Shitting birds, for n00bs, using camera

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InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

neckbeard posted:

Thanks, Don was saying he saw you out on Friday or Saturday. I think I might try heading up north for Great Greys next weekend

If you're going for owls next weekend let me know. Two cars looking for them is a lot more efficient. Also, we have a new spot for some greys (and hawk owls) if the usual area is empty.

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 16:42

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 16:39

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Current problem -- which picture do I pick for printing?

# ¿ Feb 12, 2018 23:47

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Thanks for the feedback.

Kenshin posted:

This one. The takeoff from the wooden fencepost grounds the image and gives us a reference point as to what is occurring rather than "owl in flight"

BetterLekNextTime posted:

e: I agree with Kenshin re: picking an owl photo. I'd put the first one as a close second. They are all beyond great but I think the first two check more boxes for me.

Yeah, the first one stuck out at me too...

President Beep posted:

I like this one the most. Seeing both wings makes the bird look more three dimensional to me. Not quite so perfectly side on.

Hmmm, good point and I agree...

Pablo Bluth posted:

I love this one.

Well poo poo

I guess it's a good problem to have.

VelociBacon posted:

Am I really the rear end in a top hat who has to post after an Internet Junky dump, gently caress.

Went to a new place today - not a lot of birds but they were pretty close so that's cool. Not sure what the black bird is (a blackbird?).

Just trying some photo compositing.

Sorry! There's a narrow window mid-Jan - Feb where the owls are plentiful, so I end up with a ton to post.

I like the composite idea. Given that the birds are overlapping a bit did you cut/paste them manually or is there some software that is capable of overlapping them like this? Also, cool tri-coloured blackbird. That's a new one for me.

# ¿ Feb 13, 2018 02:45

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

BetterLekNextTime posted:

So on a scale of 1 to gouge my eyes out, how over processed are these?

Briones Lego-3595 on Flickr

Briones Lego-3628 on Flickr

Briones Lego-3638 on Flickr

The only thing that really stands out to me is in the darker parts of your background where it looks like noise reduction has created some unpleasant artifacts. However, I'm probably the wrong person to be listening to since I'm usually guilty of over-processing my photos as well. I like the first two, especially the second given your choice of crop.

# ¿ Feb 18, 2018 16:11

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

neckbeard posted:

Found a Great Grey Owl on my first attempt looking for one. Weather was weird this afternoon, sun, then snow, then sun, then wind blowing snow to almost whiteout conditions in some spots, these are from a 45ish minute span. Didn't get to see it hunt, it retreated back into the forest away from the road, then I spent 3 hours driving around looking for more to no avail

Great Grey Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

Great Grey Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

Great Grey Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

Great Grey Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

Great job finding one. I think the wind drove them back into the trees for shelter today. Great shots, but that first one is especially fantastic. It's super rare to get them with some pine trees as the background, and to have it snowing as well while on a natural perch makes me pretty jealous.

# ¿ Feb 19, 2018 03:18

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

President Beep posted:

That is an awesome picture.

Echoing this.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2018 15:22

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

So I think I may have taken my favourite owl photo yet:

# ¿ Mar 5, 2018 20:13

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

President Beep posted:

I really can�t wait for the warmer weather, and hopefully some sunshine with it, to get here.

Warmer weather is a mixed blessing for me. On one hand I'm not slowly dying while I take pictures, on the other hand -- no owls. I've been going out as often as possible since this has been a great year for Great Greys. Here's a mix from last weekend and today:

toggle posted:

Apparently there is such a thing as a photo being "too sharp".

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 22:49

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

President Beep posted:

Truly awesome. That pure white snow backdrop almost gives this a studio feel. You may have shared this before, but how do you go about finding owls so �easily�? I never see them when I�m out and about.

Thanks. As for finding owls, "easy" isn't a good word to use. For species like Great Greys, once you find an area where there are a few around (check ebird for this) then it's just hours of driving to hopefully luck out and find them when they are out hunting. Today for example I drove around 400km and found one. Luckily he was happy to let me shoot him while he went about his business, but just as often they piss off just as you get all setup and ready to shoot.

For other owls it basically varies from species to species. A lot of them are truly nocturnal so it's really difficult. Around here I can go out when the temperature gets crazy cold (-30 and below) and find those nocturnal owls sometimes during the day, otherwise I'd never see them.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2018 23:28

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Ineptitude posted:

I recently bought a Sony A7R3, after helping my father do research on it and realizing what i was missing out on by using a DSLR. I had previously discounted mirrorless cameras as not being fully developed yet and never really looked into them much.

Boy oh boy it is so much fun to use, lots of nice features due to Sony really pushing the specs (that aren't necessarily due to it being mirrorless) as well as bunch of "mirrorless only" features which are so convenient. EYE-AF is absolutely amazing. It works well with most of my canon lenses (Sigma MC-11 adapter) except my 300 F2.8...

I went birding yesterday, after more or less having decided to keep the camera (and sell my 5D4) and decided to photograph some birds to sort of confirm that that too wouldn't be a problem but instead i was met with an hour of autofocus hunting; as in not landing autofocus at all. Only the centre few AF spots would be able to land AF, (and incredibly snappy at that, surprisingly) but as soon as i moved the AF spot a little outside of the centre the lens would keep hunting in and out and never landing focus. This was with the 300 F2.8 IS II, both with and without teleconverters.

Now i have no idea what to do. I have really fallen in love with the camera, to the point that i was seriously considering selling all my Canon stuff and going for Sony, however Sony has no good super tele options, the closest being a 100-400 F5.6..
I don't do birds/wildlife often but not being able to do it at all is going to suck. The 300 is my favorite lens. It is my only real option for birds but it is also a spectacular outdoor portrait lens. Out of my top 10 favorite photos the 300 has take 8 of them (none of which are birds)

I know there is a Sony A-mount 300, but changing all my gear out and still have to use an adapter is a hard sell.

I'm really glad you posted this because I was actually considering a jump to Sony as well (a9 most likely). Strangely enough, I could not find any videos showing a Sony working with a Canon telephoto. There's a few videos on adaptor performance when using different Canon lenses, but nothing over 70mm that I could find. Say what you want about Canon, but their super-telephotos are flawless and Sony has nothing at all to compare against them. I'm not really someone who has to have the newest and greatest all the time, but the 1DX I'm currently shooting with is going to need a replacement soon and the features Sony are offering are currently putting Canon to shame.

If it's not going to work with my super-telephotos then forget it though. In your case, since you use the 300 for outdoor portraits more than wildlife you might be able to get away using the lens with the adaptor, couldn't you? Do you see any image problems with the adaptor? I know in some reviews the image edge was garbage with certain adaptors.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2018 14:24

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Pablo Bluth posted:

expect you sell a kidney...

Thankfully I have a spare.

# ¿ Mar 12, 2018 16:05

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Ineptitude posted:

The biggest difference/uniqueness with the A9 is that it does not have rolling shutter if you use the electronic shutter, so for a dedicated birder (particularly bird in flight, where rolling shutter mostly applies) that do not want to disturb the wildlife the A9 is probably the go-to camera. I was surprised how loud the mechanical shutter on my A7RIII actually is, its not that different from my 5DIV.

If you need the shots per second you currently have i'd go for the A9

Yeah, 20 FPS and completely silent shutter are two features that are just too incredible. So much of my work is action shots (birds in flight, etc), and since I sell my work 20 FPS gives me double the chance to get that perfect pose. All it takes is a few times getting "the" shot due to 20 FPS versus 10 FPS to justify the price of the body.

And silent shot for wildlife shooting is pretty valuable. Even if your shutter doesn't spook your subject, it still puts them on alert usually and you lose that natural behaviour.

quote:

I have been out with my supertele a couple of more times now and the results aren't good. I tried a couple of the other available autofocus methods (only flexible spot, center spot and center zone is available with an adapter) and my initial conclusion still holds true, AF keeps hunting if you aren't in the center of the frame and even that very few shots do land focus.
If changing your super-telephotos is not an option then stick with your 1DX for the time being. I'd totally rent the A9 for a week though just to try it out, it might help to have 300 more AF spots and/or it might have faster AF the same way the 1DX-series do (?).

I shoot 99% with centre-point AF anyway, but I don't think I could accept any slowdown in the AF. Even though I'm shooting with an older 1DX the AF on that is so crazy that it feels like cheating.

quote:

My prediction is that if Sony keeps this development pace up then the next generation (May 2019 for A9II, October 2019 for A7RIIII) will have EYE-AF for WILDLIFE and there will be a mad scramble for all bird/wildlife photogs to dump their CaNikon gear and get Sony gear.

If Sony puts out a A9II with EYE-AF for wildlife and accompanies it with a 500mm f/4 I will switch, and I know of ton of other wildlife shooters that would switch as well. Canon better be working overtime to come up with a comparable offering (or something similarly killer, like the 600mm DO that was teased a few years ago).

# ¿ Mar 15, 2018 15:43

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

InternetJunky posted:

It's super rare to get them with some pine trees as the background

Quoting my old comment on Neckbeard's Great Grey Owl photo because ever since I said that I've been finding Great Greys in pine trees.

# ¿ Mar 16, 2018 15:42

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I tried a photo merge from a recent shoot (pay no attention to the top right or bottom left please):

President Beep posted:

I really hope you had to climb to the top of the adjacent tree to get this shot.

I would like to say I'm hardcore enough to climb a tree for a shot like this, but the truth is the owls make it easy by perching in very small trees that are in ditches so they're practically eye level to you.

President Beep posted:

Finally, things are starting to warm up around here. The robins were out in full force the other day.

I always look forward to spring migration, but it's snowing like mad right now up here so I think I'll have to wait a while. The weird thing is that there's a good population of robins that don't even migrate south any more in my area. They've learned to fish minnows out of the local pond in a warm spot where the ice doesn't form.

# ¿ Mar 18, 2018 17:50

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

This thread is going quiet again so time for an owl dump.

Someone IDed the yellow stain on this Great-Horned Owl as skunk spray which I thought was pretty cool

DJExile posted:

BRW21006 by Ben Wilcox, on Flickr

BRW20620 by Ben Wilcox, on Flickr

BRW20747 by Ben Wilcox, on Flickr

BRW20825 by Ben Wilcox, on Flickr

Please post more from Africa, these are great although you might want to fix exposure as they are pretty dark (at least on my semi-calibrated monitor).

BetterLekNextTime posted:

Breaking in the new camera.

How do you find the 7D2 so far?

Olds posted:

Caught Napping by Ron Lee, on Flickr

I quite like this one. The contrast between the blue and browns is great.

# ¿ Apr 2, 2018 16:59

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

PREYING MANTITS posted:

I love how the defense mechanism of the turkey vulture is to projectile vomit on whatever is disturbing it. My spirit animal?

Do you also poo poo on your legs to stay cool?

Great shot. I don't think I've ever seen those white sections on their face before -- are those feathers or coloured skin?

# ¿ Apr 26, 2018 01:28

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Finally got a chance to go out and do normal birding yesterday. There's 6 White-Faced Ibis that have shown up in my neck of the woods that are causing quite a stir since they are expanding their range in Alberta like crazy right now. A few years ago I had to drive 5 hours south to see them.

BetterLekNextTime posted:

Let's Rock on Flickr

South Tufa Green-tailed Towhee-5048 on Flickr

South Tufa Brewers Sparrow-2 on Flickr

South Tufa Sage Thrasher-2 on Flickr

Tufa Osprey Nest-4594 on Flickr

I am such a sucker for these types of bird photos where a good bit of environment is also visible in the shot. Great stuff!

# ¿ Apr 29, 2018 17:45

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I posted a colour version of this on instagram and it ended up having some weird blue tint that I just couldn't get correct, so I gave up and tried a simple B&W instead that I'm fairly happy with.

American Coot:

EPICAC posted:

I’m looking for recommendations for a camera and lens for birding. My 7D died, and Canon wanted more to fix it than it’s worth. I don’t have much invested in glass, so I’m not really tied to Canon.

If I was starting from scratch I'd be after one of those 150-600 lenses (Tamron or Sigma) and blow my budget on the best of those that I could afford. After that it would be finding a used 7D2 (or whatever the Nikon equivalent to that would be).

DorianGravy posted:

Cool. I'll give that a try. I'm open to any advice, and I'd love to get better. So far, I typically just shoot in "sport" mode, which uses a lower f/stop, higher shutter speed, and quicker frames per second. I feel like I ought to be more hands on, but birds are so quick that I don't want to be experimenting with settings while one is close. How much do you all change settings while shooting?

It was a lovely morning, so I went out and saw a nice variety of birds and heard a lot of chirping. Some of the birds were chasing each other around.

You've got some great shots, especially that heron in flight. When I'm shooting now my settings are getting adjusted all the time, but when I was a little less experienced my default setting would be shutter priority mode at 1/2000 and let the camera do the rest. It's far better to get your subject nicely in focus and frozen in frame, but requiring some fix up in post like noise reduction compared to a perfectly exposed blurry mess because you were in aperture priority and forgot to change it in the excitement.

# ¿ May 6, 2018 19:05

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

EPICAC posted:

You’d go crop over full frame?

I really only know Canon systems, but if your choice was between a used/new 7D2 and whatever you could buy in Canon's full frame lineup for the same price, I would choose the 7D2 every day purely for the AF system and FPS. This is from the perspective of bird photography specifically of course. If you shoot lots of other stuff then all sorts of other factors come into play.

# ¿ May 7, 2018 00:23

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Couple more marsh birds:

BetterLekNextTime posted:

Wildcat Song Sparrow in Mustard-5680 on Flickr

Wildcat Lazuli Bunting in Mustard-6026 on Flickr

Wildcat Song Red-winged Blackbird in Mustard-5748 on Flickr

These are so nice!

# ¿ May 9, 2018 16:04

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

I really dislike fill flash and have stopped using it. There is just something artificial about the lighting that rubs me wrong, plus it's really easy to screw up.

Although once in a while it works out ok:

With fill:

Without fill:

# ¿ May 10, 2018 20:13

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Ok, here's a harder one: fill flash or no fill flash?

(this is how fill flash normally goes for me)

# ¿ May 10, 2018 22:20

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

tiercel posted:

What bird is that?

It's a Blue-Grey Tanager from Costa Rica.

# ¿ May 11, 2018 17:29

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

DorianGravy posted:

I rented a telephoto lens for the week, and for the most part it worked well. However, I occasionally had lens errors, where the lens refused to focus or take a picture. I would have to physically adjust the lens or remove it to make it work again. Is this common? Is there any good solution to it? The camera is a Nikon d5100 and the lens is a Nikkor 200-500mm.

For the most part, the errors didn't cause me to miss anything, except once. At one point, an osprey dove into the pond and caught a fish, then slowly flew directly overhead. The bird filled the entire viewfinder, but a lens error prevented me from taking a picture. For a solid ten seconds, the bird flew slowly overhead, a fish in it's talons, and I was completely unable to take a picture.

Later, an Osprey caught a fish again, and this time I did get a picture. However, it had flown the other direction, so it's small. Still, this is my first Osprey-with-fish shot, so I'm pleased I can add to the the Osprey-with-fish shots on this page. (Also, I'm impressed with the size of the fish.)

Does anyone know what sort of fish that could be? It came from a small pond. It looks like a giant goldfish to me.

Lots of people dump goldfish into ponds and waterways now, and they are flourishing all over the place (with great destruction to local species). Your Osprey definitely has caught one of them.

In regards to the lens problem you describe, sounds a lot like a problem I'm having with my 600mm now. If it happens to me I take the lens off, rub the contacts with my finger, then put it back on the body. This seems to fix it for a while.

# ¿ May 16, 2018 16:23

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

neckbeard posted:

Found this snowy owl 7 minutes before sunset

Snowy Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

Snowy Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

BetterLekNextTime posted:

I found an owl auditioning for a Corona commercial...

Owl Palm Silhouette l logo-2833 on Flickr

These are some fantastic owl shots.

# ¿ Jan 2, 2019 22:23

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Ineptitude posted:

The Sony cameras will be able to do eye-af for animals in an upcoming firmware release (A9, A7III, A7RIII)

Game changing feature if it works.

Unrelated question: how well do 3rd party adaptors work on these Sony bodies for Canon lenses?

# ¿ Jan 17, 2019 18:25

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Atlatl posted:

White Tern and Fish

Hey, how does everyone shoot birds in flight? I'm finding it extremely hard to get the EVF to my face without losing sight of the subject and I feel like I'm relying heavily on this red dot sight, the LCD, and just bursting. I'm shooting small fast birds which probably doesn't help.

This is a skill that just gets better the more you do it. It helps if you can pick out your target as it's coming into range, and then start panning ahead of time so you can pick it up easier when it's in the frame. Zone AF can help pick up the bird quickly, but usually it's not the eye that grabs focus so this isn't the best way to get consistent results.

The smaller birds are pretty difficult, and Terns are just about as hard as they get to track.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2019 01:43

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

Atlatl posted:

I've probably just been trained by looking at photos of birds in harsh bright lighting (like Pablo said). The colors and texture comes out at a distance a little better, but now that I look at things the diffuse cloudy lighting brings out different colors.

I think most of my stuff is coming out underexposed with the ISO in auto, but I probably just need to mess with settings for that.

I just need to look at more BIF pics and keep practicing I guess

If you know you're going to be almost always shooting against the sky then boost your exposure compensation to deal with the underexposing, but of course the second the bird dips into the treeline or something else darker your shots are going to be ruined. My camera body has a few extra buttons on the front, and at one point I had one mapped to switching between +2.0 EV and back again just for this case, but since most of my shooting is in the winter I found I couldn't reliably press that button with mitts on so dropped it, but it might be an option for you.

vonnegutt posted:

- Shows bird's eye
- Shows a behavior (in this case, catching fish)
- Interesting negative space around bird (not just a blob with a head)
- Shows feather detail

What are your personal qualifications for a nice shot?

Bird eye in focus is probably the most critical one imo. After that it completely depends on the bird and behaviour being captured. Your tern shot is great because of a lot of reasons: the fish staring at us is fantastic, the framing of the bird is perfect giving it space in the direction it's flying, and that pastel background works great with the creamy-white bird. The exact same shot with a mallard duck would probably be boring (unless it also had the fish in its mouth).

# ¿ Feb 1, 2019 23:27

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

BetterLekNextTime posted:

Adventures at 6400ISO on Canon...

Wilcat Parking Lot Owl-2995 on Flickr

Actually I'm pretty psyched about this photo. There were owls here yesterday but it was so dark photos were pretty impossible. Took a chance they might stage into the same tree and came back today a lot earlier, and they actually cooperated!

The noise is fine imo. That's a great look and pose, and I like how the owl is framed.

charliebravo77 posted:

Waterbirb:

The measure of a good duck photo is how much duck poop you were covered in after you took your shots, and from the look of it you were belly-down in the stuff to get that angle.

# ¿ Nov 5, 2019 18:42

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

neckbeard posted:

Short Eared Owl by Tyler Huestis, on Flickr

You've been killing it with the owls lately. That's a gorgeous SEO!

Was that around Edmonton?

# ¿ Dec 1, 2019 20:56

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

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

# ¿ Jan 12, 2020 03:56

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

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 16:39

InternetJunky: May 25, 2002

VelociBacon posted:

Just wanted to link this in here and a couple other related threads, really cool image library available. I'm making a bunch of prints.

Thanks for the link. Just to be sure I didn't miss anything, there's no "download all" option here, right? I would love to have this entire collection.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2020 20:27

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > The Dorkroom > Shitting birds, for n00bs, using camera

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