Feb 4, 2010 - Fish in HD

I haven't yet shot any falcons in HD but eventually will. In the meantime, here's a video of some aquarium fish.

I'm currently testing different ways of encoding video for the web, this is 720P HD through YouTube.

If you followed the falcon blog (www.asic.ca/peregrinefalcons) in January 2009, I mentioned my fish had offspring. This year they did it again, so there are now 3 generations of fish in the tank. Big Blue is still the king of the tank and he likes to flaunt it.

May 18, 2009 - In the Bushes Flashing Birds

In the ideal photography world, your subject would always be posed on something interesting, unobstructed, sidelit by the morning sun, in front of a glorious background, and you'd be shooting with an f/1.8 aperture at all focal lengths.

Generally speaking, I loathe on-camera flash. If you're looking for a deer-in-the-headlight look complete with red-eye and shadows in the background, it's all good.

Yesterday's bird outing was a struggle to shoot birds in dark ground cover, or hidden in the shade of leaves. The only way to do this was to use high ISO and open the lens up, a sacrifice of quality on two levels.

Today I decided to put my "Wannabe Better Beamer" into action. Reading about the Better Beamer product, I was intrigued. Not wanting to order online and await delivery, I just had to build myself one. Using a cut 8x10 reading magnifier, a stapler, and some velcro, I soon had my first flash extender, for less than 10 dollars.

I returned to Toronto's High Park to see if I could find the warblers that eluded me yesterday.

The purpose of a flash extender is no surprise, to extend the throw distance of your flash. It's intended to provide fill, rather than completely lighting up the scene. It also helps project the light beyond a long telephoto lens, which would otherwise get in the way.

While I'm still not crazy about using flash for nature shooting, in shady situations it's a very useful tool to have at your disposal. Using this tool you're able to keep your ISO settings down, avoid noise, and lighten up your subject even if it's 100 feet away. I used it today with the flash exposure dialed down 1.5-2 stops to keep it less pronounced.

I still wouldn't use flash as my first choice, but when trying to shoot very small birds in the shade, the options are limited. This solution can also be useful on dark days.



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May 7, 2009 - Going to town with tubes

Roaming around in natural areas, there's usually a long lens on the camera always at the ready for any birds I might come across. In the camera bag are a range of items including a flash I rarely use, a teleconverter, macro lenses and a relatively new add-on, extension tubes.

Having a 400 or 500mm lens is excellent for capturing things from afar. The problem with these lenses is that they're not as useful when shooting nearby subjects. On my 500mm lens for example, I need to be over 8 feet away to be able to obtain focus.

This is where extension tubes come in handy. They can be added to a wide range of lenses, and once added, they dramatically reduce the minimum focusing distance of a lens.

In some of the included shots, I was using a 70-200mm lens, and shooting from less than 3 inches from these tiny flowers.

The detail you can capture with a telephoto zoom is amazing in itself, but with the addition of extension tubes you get a super-macro lens and a new world of perception opens up.

This summer I have a goal to use these tubes to photograph small flowers and lichens, as well as dragonflies, butterflies and other smaller insects. There's going to be a bit of a learning curve, but from a few recent shots it looks like it will be worth the effort.





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