Six-spot Burnet
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Anyone who's spend any time outdoors shooting wildlife and insects will sooner or later find that disruptions in a normal pattern are what catches your attention. The most common is, of course, movement, anything that moves catches your attention. But, it can also be shapes, some things draw your attention immediately because the shape does not fit what your subconscious expects to find. Somewhat trickier is colours. I noticed this burnet because the colour clashes with the pink plant it is sitting on. So I got down on hands and knees, mounted my trusty 100mm tokina and got out a flash and a cable. Some additional light from just on the left side and I got a dozen nice shots. I think this one is one of the nicest because it brings out the antenna but I still need to sort out the rest.

Ant eye to eye
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

A red wood ant. These insects fascinated me ever since I was a little boy. There's something about the size of them and their anthills that impressed me.
Over in the west where I live these are not very common but in the wooded areas in the south you find these a lot more. They will feed on absolutely anything they can drag into their nest, they certainly enjoyed a few mosquitoes I swatted.

Shooting was challenging in a new way. Of course there's not much light and I didn't feel like holding a flash in one hand, a camera in the other (yes, this is shot handheld)while balancing over an anthill so I just cranked up the iso a bit and did my best.
No, the challenging is following a specific and and focussing on it. There's a certain effect that shoals of fish and some herd animals like zebras used to confuse predators and it was having the same effect on me, confusing!

I think I shot 30-40 pics and got three that I liked, two of which went on flickr. You can see the other here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/5884976407/

Ruff
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

I love aviaries. They offer a unique chance to get good pictures of species that are otherwise difficult to find and even more difficult to shoot. To get a shot like this in the wild I'd need to do a lot of reconnaissance and spend a few hours in a hide.

Photographically this is relatively easy. Avoid blown highlights, get down to as low as you can, relax and shoot.

Via Flickr:
A male ruff in Blijdorp zoo

common tern
Originally uploaded by j_wijnands.

Let's start something else, a photograph a day type of post. Just a picture and the story behind it.

I noticed this bird hunting along a channel that also had some tufted ducks, a mute swan family and a few grebes. I like terns, nice colouring and interesting behaviour the way they swoop down and plunge into the water to catch a fish. In flight it reminds you of a black headed gull sometimes until you seem them close to eachother, the tern is significantly smaller.

Now, like all mainly white birds these are tricky, it's all too easy to blow the white bits. Additionally you want a nice and high shutter speed to capture any sharpness.

So, I metered on something middle brownish on the ground and set the camera manually for it. Then a matter of tracking and keeping focus.

Nikon D300, Sigma 150-500
Exposure 1/3200 sec
Aperture f/6.3
Focal Length 500 mm
ISO Speed 500
Subject Distance 21.1 m

Had to crop because it was in the bottom left of the frame.

Gray Heron catching a fish

I'm on a rather busy and intense project at the moment so whenever I can I take the camera with me to the office and go for a walk in my lunch break. Lovely way to keep the stress under control.

Today was decent weather as well for a change. Barely out of the office I spotted my very first Green Woodpecker! Not a good picture unfortunately.

A little further I spotted a grey heron against some dried out reeds. Now these birds are a common feature of the water rich parts of our country (which is most of it really) but despite being common I like them. Big enough that even a 300mm will do if you apprach with care. Colourful enough to make a nice shot most of the time.

I'd just shot a frame thinking I'd get a nice portait out of it when suddenly it struck and caught a fish.

I was set for a portrait, barely set in fact so the shutter speed was slower than it should have been but because these birds are big and stationary hunters I could get away with it.

Timing from the first splash, which I excluded thinking it's not that interesting, to the fish swallowed took about 5 seconds.

All pics are clickable for the bigger versions

A long sunday walk

Sunday January 2nd my wife took the kids to a musical leaving me with 6 hours to myself. And what better to spend that time than to put on my hiking boots and take a long stroll trough my favourite nature reserve, the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen.




Another accidental blue tit. If you happen to be in their way while they are on a fouraging route and you're really careful not to make any sudden moves you can get shots like this. A very common bird but I do like them a lot, rather colourful and great fun to watch.

I took this unusual amount of time to explore an area where I'd never been before and could not resist this:



I opted for an HDR for this scene and ended up keeping it a bit dark, it does more justice to the scene somehow.
After this shot I left the paths and went cross country for a bit and was lucky enough to capture a buzzard and a jay in flight. Birds in flight is definitely something I need to practice more.








Not at all bad but I'm nowhere near satisfied either. Of course what doesn't help is that even with a 500mm you still got a considerable working distance, you end up cropping so any mistake is magnified.

Next up some water birds. With a lot of the main bodies of water still mostly frozen a lot of birds take to the smaller but faster flowing bodies of water. Challenge there is that you have little or no shelter.



A female tufted duck.



A little grebe. Scruffy looking fish eating bird.

Now the goosanders have been giving me trouble ever since I got the big sigma. The female is a bit skittish but not that challenging. The male is. Just before I shot these two males got spooked and lifted off. I got half a dozen shots in but my camera on shutter priority either blows the body or makes the head loose all detail. I need to really rethink my way of shooting these birds.





I also got a few panorama shots but still need to finish processing those.

Bird Photography Part 3

(all pics are clickable)

Sunday morning, solid grey sky which is supposed to be good for bird photography since it provides a uniform diffuse light.

Now, my D300 tends to produce a fairly exact white balance in this kind of weather. That means that all the pics on automatic WB will get a rather blueish tint. I like to produce pictures that are a bit warmer in tone so I set it to 5880K. A value I know from experience will produce something I like. I gambled that it would work and save me time in processing.

There must be spring in the air, everything was rather restless. First thing I noticed were some very common mallards. Probably the most common waterfowl species here but good practice nonetheless.



Worked a bit on the exact crop and contrast. The result isn't too bad.

Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 270 mm
Focal Length: 269.1 mm
ISO Speed: 1600

So, autoiso worked this time. I'd set the camera for 1/500 in S mode and the camera put the lens wide open and upped the iso all the way. Not very much light then.

The egyptian geese were feeling the spring as well, chasing eachother, even landing in trees to make noise at eachother. Using the AF button still does the trick:



Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
Focal Length: 302.0 mm
ISO Speed: 1600

Good thing I raised the shutter speed I think. Still, wide open at 300mm and iso 1600, it's not going to get me the best of pics.

In a stream in the woods I noticed a grey heron. Rather small bird for a heron. Not entirely sure what caused the focus error here but I do like the lines and the reflection.



Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 250 mm
Focal Length: 254.0 mm
ISO Speed: 1600

Now, the first red squirrel of the season. Rather tricky animal to shoot, they don't sit still and if they do its often at the top of the tree. Up there the challenge is an often bright background and a very dark subject. That requires careful metering.

The unedited shot:




Click it and you will see a squirrel. Settings:
Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/640)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 270 mm
Focal Length: 277.0 mm
ISO Speed: 1600

Ah, the camera did what I told it to do. Shutter speed is the speed I set, iso is at the limit I set in auto iso and the lens is as far open as it can go. That it's underexposed is not the cameras fault, there just wasn't any more light.

But, I'm shooting a D300 and that allows for some room in post processing. So, into capture NX and see what I can do with it.




By no means the best squirrel shot in the world but it's a lot nicer. I correct exposure here by almost 1.5 stops, played with the curves, cropped, adjust color balance somewhat, slapped on a contrast adjustment filter and this is the result.

Of course there is noise, there are limits to the D300 sensor and certainly to my processing skills. No matter how good your sensor is, when you underexpose and correct that you will get a load more noise than on a properly exposed picture.

Last shot, something you will encounter sometimes, the leftovers of a predator's meal. There's a big flock of pigeons in that area and occasionally the buzzards get lucky and catch one.



Gruesome perhaps but nature all the same.

So, lessons learned

• Auto ISO in S mode is good for birds in flight and rapidly changing light conditions
• If there isn't enough light your pictures won't come out as nice.
• Fieldcraft continues to be a challenge
• There is at least some truth to diffuse light being good for birds.
• Presetting white balance will save time in processing if you get it right.
  

Bird photography part 2

all pics are clickable

After blogging about my first problems here I decided to give it another try with the new settings in my camera.

First of all, using the AF button proved to be an interesting experience. It takes a bit of getting used to, at first you're jabbing the AE-L button by mistake but after that there's certainly a speed advantage there.

My first chance I got when an egyptian goose decided to fly around. Came almost directly over me to give me this shot:


Not bad at all but not quite the level of sharpness I am aiming for. Let's look at settings:

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture:	f/13.0
Focal Length:	270 mm
Focal Length:	269.1 mm
ISO Speed:	640

Hmm... 1/800 and still movement? Why? According to a quick google the canadian goose can fly anywhere between 50 and 90 km/h. Let's assume this goose can do the same and let's assume it was doing 40 km/h. That's 11.1 meters/second which means still about 1.4 cm of movement in that 1/800. Of course part of it was compensated for by my panning movement but still... So shutter speed remains an issue there. Spot metering worked very well here.

Next I encountered a flock of great tits and blue tits in a pine grove. Even though these are about as common as muck they are still good practice. Working distance is a factor with these birds. If you can get as close as 5 meters it's already a lot and then it's still a tiny bird.

Exposure:	0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture:	f/5.6
Focal Length:	300 mm
Focal Length:	302.0 mm
ISO Speed:	640

The issue here is that my settings didn't do what I'd expect them to do. Despite auto iso I was shooting wide open here and the 70-300VR isn't at it's best wide open.

1/1250 is enough to freeze these birds if they are just sitting there. If they flutter from one branch to the next it doesn't do it.



OK, so shutter speed remains a focus.

Now, standing still about 5 meters from the trees did allow the birds to get used to me and ignore me which resulted in these two:




and



On this shot you can see a few ticks around the bird's eye.

Now, later in the day this setting came back to bite me in the behind.



Granted, it's a unique moment, pre-mating activities of Storks. And yes, I had about 30 seconds before she fled the nest. And 1530 is not a good time for black&white birds. But why is this pic unsharp?

Exposure:	0.003 sec (1/320)
Aperture:	f/20.0
Focal Length:	300 mm
Focal Length:	302.0 mm
ISO Speed:	640

There we go. At f20 most consumer zooms the diffraction spook rears it's ugly head. According to Thom Hogan the d300 itself shows diffraction from f11 onwards.
What happened is that my spot metering adjusted perfectly for the focus point on a white part of the stork And since I was at a relatively low shutterspeed the camera raised the aperture to prevent overexposure.

Next stork shot, a bit later.



A lot sharper and no wonder since I was at f9.

So... lessons learned?
- shutter speed is so important with birds
- watch your metering, you don't want to enter the diffraction zone
- Birds in flight depend at least as much on you and your reaction speed as they do on your gear
- A 70-300mm zoom is short but it's still possible to get some decent bird shots with it.

I'm already looking forward to my next experimental session.

Anyone familiar with me, this blog or my photostream on flickr knows that I try to go at least once a week for a walk in nature. Usually I visit the Amsterdamse Waterleidingduinen and usually I carry my camera.

I’m skilled enough to get decent fallow deer shots almost weekly and the occasional good bird shot. I’ve been doing that slightly over a year now and I was so overconfident that I thought I was pretty good at it.

Now this Wednesday I visited the Island of “Tiengemeten”. It’s a small island about 30km south of Rotterdam that is being returned to nature. Lovely oasis of piece and quiet that is so rare in this country. A dyke has been breached to create a wetland area and the island is populated by several hunderd very noisy Barnacle Geese.

But, let’s start with this shot, the common shellduck

Looks good this small, best of about half a dozen. Click trough to the big version and you see there’s a few problems with it.

Next shot:

Click on that and it will be sharper. Too far away but sharper.

Let’s look at settings. The first;

Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/800)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 300 mm
Focal Length: 302.0 mm
ISO Speed: 400

And the second pic:

Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/1250)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 260 mm
Focal Length: 261.4 mm
ISO Speed: 400

Substantial difference in shutter speed.

Number three:

Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/8.0
Focal Length: 260 mm
Focal Length: 261.4 mm
ISO Speed: 400

I got a few more but all in all perhaps 2 dozen keepers out of more than 200 pics. Not a good result. So I started looking for help.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=58615
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1039&message=34700638

Now it turns out my errors had a few causes.

1. Pretty lousy fieldcraft on my side. I’ve been spoiled by a landscape with loads of cover and animals and birds used to humans. On this island I encountered about a dozen other walkers the whole day. In my weekend walks I meet that many in 20 minutes.

2. Poor understanding of my camera. “automagic AF" just doesn’t hack it. I found this: http://johnfriend.blogspot.com/2009/10/nikon-d300-auto-focus-for-sports-i.html which explains a sports shooter’s setup for his D300. Most of that will be useable here.

3. No knowledge of my surroundings. Every encounter was a surprise, most flight paths were unexpected.

4. No knowledge of my models. I met at least 4 new species.

So, I now know more or less where it went wrong. I used my D300’s AF system ineffectively. I was overly optimistic on my shutter speeds and I was unrealistic in my expectations. A 370 euro zoom is no substitute for a 3000 euro zoom and a casual shot when walking is no substitute for spending 4 hours in a hide. Next step, go to a place with loads of seagulls and practice.

One final shot: