A couple pics from the last few days..

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

I went out for a little grocery shopping and when I got home I checked the latest birder's list and some people had seen a pair of Trumpeter Swans down at Wolf Lodge Bay (about 4 miles from where I live) yesterday. A rare sighting around here. So Spike and I race down there and find them. If I could have pulled over on the interstate I could have got a great shot but I couldn't in that area so I went around the road and got some long long distance shots but they were there:-).

This shot is with the 300mm + 1.4X converter AND it's almost a 100% crop. These guys were pretty far away. And it was raining pretty good, too.



Ok, here's the Great Blue Heron shot that FD asked to see.

[dudio]

Nice pics ER !
I have loved seeing Great Blue Herons ever since I was
a young boy in Quebec. We had followed a heron that
had passed overhead, and it had landed on the top road,
which is quite narrow and surrounded by trees. We managed
to get within 6 feet of a full grown adult.. they are quite something

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Thank you dudio, I wish I could get that close to one:-). I'll post a few more later on today, I'm headed out to see if I can get any closer to the swans.
I have a bunch of heron shots but I haven't as yet got very close to one, very skittish birds but then again they probably don't like Spike either. I figure if I keep trying I've got to get lucky some day.

[{OF}Flying_Dutchman]

I really like that Heron Shot ER. The swan's picture is very good for a 100% crop.

Do you have any issues with loss of light with your converter? If you say it was raining it obviously was cloudy and the exposure looks good regardless. Did you adjust it in LR?

I need to work on coming up with a nice frame like you use on all of yours. I have one I like but I have not been consistent about using it.

Oh and I got really close to a Heron once. I was driving down a back country road and one just had take off from a ditch near the road. He was still gaining height as I approached and I think he wanted to make sure he cleared the vehicle. Which he did by emptying his bowels all over my windshield. (which he was less then 2 feet from). Scared the crap (pun intended) out of me. Couldn't see nothing till I ran the windshield cleaner for a while. Luckily no other traffic nearby. And it does not smell very nice either.

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Lol, great story FD!

Oh yes, a 1.4x converter loses i stop of light and a 2x loses 2 stops, no way around it. My camera is set up to make 1/3 stop adjustments and I try to get the exposure as close as possible in camera. I shoot manual exposure and will take as many shots as I need right off the bat to get my exposure as far to the right in the histogram as possible before I start clipping the whites in the bird. I'll take a shot and then chimp the pic to make sure the whites aren't blinking. Sometimes you have to be careful, looking at just the histogram you may fail to see the teeny line clipping on the far right especially if the rest of the pic falls towards the left in the histogram. This is where the blinkies really help. Now, on a overcast day like this one was, once you have found this exposure it doesn't change much, but still I keep my eye on the histogram. Remember, especially if you're shooting high ISO's which these days usually require to keep the shutter speeds up, your enemy is underexposure. An underexposed picture that you have to bump up the exposure slider or the brightness slider will very quickly gain all kinds of noise that is very ugly. I've found with my K20D I can get away shooting ISO 1250 if I pay attention to my exposures. Many of my eagle photos were shot at ISO 1250. There is still noise, but not nearly as bad as when you initially underexpose the pic. I'm exposing these birds much like the eagles. Keeping their white bodies to the right in the histogram but they are a bit easier in that they don't have dark bodies like the eagles do. Also, I have yet to see this pair of swans fly so I'm not trying to stop motion so I'm set on the tripod and I'll take a bunch of pics with the camera locked down, all focused, and I'll use mirror lock up and a 3 sec delay with a remote to fire the camera. Anything and everything I can do to lock the camera down when trying to shoot something so far away, man, even the slightest teeniest movement degrades sharpness.

FD, give me a bit of time to find the little program that sits in LR2 I use to make the frame, it's basically a preset but I have to look it up, I can't even remember the name off the top of my head.

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

I managed to get a bit closer today but these are still some deep crops.







This past spring some Tundra swans passed through. Tundras are very similar to Trumpeters but are smaller which can make it tough to tell if you don't have one of each to compare, but Tundras have a little yellow patch right in the corner of their eye which is a giveaway. I'm not sure if we can tell in this pic if you don't have a plugin like Firefox has to zoom in to a pic, but it is there.

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Ok, FD, the little program is called Mogrify;
LR2/Mogrify - Add Watermarks, Border and Text Annotions to Images Exported by Adobe Lightroom 2

It takes a bit to get it installed and working properly but it's not that bad, let me know if you have any questions. I do my border thingy and the copyright dealy with this proggy setup as a preset in the export box of LR2.

[{OF}Flying_Dutchman]

Thanks ER. Will install it.

The top pic where the swan is flapping his wings in awesome! If you could somehow darken the background (or make it more blue) the wings would stand out that much more.

I don't like going over ISO 800 with my D40. Hope to get a D90 sometime this year if all goes well.

I'm itching to get my new lens and start using it. Won't have time this weekend cuz I'm tied up but any excuse will do

[{OF}Eaglerapids]

Good idea FD, what do you think? I cropped a bit more off the top and now I'm not sure if I should have...




I did this with the adjustment brush in LR2, even on my laptop it's like pulling teeth using the adjustment brush, very slow and laggy. Man, I need a new desktop and I want to build one when I go back to work hopefully very soon. I did it in two stages. I also cut the contrast, clarity and saturation to help make the birds pop a bit more from the background. The adjustment brush and the gradient tool are plenty powerful in LR2 but they require a lot of horsepower to run smooth.

[{OF}Flying_Dutchman]

Looks great, but I agree the image is a little far up, maybe just move it down a little so there is some room above the Swan's head.

I use LR most of the time but I also have Photoshop elements for stuff like textures, etc. It's all the Photoshop I need....