Kenshin posted:Wow, those are beautiful. Are you using a strobe or speedlight or something to get that effect? Thanks,. I'm using two wireless strobes (one with a softbox). https://www.adorama.com/fplfx600tb.html and https://www.adorama.com/fplfsl360nk1.html
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Sep 23, 2017 23:14
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Those are great! I feel lame posting my through-a-dirty-window shots now... Backyard Bushtits-3894 on Flickr Backyard Bushtits-3979 on Flickr
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Sep 24, 2017 06:22
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Those are great! I feel lame posting my through-a-dirty-window shots now... I think this is actually great (mostly because of the tones) and if you cropped out those out of focus elements at the top and right it would be even better. e: It looks almost like one of those tiled backgrounds that ties into itself to form a repeating bird thing if you put a bunch together.
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Sep 24, 2017 07:07
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Fart Amplifier posted:Thanks,. I'm using two wireless strobes (one with a softbox). Jesus christ why is stuff in this category so expensive? My wife brought home 3 godox studio flashes from china once, their total price was $100. How much better are the expensive ones? Is this like lenses where a 24-200 lens costs like $300 (my flashes in this metaphor) and a 70-200 F2.8 lens costs $2000 (Fart Amplifier's flashes in this metaphor) ? Ineptitude fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Sep 24, 2017 |
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Sep 24, 2017 20:56
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VelociBacon posted:I think this is actually great (mostly because of the tones) and if you cropped out those out of focus elements at the top and right it would be even better. Thanks- that's what I was going for. Bushtits hang out in flocks but don't usually arrange themselves in interesting ways. Hoping one of these days to find them on a night roost where they all cram together on one branch.  Pt Isabel Black-crowned Night-Heron-4303 on Flickr Pt Isabel Black-crowned Night-Heron-4297 on Flickr Pt Isabel Black-crowned Night-Heron-4311 on Flickr Pt Isabel Black-crowned Night-Heron-4286 on Flickr
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Sep 24, 2017 23:29
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Ineptitude posted:Jesus christ why is stuff in this category so expensive? I am not sure from your post if you're actually aware of this or not, but these Flashpoint strobes are actually Godox rebranded. The reason these are so expensive is that they are battery powered, wireless, have HSS, and support TTL. I'm not sure which ones your wife got from China, though, so I have no way to compare.
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Sep 25, 2017 00:39
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Fart Amplifier posted:
It was more a question of why flashes are so expensive. I have seen items that costs more than a white canon supertele. I understand why big rear end lenses are expensive, all that glass takes a lot of time and precision to make and lenses at that level require incredible tolerances to perform well. Flashes are just some electronics and a lightbulb, how do they (potentially) cost $5000 ?
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Sep 25, 2017 07:55
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Couple of shots with my GH5 and Olympus 40-150 f2.8 (with teleconverter). Not bad, still learning the new setup, but so far I'm happy. 
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Sep 25, 2017 10:53
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Sep 25, 2017 14:39
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Ineptitude posted:Flashes are just some electronics and a lightbulb, how do they (potentially) cost $5000 ? A flash needs to be able to fire a quick burst of light at a consistent color temperature across a wide range of power levels. Then you have to factor in HSS (firing a bunch of flashes at precise timings during one shutter release) over wireless, and yeah things are going to get complicated quickly. At higher power levels you need better cooling and more complicated capacitors. The strobes I linked aren't even considered super consistent (they're reliable enough for most people, maybe). More expensive strobes give better results.
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Sep 25, 2017 17:20
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Went to the Kananaskis and Banff on the weekend, tons of hawks around Okatoks and Black Diamond White-tailed Ptarmigan by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr Red Tailed Hawk by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr Grey Jay by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr Grey Jay by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr
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Sep 25, 2017 23:05
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You had me at grouse! And those jays with the aspen- Beautiful! Pt Isabel Savanah Sparrow-4233 on Flickr Bird with a view-4163 on Flickr Pt Isabel Turkey Vulture-4020 on Flickr
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Sep 26, 2017 05:05
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BetterLekNextTime posted:You had me at grouse! And those jays with the aspen- Beautiful! Oh poo poo... it's probably a Spruce Grouse, they look a lot alike. The trail on the other side of the highway from where I was is called 'Ptarmigan Cirque' so that's why I assumed. The trees are Larches though, not Aspen. They're a pine tree that loses it's needles in the fall. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3170577&pagenumber=407#post476777602 Still working on my ones from Sunday above Moraine Lake, the larches there weren't all covered in snow there.
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Sep 26, 2017 12:59
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I'm really glad I found this thread! I somehow did not know that SA had a photography forum... I've been taking amateur photos of birds and other critters for about a year now, and I definitely need more practice with my camera. I just found the general photography questions thread, so I'll be hitting that up for more information. Anyway, please check out a couple decent photos I've posted elsewhere on the forums. Barred owl  Juvenile red-bellied woodpeckers in my front yard  Northern parula  Prothonotary warbler
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Sep 28, 2017 20:55
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Nice! Love the owl! I don't know if you are looking for critique, but I noticed some of your subjects are a little underexposed (often happens with birds in trees since they can end up with a brighter background, which your meter tries to get right at the cost of your subject). If you notice this before before you shoot, you can overexpose a bit- 2 stops for really bad backlighting, less for moderate like your photos. You can also tackle this in post-processing either by bringing up the exposure of the whole photo, or just the shadows, or some combination of the two. It all depends what you are going for though. Anyway, welcome to the thread!
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Sep 28, 2017 21:37
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Nice! Love the owl! Thank you! I love that owl too. It loves to hang out near a popular fishing spot in that park to steal fish from people. As I said, I'm an amateur and am comfortable saying I don't really know what you're talking about with regards to exposure and meter.  I do appreciate any critique though because it will give me a starting point for research into improving my technique (which right now is honestly just point, focus, shoot). I also have never done any editing of my photos, which is something I would like to learn more about as well.
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Sep 28, 2017 22:13
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I won't do this justice in a short post- if you haven't checked out something like Understanding Exposure or an extended manual for your camera, I'd recommend starting there so you get the basics of exposure. It really helps understand "normal" bird shooting, why it's hard to get good shots of quick birds when there's not much light, and, as you get more comfortable, when you can break the rules for artistic effect. Regarding "metering", your camera has a light meter that has different ways to tell how bright a scene is. Probably by default it is more or less looking at the whole frame, and trying to get the average amount of light to a neutral level i.e. proper exposure. The problem with backlit subjects is that by setting the background to this neutral level, or setting the average between the darker subject and lighter background to this neutral level, the subject can end up darker than is pleasing. The things I mentioned are ways to counteract this if you want the owl to look lighter. There's no one way to edit a photo. I'm by no means a professional but my basic workflow for most bird shots is Shooting (ignoring metering modes, focus modes etc): *Shoot RAW instead of JPEG *Set ISO to something on the high end unless it's super bright (e.g. ISO 1600 or ISO 3200 for my newer camera) *Camera Mode on Aperture Priority (Av)- some people prefer Shutter Priority (Tv) *Set Aperture to the most wide-open f-stop I can get away with- depends on the lens but e.g. my Tamron I typically shoot at f8. With Av mode the camera will choose a shutter speed based on the ISO and f-stop. These steps help get me the highest shutter speed I can get which helps to avoid a blurry photo *If my subject is backlit, I may use exposure compensation to increase exposure. *Focus, compose and shoot. *Repeat 150 times and hope one looks good Post-processing In Adobe Lightroom or similar basic editor: *Crop and straighten if necessary (birds are usually jerks and it's hard to get one to fill the frame like your owl) *Tweak sliders for exposure, contrast, highlights and shadows, and saturation. This is pretty much just experimenting seeing what improves the image. *Sharpening slider- don't overdo it! *Noise reduction slider if I was shooting at 1600/3200 ISO- also don't overdo it! *Lens profile correction- honestly I forget this one sometimes but lightroom has built in corrections for most lenses. *Maybe a little bit of vignette to subtly darken the corners and focus attention on the subject
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Sep 28, 2017 23:04
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What camera and lens are you using Skutter? We may be able to give some additional customized advice based on that as well.
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Sep 28, 2017 23:13
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BetterLekNextTime posted:Awesome info Thank you very much for the effort post! The amount of information about photography is so overwhelming, and a lot of it that I've seen so far isn't very newbie-friendly. This gives me a great starting point, so thank you again. Kenshin posted:What camera and lens are you using Skutter? We may be able to give some additional customized advice based on that as well. My camera is a Nikon D3200 24.2 MP CMOS Digital SLR (I copied the title from the Amazon order). I used the kit lens (a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 Auto Focus-S DX VR NIKKOR Zoom Lens) that came with it for a while, then switched to a Kelda 420-800mm F/8.3-16 manual lens that takes amazing photos but was annoying to use, for me. The current lens I am using is a Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR Lens (also copied from Amazon), which I really love because I can tell it is a lot more versatile, but I do miss the amazing zoom that the manual lens has. It also came with a bunch of fancy lens covers so I can do things like macrophotography or colored filters. I'm definitely getting better, looking back at when I first started taking photos, in terms of composition, patience, setting, etc. It's just those fancy things like "lighting" and "exposure" that I really have no clue about.
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Sep 29, 2017 14:27
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Skutter posted:Kelda 420-800mm F/8.3-16 manual lens I had no idea this lens existed. I looked it up (it's a generic made under various brand names - Opteka Top-Max, Kelda,, etc) and wow, it's super, super cheap for any photo gear, let along a lens with that kind of reach. It's cheap for a reason though, firstly the optics aren't great, lots of chromatic aberation, very soft even at small apertures. And there's no iris. The lens has a fixed aperture at each focal range. f/8.3 is slow enough, I can't imagine trying to get good exposures at f/16 unless the bird is in a studio surrounded by strobes. As for understanding exposure, it's a relatively simple concept once you get your head around what is actually happening. There are three elements to exposure (which is why you'll see it referred to as the 'exposure triangle'). Adjusting any of the three has the same effect to your exposure but does different things to the image. - Aperture is the size of the hole that the light comes through to get to your sensor. A larger aperture means more light. Aperture is given as a fraction (e.g. f/4) so a smaller number represents a larger hole (because 1/4 is bigger than 1/8). You probably noticed that the aperture numbers on your lenses aren't usually nice round numbers. Instead they are numbers like 6.3 or 5.6. That's because the numbers are calculated for each of those stops to be exactly double the area of the next smallest and half the area of the next largest. Because the aperture is a circle, the area is calculated using π^2 which is why you get weird looking numbers. Changing the aperture affects the amount of the picture that will be in focus. A large aperture (small number) will have a very thin slice of the image in focus, while a small aperture (large number) lets you get more of the image in focus. Having a narrow area of focus (called 'depth of field') is great for portraits and for birds because it lets you get the subject in focus but make the background blurry. Usually for landscape photos, you want to get as much of the image as possible in focus so you would use a smaller aperture. - Shutterspeed is simply the length of time that the shutter is open for. Obviously the longer it's open, the more light can come in. Just like with aperture, each full step setting is double or half the next one. With digital cameras, you can set speeds that are between those full steps, but older mechanical cameras had fixed settings - 1/125, 1/250, 1/500, etc. Shutterspeed affects how movement is captured. A slower speed will blur movement and a faster one will freeze it. - ISO is the sensitivity of your sensor to light. The higher the number, the more sensitive. Again, a full step is half or double the next and, again, with digital cameras you can often set partial steps. But basically if you double or halve the ISO, you get double or half the light. With higher ISO, you can shoot faster and/or with smaller apertures but you also get more noise in your images. With modern digital cameras, you can safely shoot up to about 1600 even with entry level bodies before you start to get appreciable noise,. At ISO 200 or below, there should be no noise a all. So, you can see that each of those settings affect exposure in the same way, even though they have different effects on the image. If your camera says you are properly exposed at ISO 400, 1/200s shutterspeed and f/8. then you can change any of those settings and move one or both of the other two by the same net amount in the opposite direction and still have a correct exposure. For example if you opened up your aperture one stop to f/6.3 (letting in twice as much light) , you could halve the shutterspeed (to 1/400) or halve the ISO (to 200) and keep the same exposure. If you opened the aperture two stops instead, you could move one of the others two places or move both one step. It's worth setting your camera to Manual for an afternoon to play with those three settings, see how they affect the image, and specifically for you to see what level of ISO provides acceptable amounts of noise. There's also this really helpful interactive site that lets you play around with the settings in a virtual camera and see how they change the image that you capture.
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Sep 29, 2017 19:14
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After surviving Hurricane Irma, I've gone and taken more bird photos... Macaw  Young African crown crane  Birds  Bird  DucksRegarding exposure: For animals I usually set it to 1/500 shutter priority with auto ISO. I may adjust the shutter speed down if the animal is slower/stationary but for birds I find 1/500 is the minimum. The shutter priority will then automatically get my aperture wide open* for the best "portrait" style shots and the auto-ISO is usually good enough that I don't need to worry about it (or can fix with some noise reduction in lightroom). Manual mode is good for learning with some fixed subjects at home but when your subject is wild animals let your camera manage as much as possible automatically so you can focus on getting the shot off before it leaves. *99% of the time. If you are shooting in brilliant sunlight you might not get the biggest aperture but even here in Florida I don't have that issue very often. Zero One fucked around with this message at 16:52 on Sep 30, 2017 |
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Sep 30, 2017 15:58
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The leaves are off the trees here which means the Long-eared and Saw-whet Owls are on the move south. I joined some owl banders Saturday night and we caught a couple of LEOs. The previous night they caught 19 in total. I've never seen either of these before -- they are stunning. Skutter posted:
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Oct 2, 2017 03:42
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InternetJunky posted:
Bottom is a Nicobar pigeon from India.
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Oct 2, 2017 18:57
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 Wildcat Canyon Acorn Woodpecker-4993 on Flickr coops or not-4745 on Flickr ACWO leaving with acorn-4963 on Flickr
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Oct 4, 2017 06:32
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 Black Swan F0597 by Serapis, on Flickr Goose F0615 by Serapis, on Flickr
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Oct 8, 2017 20:35
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 Wildcat Canyon Downy on Fruit-5365 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon RBSA-5390 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon Western Tanager-5381 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon band-tailed pigeon-5038 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon Foxy-5210 on Flickr
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Oct 9, 2017 16:56
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InternetJunky posted:The leaves are off the trees here which means the Long-eared and Saw-whet Owls are on the move south. I joined some owl banders Saturday night and we caught a couple of LEOs. The previous night they caught 19 in total. Those eyes! I went to the Grand Canyon this weekend.  Red-breasted Nuthatch. Look at those claws.  Common Ravens. Pairs of Ravens were occasionally swooping with each other, like they were playing.  A Red Crossbill. Check out that beak!
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Oct 10, 2017 05:05
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Crossbills are so neat. Lovely photos, lately. Thanks everyone who shared!
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Oct 10, 2017 17:14
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 Wildcat Canyon Flicker-5586 on Flickr Wildcat Canyon Great-horned-5436 on Flickr Backyard Bushtit-5281 on Flickr Backyard Bushtit-5291 on FlickrOh, and Dorian Gravy, I think your ravens may be a crow harassing a raven. Love all three of those pics!
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Oct 12, 2017 05:20
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 Nicobar pigeon
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Oct 22, 2017 04:27
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Wonderful colors! Mountain Chickadee.   Red-tailed Hawk. 
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Oct 29, 2017 20:37
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 Wildcat Red-tailed Hawk-5935 on Flickr Wildcat Red-tailed Hawk-5965 on Flickr
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Nov 2, 2017 21:14
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Had a really nice time with some shorebirds on Friday. Mostly Stilts-6734 on Flickr Make room-6855 on Flickr Godwits-7017 on Flickr Marbled Godwit-7164 on Flickr Willet Lineup-7077 on Flickr
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Nov 5, 2017 19:31
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