From imagination to image
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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
Another image from my first try with the 500mm f/4.0L lens. A nuthatch eying the bird feeder:
Nuthatch
I’m still amazed how amazingly sharp this lens is. Processed just gently in photoshop cs5 with Nik plugins – Viveza 2 to give an overall brightness to the image since it was shot under trees, and White Neutralizer from Color Efex Pro 3.0 to adjust the white balance. Sharpened gently with Sharpener Pro.
Tags: Avian, Backyard, Bird, Canon 500mm f/4.0L, Canon 5DMII, Lincoln, Nik Software, Nuthatch, Photoshop CS5, 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 Lotuses are blooming down in Wickford and although it was a bit windy and the sun was too high in the sky I was able to get some nice images of the new buds.
I thought I’d try something different so I dug out my old Canon 300L f/4.0 and my 1.4X tele. It gives me a bit more reach than my 100-400 and I think it’s a bit sharper.
Tags: "Canon 1.4X teleconverter", "Canon 300L f/4", "Egyptian Lotus Flowers", Canon 5DMII, RI, Wickford
The day after Hurricaine Danny blew through we went down to Matunuck Beach, me to shoot, Mike to surf. It was too misty to do much shooting of him and Jas (and the 200 or so other surfers out there) so I squeezed myself up against a wall and shot the waves as they washed in and out. A quite hazardous job since the current was fierce and I was wearing jeans, boots and was carrying the 5DMII with the 16-35 and had a pack on with the other camera and my 100-400 and various sundries. It would have been sink long before swim. The cameras got a little spray on them and I got soaked up to my waist but was rewarded with some interesting images.
Mike having some fun
Storm Surge:
Storm Surge2 B&W:
Tags: B&W, Canon 16-35L f/2.8, Canon 5DMII, Hurricaine, Matunuck Beach, Mike, Monochrome, Ocean, RI, surfing
So it was freezing, literally, Saturday morning but I felt inspired for the first time this year to get out and shoot. Got up and started to bundle up, looked at the thermometer and it was -1F so I added a bit more clothing, grabbed my 30D, 24-105 and a polarizer and headed out. I went to a small stream and dam behind a house off a main road near me. The trick with this was that it there is no shoulder there to start with and with the piles of snow there’s even less place to stand, at Mikes suggestion I wore my orange hunting season vest to be visible, which got me a thumbs up from a passing officer.
It was COLD! After about 10 minutes I forgot I had toes but it was alright. I was right up on the guard rail and wishing I could go over and down towards the stream bed but that is (I think) private property and I didn’t want to take a swim. The sun was just getting high enough to light the little dam and the rime ice that had formed on it during this week of relentless cold. My eye was drawn to the corner of the dam and the way the ice and water were mixing. I’m a huge Moose Petersen fan and he’s been really enthused lately about the D3X he tried and how he could get fabulous image subsets from the huge files it gave him (and it doesn’t hurt he’s a totally awesome photographer). Now I use a Canon 30D and it’s not got the oomph that a D3X does and since I only took my 24-105 (no way I was changing lenses in the cold and on the side of the road, and ditto for carrying an extra body and lens) I had this to work with:
I played around with a few crops, this was one I liked but it still didn’t do it for me:
Then I played some more and finally ended up with this:
Maybe not quite the intricate detail of a tiny portion of a huge file but still, it’s seeing the small detail in a scene and it’s still pretty sharp. Almost as sharp as the pain in my toes that took about an hour and a hot shower later to finish thawing out.
Tags: Ice, Photography, RI, Stream