Shitting birds, for n00bs, using camera

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BetterLekNextTime: Jul 22, 2008; It's all a matter of perspective...; Grimey Drawer

Nice! That's a great gift. They take longer than you'd think to put together.

I actually did two calendars this year, one with images from my local park and the other western landscapes and wildlife. Not all birds but birds are definitely represented. They're both doing pretty well and a couple of local stores even stocked a few!

These might not be the exact edits that are in the calendars, just what I already found on Flickr.

Park Calendar

Wildcat Stellars Jay logo-5089, on Flickr

Owl Palm Silhouette l logo-2833 on Flickr

Western Calendar

Great Gray Owl-0765 on Flickr

Mendocino 2014 308 on Flickr

If any US goons actually want either of the calendars pm me and I'll figure out a discount.

And Atlatl, those are great, particularly the cormorants. I agree, I think the moon looks good as is, but you might try it out and see which you like better.

# ? Dec 9, 2019 17:47

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# ? May 15, 2024 01:18

DorianGravy: Sep 12, 2007

Very cool. I especially like the owl on palm fronds.

Who did you use to print the calendars? I didn't see anything particularly cheap this year, and settled for $16/calendar over at Nations Photo Lab, which is more than I wanted to spend but I like the quality. On your calendar, I like how you use some of the blank squares to add extra photos/descriptions. Did you have to fit those manually, or was it easy?

# ? Dec 10, 2019 03:57

BetterLekNextTime: Jul 22, 2008; It's all a matter of perspective...; Grimey Drawer

I've used Smartpress. They have a pretty large minimum order (50) but the price per calendar is a lot lower. I think this year they were around $7 per calendar for 200 (100 each of two designs with the same specs and number of pages), and that's with 4 extra pages for some 2019 and 2021 months plus some "about the artist" pages, a hard proof they mail (optional but definitely a good idea if you are ordering 200!), and individually wrapped calendars. There was a 10% discount promo going. All three calendars� one 2019 design and two 2020 designs� have come out really nice. The only quibble has been I'd definitely say they don't overdo it on the packing materials and last year I had a few with slightly dinged up corners.

I looked around a bit last year but I don't think I found anything that was really cheap for small quantity saddle stitch. Spiral bound is way cheaper. Costco Photo is always a good option if you have a membership or know someone who does.

I ended up doing the layout in InDesign and then uploading a .pdf. Smartpress provides a template that they release sometime around the middle of the year, also a .pdf template although I'm not sure which software you would edit that in� acrobat?. You can send them your own .pdf but you'd have to put in your own production marks.

For those inset boxes it's a matter of making a frame and getting the edges to snap perfectly to the date box grid. Kind of fiddly but not too bad. I ended up just using .jpgs for the photos and InDesign seemed to handle the color conversion pretty well.

# ? Dec 10, 2019 06:17

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

i cant believe ive been loving betrayed like this

# ? Dec 12, 2019 18:17

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Atlatl posted:

i cant believe ive been loving betrayed like this

Haha, the long con.

# ? Dec 12, 2019 20:02

Clayton Bigsby: Apr 17, 2005

Atlatl posted:

i cant believe ive been loving betrayed like this

It's like a dpreview thread come to life.

# ? Dec 12, 2019 21:06

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

Once again, the need for graphic thread titles with images is apparent.

The mid-coast of New South Wales is a gorgeous landscape, mostly a series of arc-shaped beaches separated by rocky headlands, with walking trails and viewing platforms. I was mostly just taking pictures of waves but a few birds were around, too.

16 May 011 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
Pied Cormorants, low and fast.

16 May 015 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
White-Bellied Sea Eagle, clumsily shot and ineptly converted to B&W to hide the missed focus.

16 May 016 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
Either Little Terns or a couple of Great Crested Terns, I'm not sure.

16 May 019 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
And another Pied Cormorant.

# ? Dec 13, 2019 02:14

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

ExecuDork posted:

White-Bellied Sea Eagle, clumsily shot and ineptly converted to B&W to hide the missed focus.

I think that might be more of shutter speed being too slow. Getting critical focus on bifs is sort of a crapshoot but you probably want to be closer to 1/2000th to get a sharper result. I'm not familiar with pentax or what the noise looks like, but it looks like you have a lot of room to push ISO up to hit that speed.

I've started experimenting with slower shutter speeds for takeoff, as I've been pretty unhappy with how un-dynamic (?) takeoffs looks without any motion blur. This shot is way too busy with the branches and I didn't really leave enough negative space ahead of the woodpecker, but it's sort of what I'm going for. Thoughts?

Also trying to include more of the environment, but I'm not good at landscape and so I'm not too aware of what elements might be distracting or that I need to control, so give me opinions or reading material please

# ? Dec 13, 2019 03:45

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

Atlatl posted:

I think that might be more of shutter speed being too slow. Getting critical focus on bifs is sort of a crapshoot but you probably want to be closer to 1/2000th to get a sharper result. I'm not familiar with pentax or what the noise looks like, but it looks like you have a lot of room to push ISO up to hit that speed.

First, you have some great shots there. I particularly like the woodpecker taking off.

Yeah, shutter speed could be the main issue. I'm always afraid of high ISO because I cut my teeth digitally on a Pentax K10D, which had a maximum ISO of 1600 and it was ugly at anything above 800 (and 800 was pretty grim). My K5 is now getting old - I suspect it's at somewhere between 80K and 90K of shutter actuations, gotta remember to check - but it does OK at up to about 1600 (and maxes out at 52K, which is hilariously noisy, too).

I got a christmas bonus for the first time in my life this year (it's dressed up as some kind of vacation pay, but I think it's real) and this conversation, plus some recent conversations I've had with my wife, are making me think about buying gear for the first time in a long time. There are plenty of other financial considerations, but yeah, maybe I should start looking into Pentax's long glass again...

Regarding landscapes in wildlife shots, yes, that's how I compensate for insufficient reach (reach is always insufficient). A couple of things that I think are important in my own photos: reasonable horizons and limit the out-of-focus foreground elements as much as possible. Blurry foreground tree branches are a particular problem for me. And if there's a water horizon in the background, the first thing I do to the photo is set that to level. Your cardinal shot, for example, has a big branch pointing almost directly at the viewer, in the middle of the shot. It mostly blends into the chaos of all of the other branches but maybe I'm just particularly sensitive to that kind of thing.

# ? Dec 17, 2019 01:37

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

Thanks! Now that you mention it, foreground elements do bother me but I haven't been thinking consciously about them and never considered that as a complaint.

i actually see these four individual birds at least once a week at this point:

ebird is addictive, I carry around a camera with the 100-400 in my backpack all the time now

# ? Dec 17, 2019 01:50

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

# ? Dec 19, 2019 01:08

neckbeard: Jan 25, 2004; Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy...

some Waxwings from this morning

Bohemian Waxwing by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

# ? Dec 23, 2019 04:02

runaway pancake: Dec 13, 2008; by Fluffdaddy; Gravy Boat 2k

Some dumb birbs on ice

# ? Dec 23, 2019 07:55

Raikyn: Feb 22, 2011

Fantail by Marc, on Flickr

# ? Dec 23, 2019 09:11

BetterLekNextTime: Jul 22, 2008; It's all a matter of perspective...; Grimey Drawer

Central Sanitary LoggerheadShrike logo-4818 on Flickr

Krakauer_McNabneyMarsh_Peregrine_fs_logo-4453 on Flickr

Krakauer_McNabneyMarsh_Peregrine-4517 on Flickr

# ? Dec 26, 2019 00:19

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

runaway pancake posted:

ooh nice takeoff

# ? Dec 27, 2019 19:10

Megabound: Oct 20, 2012

# ? Dec 27, 2019 22:37

Birudojin: Oct 7, 2010; WHIRR CLANK

I managed to find one great horned that refused to turn its head towards me (and rotated it around to prevent it) and one snowy that decided to upchuck an owl pellet at me in a sign of what it thought of my presence.

# ? Dec 28, 2019 08:25

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

As usual, this thread is full of absolutely amazing pictures, but this:

Raikyn posted:

is GORGEOUS

# ? Dec 28, 2019 09:06

toggle: Nov 7, 2005

# ? Jan 1, 2020 01:24

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

Re: foreground elements

16 May 030 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
When editing this one, I tried to keep just enough of the bright green grass in front of and behind the Spangled Drongo.

16 May 033 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
And here, I'd like to know how distracting the branches and seed pods around this White-Cheeked Honeyeater are.

# ? Jan 6, 2020 06:13

tk: Dec 10, 2003; Nap Ghost

ExecuDork posted:

Re: foreground elements

16 May 030 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
When editing this one, I tried to keep just enough of the bright green grass in front of and behind the Spangled Drongo.

The composition works on this one, but the bird is really underexposed. At first glance it�s just kind of a black blob. Also think focus is on its tail instead of its head, but it�s so dark that I�m not entirely sure.

quote:

16 May 033 by Martin Brummell, on Flickr
And here, I'd like to know how distracting the branches and seed pods around this White-Cheeked Honeyeater are.

The branches and seed pods around it are fine. The branch running in front of it is less than ideal, but I think it�s the leaves directly behind the bird hurting this one. The tail-feathers show up well because of the contrast with the sky, but there�s little contrast between the bird�s body and the leaves. If you look at the picture in thumbnail view you can barely tell it�s a bird, and that�s how other people are going to first experience the picture.

Similar comment to the above on exposure. The scene overall is exposed well, but the picture is of the bird, not the scene overall.

tk fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Jan 6, 2020

# ? Jan 6, 2020 17:11

Atlatl: Jan 2, 2008; Art thou doubting
your best bro?

toggle posted:

love them wrinkly flappy eye birds

tk posted:

The scene overall is exposed well, but the picture is of the bird, not the scene overall.

Agree with all this, also you definitely just slightly missed focus on both. In the first the focus locked on the grass just behind the bird, and on the second it locked onto the branch that it's sitting on. I gently caress this up all the time and I'm sure others do too, especially shooting into branches or brush, and the main way I deal with it is by using the AF/MF feature for any non-flying bird so that I can make sure that the eyes are in the DOF after AF gets me pretty close.

The easiest way to check for slightly missed focus in post is to compare the sharpness of the eyes or beak or feather detail to the sharpest looking piece of foliage around them. If they foliage is sharper and not in the same plane as the bird, your focus was a little off. You're not going to be able to really see that until you're looking at them on a computer, unfortunately.

It'll take practice but I think it will let you shoot wide open at f/4 (I'm assuming you're shooting the pentax 300 f/4?) and get the bird in focus, which will get your birds to be better exposed.

# ? Jan 6, 2020 18:09

neckbeard: Jan 25, 2004; Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy...

Bald Eagle by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

The ol' grain terminal has been pretty lackluster this winter. We haven't had any Gyrfalcons in a couple years. There's one Prairie Falcon that has hunted there over the past few years that has been spotted, but not with any real regularity. This Bald Eagle is the only real regular there now, but wasn't there long enough to watch it hunt

# ? Jan 6, 2020 18:48

ExecuDork: Feb 25, 2007; We might be fucked, sir.; Fallen Rib

tk posted:

The composition works on this one, but the bird is really underexposed. At first glance it�s just kind of a black blob. Also think focus is on its tail instead of its head, but it�s so dark that I�m not entirely sure.
The branches and seed pods around it are fine. The branch running in front of it is less than ideal, but I think it�s the leaves directly behind the bird hurting this one. The tail-feathers show up well because of the contrast with the sky, but there�s little contrast between the bird�s body and the leaves. If you look at the picture in thumbnail view you can barely tell it�s a bird, and that�s how other people are going to first experience the picture.
Similar comment to the above on exposure. The scene overall is exposed well, but the picture is of the bird, not the scene overall.

Atlatl posted:

Agree with all this, also you definitely just slightly missed focus on both. In the first the focus locked on the grass just behind the bird, and on the second it locked onto the branch that it's sitting on. I gently caress this up all the time and I'm sure others do too, especially shooting into branches or brush, and the main way I deal with it is by using the AF/MF feature for any non-flying bird so that I can make sure that the eyes are in the DOF after AF gets me pretty close.
The easiest way to check for slightly missed focus in post is to compare the sharpness of the eyes or beak or feather detail to the sharpest looking piece of foliage around them. If they foliage is sharper and not in the same plane as the bird, your focus was a little off. You're not going to be able to really see that until you're looking at them on a computer, unfortunately.
It'll take practice but I think it will let you shoot wide open at f/4 (I'm assuming you're shooting the pentax 300 f/4?) and get the bird in focus, which will get your birds to be better exposed.

Thanks to both of you. Yeah, when I uploaded them I sort of thought they were a little dark, but I'm working on my laptop and I've been futzing with brightness settings on every device I own incessantly for the past week so I didn't double-check. And I certainly missed focus, another thing I noticed at the end of editing (when my brain was shutting down and wanted no more hard thinking).
I *wish* I was shooting a Pentax 300/4 - I opened a savings account at my bank last month to start saving up for exactly that lens, plus a new body (most likely a used K-3) - those shots are through my rather crappy but dirt cheap Sigma 100-300 / darkness. I try to never use that lens more open than F/8 because the maximum aperture at 300mm is 6.7 anyways and it's soft soft soft wide open. It is an autofocus lens but my K-5's AF is hopeless through that lens so I always MF it (badly). I think I paid like $75 for it on eBay about a decade ago.
My plan is to buy the camera and lens in July, so in the meantime I need to keep practicing with the gear I've got. Thanks again for the advice!

# ? Jan 7, 2020 05:30

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Honestly I find the best way with birds like that is to use continuous AF with back button focus hold the focus button down and take bursts of as many shots as possible and most likely one or two should be focussed spot on. Trying to check critical focus down a viewfinder before shooting with a small moving subject is difficult and just means you miss shots.

With editing check focus before import, do a few basic adjustments then come back to it after while I tend to come back a few times before I'm happy with the edit, I find brightness a big issue, my main monitor is quite bright so I generally have to check on a few devices before I upload.

# ? Jan 7, 2020 11:30

charliebravo77: Jun 11, 2003

I just bought a ticket to go to a prairie chicken viewing area to watch them 'booming' in April. I can't believe I'm this excited to go watch birds dance and gently caress but here we are.

# ? Jan 7, 2020 18:01

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

charliebravo77 posted:

I just bought a ticket to go to a prairie chicken viewing area to watch them 'booming' in April. I can't believe I'm this excited to go watch birds dance and gently caress but here we are.

I got up at 4am to sit in a freezing hide to watch Grebes dance as a prelude to loving and I'm planning it again this year.. Those Grebes better dance....

# ? Jan 7, 2020 19:50

BetterLekNextTime: Jul 22, 2008; It's all a matter of perspective...; Grimey Drawer

charliebravo77 posted:

I just bought a ticket to go to a prairie chicken viewing area to watch them 'booming' in April. I can't believe I'm this excited to go watch birds dance and gently caress but here we are.

Yessss!!! One of us! One of us!

# ? Jan 7, 2020 21:03

torgeaux: Dec 31, 2004; I serve...

charliebravo77 posted:

I just bought a ticket to go to a prairie chicken viewing area to watch them 'booming' in April. I can't believe I'm this excited to go watch birds dance and gently caress but here we are.

I don't think anyone in this thread wouldn't join you.

# ? Jan 7, 2020 21:07

charliebravo77: Jun 11, 2003

If I get one good photo it'll have been worth the $35 and 4 hour drive.

If anyone else is around the IL/IN area there's two tickets left for the day I'm going.

https://illinoisaudubon.org/field-trip/prairie-chicken-viewing-in-blinds-4-4-2020-photo-friendly/

# ? Jan 9, 2020 00:52

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Finally found me some owls after a year-long dry spell.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 03:56

jarlywarly: Aug 31, 2018

Absolutely gorgeous

# ? Jan 12, 2020 11:54

neckbeard: Jan 25, 2004; Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy...

InternetJunky posted:

Finally found me some owls after a year-long dry spell.

Ha, with the cold snap we've been having I was wondering if you'd be posting some Great Greys. The talons in the second pic, drat...

Enjoy the -30 air temp and -40 windchills. I'm going to head off to Guatemala on Thursday

# ? Jan 12, 2020 16:07

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

neckbeard posted:

Enjoy the -30 air temp and -40 windchills. I'm going to head off to Guatemala on Thursday

I'm probably one of the few people that is happy to see -40 on the forecast. Are you going to Guatemala for work or pleasure? It's a birder's paradise from what I hear.

# ? Jan 12, 2020 19:48

neckbeard: Jan 25, 2004; Oh Bambi, I cried so hard when those hunters shot your mommy...

InternetJunky posted:

I'm probably one of the few people that is happy to see -40 on the forecast. Are you going to Guatemala for work or pleasure? It's a birder's paradise from what I hear.

Vacation this time, I was there for work last July-Sept, racked up enough hotel points to stay there for a bit and flight down there is under $1000 this time of year. Going to Tikal next weekend, and the weekend after probably Atitlan and there's lots of birds around Guatemala City too (just don't wander off into the sketchy areas)

# ? Jan 13, 2020 00:04

Terrifying Effigies: Oct 22, 2008; Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up.

First time I've managed to get half way decent shots of birds in flight - helped that they were largely flying in circles, although only having 20 minutes to shoot before having to jump on a bus really cut down on opportunities.