Another in the backyard series with my 500mm f/4.0 lens. An American Goldfinch taking a momentary rest on a weed I hadn’t gotten around to pulling.
Cropped to 50% Nik Dfine and a small amount of Nik Sharpener is all.
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Tags: Avian, Backyard, Birds, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Goldfinch, Nik Filters
Taken with that amazing Canon 500mm f/4.0L lens on the 5DMII. ISO was set to 1250. The only editing done was to use Nik Dfine to clear up the noise. I’m amazed at the bokeh along with the sharpness. Now if I could only hire a sherpa to carry the beastie for me I’d be even happier.
Tags: Avian, Birds, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Juvenile Tree Sparrow, Lincoln, RI
A 500mm f/4.0L lens. It arrived today, a day early, and it is a BEAST. It weighs 9.5 lbs and comes in a hard case (which is apparently a good thing because the box from Canon that was inside the intact box from B&H was all crumpled on one end with the Styrofoam crunched up good inside). The Wimberly head for the tripod comes tomorrow so I hand held it, well, not really hand held it, I’m not up to that – yet – I sat in a chair in the backyard and balanced my elbow on my knee or on the arm of the chair. The birds and squirrels were very cooperative after an initial fly off. This is one of my favorites, just for the color and sharpness, it’s a bit busy for me with that branch in the foreground but he didn’t stay still very long. 50% crop, Dfine and Pro Contrast Nik filters.
Male Cardinal on Branch
Tags: Avian, Backyard, Birds, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Handheld, Lincoln, Northern Cardinal, RI
The full moon as it was setting at 4:45AM, from the parking lot of Nickerson Beach where I met Roman Kurywczak and Denise Ippolito for a half day workshop shooting the birds at Nickerson Beach. I can’t say enough good things about those two and the workshop they lead, full of great information, ideas, vision and a perfect location. I even got to meet the famous (infamous?) Artie Morris. Going to go back and do it again in July and I can’t wait. More pictures from the workshop to come as I weed through the 1000+ images I took in 4 hours!
Tags: Avian, Birds, Canon 100-400OL f/4.5-5.6, Canon 5DMII, Denise Ippolito, LI, Nickerson Beach, Roman Kurywczak, Romin' with Roman, Workshop
Great Blue Heron doing some early evening grooming before flying off to roost. I loved the way the warm last rays of light illuminated it.
Canon 50D, Canon 100-400L f/4.5-5.6, finished in LR2 and CS4 with Nik plugins and Tony Kuyper’s actions.
Tags: Avian, Birds, Canon 100-400L f/4.5-5.6, Canon 50D, Great Blue Heron, Nik Plugins, Photography, Tony Kuyper Actions
I’ve fallen off the blog wagon again but I’ve got a few images from our trip to St. Lucia finished up so I’m back to trying again.
This is an Antillean Crested Hummingbird, the other type of hummingbird that we saw on vacation. They sat still even less often than the Green Throated Caribe’s did, but this particular male favored this branch at eye-level under the canopy of a fragrant tree, so it was just a matter of being patient enough. Which was hard since the sun and the surf beckoned me at the same time.
Processed in Photoshop CS4 with the help of Nik Software Plugins and sharpened with Tony Kuyper’s action.
Tags: Antillean Crested Hummingbird, Birds, Canon 100-400L f/4.5-5.6, Canon 5DMII, Nik Software, St. Lucia, Tony Kuyper Actions, Vacation
Among some of the hundreds of birds we saw while visiting the Kilauea Lighthouse were white-tailed tropicbirds. We saw a few soaring over Waimea canyon but none this close. In the morning they flew over and under us darting in and out of the water after small fish and squid. The wind was howling so we never heard their famous cry of “I like pie, I like pie.” Which was a good thing since the closest pie was probably an hour away.
Canon 50D with 100-400L f/4.5-5/6
Tags: Birds, Hawai'i, Kaua'i, Kilauea Lighthouse, Vacation, White-tailed Tropicbird
I had an awesome weekend playing with my new 5D, I used it just for landscape images on Thursday down at the wildlife refuge and used my 30D for wildlife images. Then on Friday I went back and tried it for everything, wondering if the file size would compensate for the “loss” of focal length. I didn’t use it on the full RAW size because I forgot an extra card but I thought it did pretty well. All of the below are crops to 30% of the original image size except for the sunset, that is full frame. The image information is in the exif data, I’ll take more time next week with some other images but I’m off for a convention for the weekend and just wanted to get these up:
Short Eared Owl – hunting:
Brandts watching the surf:
Brandts deciding the surf was high enough, B&W:
(Almost) Sunset, Sachuest NWR:
And I really do want to thank my friend Terry because without his constant reminding me of how awesome his 5D was I probably never would have gotten mine. I was vacillating between the 5DM2 and the 50D and although I do alot of wildlife where that 1.6X factor is awesome the full frame is incredible. So a belated thanks again!