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I did get the Pro version of the Kenko 1.4. For whatever reason the lens is not physically compatible with the Canon tc's. I REALLY like the 70-300L, although this is my only L glass so I don't have much to compare it to. I got it bundled with the 60D this spring when I had a convenient buyer for my T2i + 70-300 IS nonL. It is worlds better than the non-L: super sharp, fast AF and pretty quiet. It is light and easy to hand-hold, also relatively small. Basically a nice walk-around zoom with a bit more reach than the 70-200's and a bit smaller and sharper than the 100-400 (from what I've read). To be honest I might have gotten the 100-400 but they were not included in the deals I was looking at. My main criticisms are that it doesn't come with a tripod mount (and I haven't been able to find one), and, obviously, it is a relatively slow lens. That and the incompatibility with Canon TC's to give it more reach probably rule it out as a moneymaking lens for someone who needs to earn a living with wildlife photos.
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Jun 21, 2011 20:53
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Wish I had a woodpecker nest in my yard  This is from my first evening of testing (finally had time to download).  Not a great photo, but given that it was at ISO 1600, hand-held at 1/30sec and who knows what the AF actually grabbed (and cropped), I'm not too unhappy with it. I also shot some (non-bird) tests today to compare the 70-300L with and without the TC. I can't rule-out that this is something unrelated to the TC and just due to metering a slightly different scene, but it seems like my camera overcompensates for the loss of light, and slightly overexposes when the TC is on compared to the lens only. Not bird pics, but this is one of the tests- a flower on the right side of the frame with AF using the right focus point on my 60D. I then cropped them to be roughly equivalent. With the Kenko Pro 300 1.4x TC (200ISO f8 1/640sec 420mm) uncropped  cropped  No TC just 70-300L (100ISO f5.6 1/1250sec 300mm) uncropped  cropped 
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Jun 24, 2011 22:23
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Parus major = Great Tit (related to chickadees and titmice in North America) Ficedula hypoleuca = Pied Flycatcher Great Tits are one of the model species of field behavioral ecology, so it's really hard not to snigger when you have to teach students about them... The photo is great- you could probably post that in the Critterquest thread and someone could ID the butterfly for you.
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Jul 7, 2011 20:26
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torgeaux posted:Bird ID? And 200mm is definitely too short. Gonna take my 2x teleconverter next time, and accept the loss of sharpness. Smooth-billed Ani- very cool birds. They are in the cuckoo family, but are super social. Multiple pairs share a nest. edit- possibly groove-billed.
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Jul 9, 2011 18:51
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Was it taken in the U.S.? That might help.
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Jul 9, 2011 18:54
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wikipedia says only smooth-billed in Cuba, but i'm not sure I'd take wikipedia as the last word in bird distributions
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Jul 9, 2011 20:08
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CarrotFlowers posted:
Look like female Red-winged Blackbirds. Nice pics!
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Jul 14, 2011 19:25
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Spent all week having the wrong lens on my camera when birds were within range, but finally found an Anna's Hummingbird that kept eating while I switched.
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Jul 16, 2011 07:05
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HookShot posted:
Some kind of Cormorant/Shag, but it's definitely not North American so I don't have a clue.
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Jul 31, 2011 18:37
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InternetJunky posted:Kayaking + photography is such a great combo for bird photography. If you sneak in without much movement the birds tolerate much closer human presence than normal. This is not a crop: Holy crap that's awesome. Can you see your reflection in the loon's eye?
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Oct 23, 2011 17:31
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HookShot posted:
This is fantastic. I love how the detail in the railing mirrors the pattern of feather tips on the starling. I keep blocking out the left edge of the picture- not sure if I would like this better as a square crop or not, to get rid of the dark archway in the top left corner.
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Nov 11, 2011 20:03
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I'm kind of torn- my eye moves really strongly in a triangle from the bird's face, left to the archway, down to the birds feet along the railing, and back up the face. Really dynamic, but at the same time, I don't spend enough time on the bird, and too much time on the background which maybe shouldn't be competing as much. Here's my attempt to salvage a bad pic of a little bird on a gloomy day through a dirty window... 
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Nov 12, 2011 00:07
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Some backyard birds on a mostly dreary weekend...  
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Nov 21, 2011 03:40
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Many lists are run by local Audubon societies, so that is one place to look. You can also try looking around birdingonthe.net for list archives or rare bird alerts. One more place is eBird- a citizen science site. Here's a map of recent sightings. It doesn't look as complete as the links in BoE's post.
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Nov 28, 2011 07:26
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HookShot posted:Crossposting from SAD quote:
I'd imagine it is tough to take a bad photo of alert hooded mergs, but this is really nice. I never paid much attention to the white streaks on the back, but they really come out with the pattern in the water. quote:
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Dec 7, 2011 21:02
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InternetJunky posted:Winter has put a damper on any chance I have of capturing much more than backyard birds so I've gone through and tried to salvage some old shots. goddamn....
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Dec 8, 2011 05:16
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Trambopaline posted:
No weirder than this (nice pic by the way- pheasants are pretty gorgeous birds).  Spent all weekend birding for some Audubon Christmas Bird Counts. Hauled my camera around but didn't get much chance to get any photos, and of those, not many good photos. These were some of the better ones...    
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Dec 19, 2011 22:19
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Either that or "Welcome to Crop-land"
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Dec 20, 2011 06:36
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scottch posted:Other times they are so very co-operative. This guy was more concerned about the crows stealing his breakfast, so let me get real drat close. Of course, the crows being assholes is what allowed me to sneak in tight... Wow, that's a really nice shot. It's not a rough-legged. Definitely a juvenile accipiter, either Sharp-shinned or Coopers. I'm fairly certain it is sharp-shinned, although those two are notoriously hard to tell apart.
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Dec 22, 2011 20:45
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Just looked at your exif- 200mm! That's pretty amazing to get so close.
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Dec 22, 2011 20:53
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BeastOfExmoor posted:I'm going to guess either a female Northern Gosshawk or female Coopers Hawk. Another possibility would be a Sharp-Shinned hawk, but they're only about the a little bigger than a robin so a starling would be pretty big prey for them. I wish they would all kill starlings with no mercy. There is a bit of overlap between small (male) Coops and big (female) Sharpies. I was going by the fairly prominent eyebrow, and the fact the eye looks kind of big (meaning head is kind of small in proportion). I heard about a study out of Golden Gate Raptor Observatory where they caught and banded hawks, then released them with some expert birders nearby to see how they did- they were only about 80% right. And I'm far from an expert.
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Dec 22, 2011 21:08
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 Saw a jay be an rear end in a top hat this weekend- I was at a monarch butterfly wintering refuge and a stellar's jay flew at a branch with a couple hundred butterflies and scared them all. I think it might have grabbed one, but I thought they were supposed to be poisonous so it may have been an rear end in a top hat just for fun.
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Jan 2, 2012 07:36
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Yes, please send some down to California! Do you normally get hummingbirds wintering up there? And how many pounds of seed are your evening grosbeaks going through each day?
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Jan 4, 2012 16:33
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Maybe a juvie? I'm jealous you got to see one so close. One of my favorite birds because my parents had an awesome Charlie Harper print of a bunch of skimmers.
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Jan 18, 2012 05:21
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Dread Head posted:Solved, I have made a new wildlife thread. If anyone feels like it needs a proper OP maybe we can put something together. I feel like it is pretty much the same as the one in this thread. Great- thanks for doing this. I'm happy to have both threads, and will probably cross-post if I have something that fits both the birds (maybe also cross-posting in the macro thread if it is a bug shot). One thing you might add to the OP is to look for the GBS Critterquest threads if you have a crappy pic and just want help identifying the animal in question. But maybe that is already a given for Dorkroom threads.
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Jan 22, 2012 21:07
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My guess on your mystery bird is Black Phoebe. Nice photos (I especially like the ducks).
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Jan 30, 2012 00:24
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Pablo Bluth posted:Word. Look at This bunch.. For a nondescript brown sparrow. I was going to post something along those lines... If those were REAL birders they would have their back to the bald eagle and be scanning the flock of cedar waxwings behind you for one vagrant Bohemian. Or breaking into a sewage treatment plant to look through 8 billion gulls for one rare one.
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Feb 3, 2012 20:37
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without seeing the original and knowing exactly what you did, I kind of feel like I'd rather have some blown out area and a reasonably white bird than turning down the exposure so much that it begins to look dirty. Somehow what must have been warm low-angle light isn't coming across as warm. Maybe it's a white-balance issue? I suck at post processing so I can't give you any more feedback than that.
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Feb 3, 2012 22:47
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Bob Socko posted:It's a good shot. Yeah, it's a bit soft, but my eye is drawn to the wing first, and the clearly-defined feathers help counterbalance any softness around the head. I usually don't photograph gulls because they're so common, therefore I assume everyone will think they're boring. You're getting around that by photographing them doing neat things, and I like it. Almost everything in Hawaii was brought from somewhere else. At least everything close to sea level. Great turkey pics though! There were actually turkeys in Hawaii before they were (re)introduced to California.
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Feb 22, 2012 07:25
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Yeah, that was a nice PBS program. Did you film any of the Anna's Hummingbird courtship footage? I know the folks who did that research. Ducks are cool- that should be fun.
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Feb 25, 2012 01:58
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Are you sure that last one isn't a Northern Cardinal? Great pics though- I love the doves! Hopefully I have more to contribute soon. Just arrived in Wyoming for a couple of months of field work. All I have is a thumbnail sized redpoll so far though.  Common Redpoll
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Feb 28, 2012 05:11
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Dang I wish we'd get some snowy owls! I'm in Wyoming for the next couple of months, it's plenty cold, a little bit snowy, but no freakin' owls. Get ready for another 2 months of grouse pics. Hopefully will get more photos of other wildlife this year.  IMG_1578 - Version 2, on Flickr
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Mar 3, 2012 06:27
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I really like the color in the vulture- nice shot! ^^^^ Also nice ones from the zoo. I have a book that has an almost identical shot to the flamingo. It has begun... Happy to get some snow to cover up the cow pies... I promise I'll try not to post a million of these.  IMG_2175 - Version 2, on Flickr
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Mar 9, 2012 01:14
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Not much else out here right now, so have some more sage-grouse One female in flight  female_in_flight_full_size on Flickr Lots of females (we are in the peak of breeding right now)  IMG_3333 - Version 2 on Flickr A couple of yearling males came over to my blind to practice displaying where they wouldn't get harrassed by the big boys.  IMG_5924 on Flickr  IMG_5925 on Flickr A couple that might be more critter-questy: an eagle leaving the lek before sunrise, and a prairie falcon having some fun.  sunrise eagle on Flickr  Prairie_Falcon_pestering_50 on Flickr On a side note- anyone here use the Flickr uploader in Aperture? I have the worst time with it half the time uploading the original version instead of the crop/processed one.
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Mar 26, 2012 21:01
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Does this count? IMG_6519 on Flickr also a meadowlark, flippin' some poo poo then singing a song about it.  weme_at_cot 2 on Flickr  weme_at_cot 1 on Flickr
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Apr 5, 2012 23:18
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If you took those pics in North America, those are probably Great-tailed Grackles, and not crows. Not sure if any european/asian crows have that irridescence and yellow eyes.
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Apr 7, 2012 17:36
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Magnus Condomus posted:I am bad at birds. Yeah, Austin, TX. On top of Whole Foods. Yeah, great-tailed grackles are pretty common in Texas. Pointier bill, a bit sleeker body than a crow would be, longer tail than a crow, and a little more iridescent. That head-up posture is also pretty typical for grackles (and some other birds in the family). I've never been to Austin, but at least in some of the towns along the Rio Grande, these guys roost together in huge colonies and make the biggest racket. Sounds like you're standing underneath the world's largest Chucky-Cheese.
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Apr 7, 2012 18:10
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Horned larks still one of the few birds out here. Horned_Lark 005 on Flickr weird singing posture  Horned_Lark 004 on Flickr ACTIVATE SUPER FLUFFY  Horned_Lark 003 on Flickr
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Apr 12, 2012 19:45
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More WEME and HOLA wyo_birds 033 on Flickr  wyo_birds 032 on Flickr  wyo_birds 031 on Flickr
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Apr 19, 2012 22:39
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Looks like Spring, but no babies yet. grouse&dandylions 080 on Flickr  arms_crossed_grouse 082 on Flickr  close_thrasher 086 on Flickr  chugwater_hola 085 on Flickr
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May 3, 2012 21:32
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