The turning points, time, patience, and places

We’re about to close out the year 2015, and begin a new year, 2016, and even though I know that dates are just arbitrary numbers on a calendar, a new year always seems to be a good time to take a look back, and also to look to the future.

On Christmas Eve, I took delivery of the last package in that I’ll be getting from the company I have been purchasing my camera gear through lately for the foreseeable future. The package contained a 4 Tb hard drive, so now I can fully back-up all of my photos, and a better quality polarizing filter to fit the 300 mm L series lens that I use for birding most of the time these days.

Everything else on my camera wish list relates to the Canon 5DS R in one way or another, and that camera is at least two years away unless things change drastically in my life, and I doubt that they will. Besides, my skill level as a photographer still doesn’t warrant a camera that good, yet.

Over the past few months, I’ve felt that I’m reaching yet another turning point in my photography, my images have shown a great deal of improvement over the past year, but I feel that I still have a long road ahead of me.

The first big turning point took place towards the end of 2012, and the first few months of 2013, when I decided that I was going to get serious about photography, and that it required much better equipment than what I had at the time, a Nikon D50 camera, and one of the worst lenses that Nikon ever put the Nikkor name on, a 70-300 mm lens. In addition to those items, I also carried a Canon Powershot point and shoot that I used for landscapes and close-up photography. I’ll admit that my back and my knees still look back fondly at those days, when the entirety of my camera gear at that time weighed less than just the birding set-up that I carry these days does. 🙂

April 4th, 2013 is when I made the switch to a Canon 60D camera, along with the Beast, a Sigma 150-500 mm lens. There was an immediate increase in the quality of the photos that I shot, right from day one. Over the next two years, there were many small turning points as I learned new skills and how to get the best out of the 60D camera and each of the lenses that I’ve added to my collection since then.

It was during the summer of 2014 that I finally realized that almost every one else was right, and that I was wrong, you do have to do at least some post-processing to most of the images from even the best digital cameras. I began experimenting with HDR photography, and eventually added Lightroom to the software that I use earlier this year.

The next big turning point was the acquisition of the Canon 7D Mk II camera in the spring of 2015, which I’ve raved about enough here since I got it. It makes getting photos such as this…

Snowy owl in flight

…so much easier than what it would be if I were still trying to use the 60D for bird in flight photos.

That photo brings me to where I am right now, that was shot on Christmas day, and it leads to what I think this next turning point will be, and it has nothing to do with cameras or lenses, but how I approach photography and the subjects that I shoot, and where I go to photograph them.

The owl serves as a great example of what I’m going to try to explain, I spent most of the morning with the owl, shooting several hundred photos of him to get one good one.

In the past, I would have shot a few images of the owl as it perched on a power line pole. By the way, I know that the sky is too dark in most of these images, I was trying out the new polarizing filter, and I was too tired when I got home after a very long day to lighten the sky in these. That’s a bit surprising, as I’m getting much pickier about my images than I would have imagined a year ago. I find myself using the healing brush in Lightroom to “paint” the correct color temperature onto waterfowl when the blue from the water reflects on the waterfowl to the point where they are too blue. I could warm the image up overall, but that turns the water to a muddy blue when it shouldn’t be. However, since the owl was perched where it was, none of these are going to be winners unless I master software editing to the point where I exchange the power pole for something natural, like a dead tree. Then, I could always go back and lighten the sky. 😉

Snowy owl

In the past, when I was sure that I had gotten a good photo of the owl, I would have moved on in search of other subjects to shoot. For one thing, with the owl on top of the pole, I’d never get a great photo of it, he was a bit too far away, and with him perched on a man-made object, a truly great photo was impossible. But, I hung around anyway, trying different things, for example, that was shot with the 300 mm lens and 2X extender mounted on my tripod and with the ISO set to 100 for the very best resolution that I could get. However, that resulted in a shutter speed of 1/100 second, which would have been too slow if the owl had even twitched while I shot that series of photos with the effective focal length of 600 mm.

While I had the set-up on the tripod, I shot a video, which taught me another lesson, turn off the IS when shooting a video when the camera is on a tripod.

Another reason that I couldn’t get a great photo of the owl is because the darned thing refused to fully open its eyes, so I have several hundred images of him squinting in the sunshine.

Snowy owl

Snowy owl

Snowy owl

As you may have been able to tell, I walked around the owl, I even climbed the hill that he was near, hoping to get a better photo of him. When he did open his eyes completely…

Snowy owl

…it was because he was about to poop.

Snowy owl pooping

Hey, many of the people who read my blog say that they like the action shots, I can’t wait to hear the comments on that one. 😉 That’s what happens when I have the 7D set to high-speed burst shooting and I think that the subject that I’m watching is about to do something, he did.

A little later, I saw the owl perk-up, as if it had heard or spotted something to eat.

Snowy owl

He had, but as he took flight, I had to wait for him to clear the power-lines, so I got two shots of him coming at me, neither of which are very good. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to use the second rear focus button, which would have been better as far as focusing, but the way I have it set, it also adds two stops of exposure compensation, which I thought would have been too much for an all white bird. So, here’s the best one of him flying directly over my head.

Snowy owl in flight

I have a few good photos of its butt as it flew away from me, but I deleted those. I was lucky in a way, the owl flew just a short distance, apparently what it thought would be a tasty meal either wasn’t, or had taken cover before the owl got to it. The owl turned around, coming back towards me, so I did switch to the second focus button to get the first photo in this post, along with a few more like this.

Snowy owl in flight

The owl came back to the same spot from where it had started, so my photos of him landing were ruined by the power-lines.

Snowy owl in flight

It was only then that the owl looked at me with its eyes wide open.

Snowy owl

Isn’t that the way that it goes, I spend well over an hour standing in the cold, waiting to get a good shot of the owl, and I come up with just a couple of so-so shots of him in flight. I waited for a while longer, but eventually the owl flew off away from me, and I never did see him again. But, that does bring me to the title of this post, and the turning point that I think that I’ve reached now.

I can’t afford one of the super long telephoto lenses on the market, at around $10,000 they are way out of my price range. On top of the lens, I’d need an entirely new tripod set-up to hold it, which would cost another $2,000 to $3,000 or more. So, in order to improve my photos, I’m going to have to work harder to get closer to my subjects, spend more time with each one instead of rushing about trying to get as many species of birds in a day that I can.

This new philosophy paid off in these three photos of a kestrel, my best ever, but still not great.

American kestrel

American kestrel

American kestrel

Kestrels are our smallest, and I think, most beautiful members of the falcon family. I’ve tried for years to get a good photo of one, and have always failed in the past. These aren’t great, but they’re much better than my past efforts have been. Spending more time, and having the patience to do so paid off. Those were also shot on Christmas day, and I spent close to an hour to get those three images.

So, if I can’t afford a longer lens to get closer, then I guess that I’m going to have to do a couple of other things instead. One of those is to break down and begin wearing camouflaged clothing. I’ve avoided that, mainly because I don’t want to look like some redneck yahoo running around out in the woods. Back in the late 1960’s and 70’s I wore came when hunting, before it became some kind of fashion statement that too many people use it as these days. Since I’ll need a few different season’s worth to cover the year here, with green, brown, and white being the principle colors, that won’t be cheap, but it will still be a lot less than a 600 mm lens. 😉

I should also come up with some kind of portable blind, or hide as they are called on the other side of the Pond. There are many on the market to choose from, but I think that they are over-priced, and also quite heavy, for a bit of camouflaged cloth stretched over a couple of cheap poles like a tent. It wouldn’t take too much, if you watch birds or any other critters, as long as something doesn’t move, they get used to it quite quickly, and will come very close to man-made or new objects in their range. The Muskegon wastewater facility is a perfect example, there are pipes, structures, and equipment everywhere, and that place attracts more birds than any other that I’ve ever been to. It’s nothing to see a bird such as a peregrine falcon which I saw a few months ago…

Peregrine falcon

…perched on the plumbing there. One day, I waited in vain for one of the kestrels to return to the crane that it had been using regularly as a perch as it looked for prey. My car being close by bothered it, but a crane that hadn’t been used and had just sat for a month became a favorite perch for the kestrel, until the crane was moved.

Then, I’m going to have to come up with a way to carry everything. The backpack(s) that I have are good, however, I hate to admit it, but strapping 20 pounds of camera gear to my back and hiking 5 miles is not my idea of fun. If I add even more weight to what I carry, then I’ll start leaving things behind, even more often than I do already.

That’s a bad thing, for macro photography not only requires time and patience, but also a lot of gear. Even on a bright sunny day, getting enough light to get a good shot with enough depth of field to get the subject in focus requires extra light most of the time. Here’s one way that I do it, a LED panel light mounted on a Gorillapod.

LED light mounted on a Gorillapod

I like that set-up because it’s so versatile, not only can the Gorillapod function as a regular tripod with the legs resting on the ground, I can wrap the legs around things like branches, as you can see in the photo, and get the light right where I need it.

These are the tiny fungi that I photographed at the time. I saw these first…

Tiny shelf fungi?

…they were about a half an inch wide. As I was setting up to shoot that image, I saw these nearby…

Tiny jelly fungi?

…which were about an eighth of an inch in diameter. Even with the 100 mm macro lens and Tamron 1.4X extender, I still had to crop an image to really show what the fungi looked like.

Tiny jelly fungi(?) cropped

Just a short time later, I was shooting landscapes.

Muskegon State Park dunes

Then, it was a sunset…

Muskegon Lake channel sunset

…and as if I didn’t already try to photograph enough subjects as it is already, I’d like to branch out and try my hand at night photography.

Use Silversides submarine and other boats at the docks

The Muskegon Lake channel at night

I shot those in the last vestiges of twilight, as I was waiting for the full Christmas moon to rise.

Full moon on Christmas over Muskegon Lake

And although I didn’t shoot these next ones on Christmas, I have to throw them into the mix because I shoot flowers…

Teasel in bloom

…as well as insects when I have the opportunity.

Unidentified dragonfly

I know that I should specialize more, rather than shooting everything that I see, but I can’t help myself. It wouldn’t be so much of a problem if each genre of photography didn’t need its own lens(es) and other accessories.

Of course I could rely less on the camera gear and use software instead. For example, there’s specialized focus stacking software that many people use to get the really great macro images that you see. Instead of using a tiny aperture to get the required depth of field, and therefore need less light, you can use that software to stack multiple images taken with the focus set slightly differently with each shot to produce one image that has everything in it sharp and in focus.  The problem with that is that it doesn’t work when shooting live things that move.

There’s specialized software that can be used to create star-trails, which gets around the noise issue when taking long exposures with a digital camera, and so it goes. There’s specialized software for nearly every genre of photography, but that’s not cheap either.

I’m getting sidetracked again, back to the subject at hand. I’ve considered going on excursions to shoot specific subjects, such as landscapes, and ignoring anything else that I see on one of those excursions. That way, I could cut back on the amount of gear that I need to carry with me at any one time. That would also give me more time to work on a specific genre of photography, say spend a day chasing birds. Or, I could devote an entire day to landscapes, etc. The problem with that is getting the best lighting for each genre. You don’t want to shoot landscapes in the middle of the afternoon, and while I can make mid-day light work some of the time for critters, the golden hours just after sunrise, and just before sunset are also the best light for them.

Juvenile ring-billed gull

Ring-billed gull

Pekin duck

Female mallard

Male mallard

Female mallard

But as I’m trying to get the perfect photos of those species, I’m wasting good light for landscapes.

Muskegon State Park dunes

Instead of spending an entire day on one type of photography, I’m breaking up my days into segments, spending some time birding, then allocating the afternoons and evenings for landscapes. The problem with that is whatever I leave in my car is what I need for something that I see but wasn’t thinking that I would see, such as insects on the beach while I’m shooting landscapes. Or, a pretty scene in the woods while I’m chasing critters.

My brother took my suggestion and uses a large wheeled baby stroller to carry all of his camera gear with him, I should do that also. That does bring up other problems though, how to keep some one else from taking off with all my stuff while I’m off in the brush chasing birds for example. Many of the places I go can be very crowded, especially in good weather over the summer months. And, I wouldn’t want to try pushing or pulling any wheeled cart of any kind through the beach sand or dunes along Lake Michigan.

If I were to spell out the ideal situation for myself, it would be that I could devote myself to photography full-time, so I wouldn’t have to worry about how long I spent photographing one particular bird, or how long it took me to set-up for a macro shot, or landscapes, and so on. I’d also have sole access to land that attracted almost every species of birds, with the ability to set-up permanent hides in spots where I knew that I’d be close to birds and able to get good images from those hides depending on the time of day and weather. But, that isn’t going to happen, so I should stop dreaming about it.

Still, it was great having the entire day, from just after sunrise to well after sunset on Christmas Day to spend outside in all of the various locations that I went that day, and having the time to get the photos that you’ve seen in this post so far, and to also have the time to spend working on my camera settings and techniques for birds in flight.

Juvenile ring-billed gull in flight

Mallards in flight

Mallards in flight

Even if I did forget to set the range limiter on the 300 mm lens back to the full range so that I wasn’t able to get as close to these lichens as I would have liked.

Unidentified lichen

But, how I allocate my limited time being outdoors, as well as the places that I spend that time is still a big issue for me right now. So, as the sunsets on another day…

Sunset over the Muskegon Lake channel 2

…and the moon is rising…

Christmas Day full moon rising over Muskegon Lake 2

…I’ll post one more image of the snowy owl, with him waving goodbye to every one.

Snowy owl

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

December 27, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | Tags: Birds, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Nature photography, Photography, Photos, waterfowl | 30 Comments

Another day to play, and a Merry Christmas to all!

I went to the Muskegon County wastewater facility again on Sunday, hoping to track down a snowy owl, a few of which have been seen there recently. I had no luck finding an owl, and it was a relatively boring day there. Yes, there were thousands of geese, but all Canada geese, and thousands of ducks, including the largest flock of northern shovelers that I’ve ever seen. However, I couldn’t get close enough to most of the waterfowl there to get good photos of them. I suppose that this is the best of the lot, only because I seldom get close to canvasbacks.

Male canvasback ducks

Since I prattled on at length about my camera and the way that I can set-it up to suit what and how I shoot, I won’t say much about that in this post other than to say that I did have a chance to test those settings…

Red-tailed hawk in flight

…but the hawk would come no closer than that…

Ring-billed gull in flight

…my aperture is a touch too wide to get the depth of field needed for a large bird up close as the gull’s wingtip is in focus, but the eye and body is a bit soft in that one…

Mallards in flight

…I need to train the female mallards not to cut in front of the male that I’m tracking…

Mallards landing

…but overall, the settings work well for flocks of birds at a distance…

Canada geese and mallards in flight

…whether a mixed flock like that, or all geese like this one…

Canada geese in flight

…and I can see that I’m going to have to fine tune the instant bird in flight settings that I have programmed into the second rear focusing button, also that I really should program one of the three available program modes for the ultimate in bird in flight settings.

I suppose that the really big news from the day was this guy.

Male belted kingfisher

It’s a testament to how warm it’s been so far this fall that there’s still a kingfisher around here. I just wish that I had happened upon it where the branches weren’t in the way. I wasn’t going to let the chance to get an up close and personal photo, even with the branches, slip away though. As soon as I moved to the right to get a clear view of the kingfisher, it took off as they always do.

I went back to the same spot later in the day, but couldn’t find him again, which is normal. I snuck up through the woods with the 2X extender behind the 300 mm lens all set if he had been there. Since I was in the woods with that set-up, I shot a few photos of the upland birds that I saw as I returned to my vehicle.

Brown creeper

I had seen quite a few brown creepers the last time I was at Duck Lake, but hadn’t gotten any photos of them then. This one isn’t very good, since the creeper insisted on staying on the shady side of the tree.

It was much the same for the nuthatches as well, they stayed in the shade most of the time.

White-breasted nuthatch

White-breasted nuthatch

Shooting in low light with the 300 mm lens and 2X extender doesn’t produce great images, but they’re not terrible either. That set-up does need good light for it to produce good images.

White-breasted nuthatch not cropped

I call it playing, but the hour or so that I spent chasing the smaller birds with the combination of the 300 mm lens and the 2X extender was invaluable to me as far as learning how to get the best out of it. By the time I got back to my car, I had that combination tracking birds as they hopped from branch to branch, when from my first tests, I never would have thought it possible to do so. In fact, the brown creeper shot was one of a series of photos shot in burst mode as it hopped its way up the trunk of the tree. It may not be a great photo, but it’s all part of the learning process that never seems to end.

Speaking of the learning process, I returned to shoot the lichens that so many people commented on from an earlier post, this time with some better light. I started out wide, because I like the rock almost as much as the lichens on it.

Lichens on a pretty rock

The 100 mm macro lens I have has three range limiting functions, so I went as close as the first allowed.

Lichens

Then, it was as close as I could get at 100 mm.

Lichens

I wanted to get closer, so I put the Tamron 1.4X extender behind the macro lens.

Lichens

I wanted to show the tiny grey-blue lichens which appear to be just starting to grow on the rock towards the lower left of the image, as well as the other small segments? of the orangish lichens. I tried to go even closer by installing all three of the extension tubes that I have for the purpose of extreme close-up photography, but for some reason, the 60D camera didn’t record a single one of the images that I shot with that set-up, and I’m not sure why that is. I could see an image in the viewfinder, and it sounded as though the camera had shot the photos, but there’s no images and not even a record of my having shot any of the attempts that I made with all three extension tubes. Oh well, another lesson learned. That was a bit ridiculous anyway, as the hood of the lens was almost touching the rock to get the lichen in focus, and I had an extremely difficult time not casting a shadow on what I was trying to photograph.

I probably should have tried a few of the other combinations of lenses, extenders, and extension tubes, but I have limited patience when it comes to shooting the same inanimate subject repeatedly. Perhaps I would have had more patience if the temperature wasn’t just above freezing, and if I hadn’t been kneeling in mud as I shot those. The lichen will be there the next time, so when I take a break from the birds, I can go back and play some more.

The lichens do bring up one other thing though. When I first viewed those photos, I was disappointed in the way that the rock that the lichen was growing on looked in my images. The rock had a slightly pink cast to it, and I could tell that it contained quartz from how sparkly it was when I was shooting the photos. The pink cast and the sparkles weren’t there when I viewed the images, and those are missing from the photos as they appear here.

One of the things that I do in Lightroom is go through my photos and flag all of the ones that I may want to export to use here in my blog. Then, before I export the photos, I view them all full screen to choose the best of very similar photos. So, as I was going through the lichen photos full screen, I could see the pink cast of the rock as well as the sparkles, but when I went back to the regular view in Lightroom, they were gone again. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s something that I notice more often all the time. As my images improve, they now look better viewed full screen than they do in even slightly reduced size within Lightroom, that is, unless the images were cropped quite a bit. Of course you have no way of knowing if that’s true, 😉 but I have to wonder why that is. I’d say that it was a quirk in Lightroom, or if it was just in the images after I exported them in the Jpeg format, then the details were lost in the conversion. Just an observation that probably means nothing.

I have a few other photos from Sunday, starting with a female bufflehead taking flight.

Female bufflehead

Female bufflehead taking flight

Female bufflehead taking flight

Female bufflehead taking flight

I also shot a few more photos of a crow.

American crow

American crow

And, these next three photos are nothing special either, other than they demonstrate why it can be hard to identify ducks at times, it’s all the fault of mallards, who aren’t choosy when it comes to mating.

Female mallard hybrids

You may have noticed two different colorations of the bills of those ducks, along with a difference in size. They were all hanging out with the mallards.

Mallards

And, here’s a close-up of the smallest of the ducks in the flock. She’s part mallard, but I have no idea what the other species was that the mallard had mated with to produce her. You can see by the patterns of her feathers along with her size that she’s not a “pure-blood” mallard. I’m reasonably sure that the larger ducks with the bright yellow bills in the first of these photos were black duck/mallard hybrids.

Female mallard hybrid

I swear, mallards are going to take over the world eventually. 🙂

Anyway, those are the only photos that I saved for blogging from my trip on Sunday. So, since Christmas is later this week, I’m going to go back in time and post a couple of photos that have a Christmas look to them.

Fox squirrel leaping

Fox squirrel begging for the snow to stop

Playground #2

Snow scene

I’ll admit, I’ll be disappointed that we won’t have a white Christmas here this year. However, looking back at those photos from last winter, I’m not missing the cold or snow measured in feet rather than inches!

Also, the next few images will be my Christmas present to all of you who put up with my long-winded posts and poor photos, a few of my better images from this past year.

Asters

The Muskegon channel at dawn

Killdeer

Ring-billed gull

Also, as the sun is about to rise over a new year, I think that this one is fitting.

Sunrise

And with that, it’s time to say Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good year!

Park decoration

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

December 22, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | Tags: Birds, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Nature photography, Photography, Photos, waterfowl | 28 Comments

Making use of limited time and light

According to the local meteorologist, we’ve only received 8% of the possible sunshine over the past two weeks. It was so dark and gloomy this past weekend that I stayed home for my walk on both days. On Saturday, I didn’t save a single photo that I had shot, and there were very few to begin with. I did save a few from Sunday, although I’m not sure why, as they aren’t very noteworthy. I would have shot many more photos if I had gone somewhere else, but the images that I would have gotten wouldn’t have been very good because of the weather, so it made sense to stay home.

My work schedule this week hasn’t helped much either, I’ve been putting in long hours just sitting waiting for loads and very little time driving. That wouldn’t matter that much, except I’ve been getting home just before daybreak, then sleeping through most of the few daylight hours this time of year until it’s time to go to work again.

So, with a little time to kill, I’ve been playing with some of the settings on the 7D Mk II. What an amazing camera it is! Sorry for repeating that so often, but the more that I learn about it, the more amazing things I find that it’s capable of. But before I start prattling on about camera settings, a look back at last summer.

Woodland sunflower?

In my last post, I mentioned that I had two of the buttons on the rear of the camera programmed to give me two completely different auto-focusing set-ups, one for wildlife portraits, and one for birds in flight. In watching a few more of the videos about the 7D, I learned that I can take that a step or two, possible three, farther. Now, one rear button gives me the settings that I normally use for shooting stationary subjects, and I learned how to program the second button to not only change the auto-focusing settings, but also many of the exposure settings as well.

That brings up something else that I mentioned before. When I first began using the 7D, I set it up much the same way as I had found worked best with the 60D that I had been using. That’s worked well enough, but the 7D is an entirely different camera, with the one of the biggest differences being the much better metering system that the 7D has over the 60D.

I use partial spot metering almost exclusively for wildlife portraits, because I want the subject exposed correctly, and that’s the setting that worked best with the 60D. By the way, partial spot metering or spot metering means that the camera sets the exposure on what’s in the center of the frame, and ignores very bright or dark backgrounds around the edges of the frame. That’s the way that I get the subject exposed correctly when shooting against a bright sky for example. That is, if the subject is in or very near the center of the frame.

However, as I switch which focus point that the 7D uses when I compose my photos, I have to be careful to keep at least some of the subject in the center of the frame, as the spot metering stays centered in the frame, even if I’m using a focus point on the edge of the frame. That’s not usually a problem, but there have been a few times when it has.

Eastern garter snake

So, after having set-up the second rear button for a different auto-focus set-up, and then after I watched another video on the metering system of the 7D, it occurred to me that partial spot metering is the only one of the four metering choices that I’ve ever used with it. I’ve made do with the camera set-up the way for birds in flight, but it’s not the best possible way to get the correct exposure.

For most of my birds in flight photos, the birds are overhead, meaning that there’s either a bright blue background if it’s a sunny day, or what appears to us as a dull grey background if it’s cloudy. However, what we see as a dull grey sky, the camera renders as a bright white background, and the bird is severely underexposed. Normally, I go way up with my exposure compensation on cloudy days, and up slightly on sunny days.

Trying to make an already long story short, I’ve taken advantage of what Canon calls the register/recall function available on the 7D. Now, one of the rear focus start buttons has the camera set the way that I normally have the camera set-up for stationary subjects, and the second button on the rear of the camera not only changes the all of the auto-focus settings, but also switches the metering mode to evaluative, with two stops of added exposure compensation, along with switching the white balance setting to auto. The only thing that I would have liked to have been able to change but wasn’t, is the ability to switch the drive mode from low-speed burst to high-speed, but 5 frames per second should be fast enough anyway.

If not, I learned another really cool feature of the 7D, being able to change most of the camera settings while looking through the viewfinder. I can accomplish that through the use of a button that I didn’t know what its function was until I saw it in one of the videos that I watched. It’s the M-fn button near the shutter release, and when I press it, I can cycle through almost all of the options for almost all the camera settings, while looking through the viewfinder and pressing the button until the settings that I want to change are highlighted in the viewfinder. Since drive mode is the setting that I’m most likely going to want to change quickly, I have the camera set to default to drive mode as the first option for me when I press the M-fn button. Once I press the button, all I have to do is turn the top control dial one click, and I go from low-speed burst to high-speed burst mode. I press the button again, turn the dial one click back, and I’m back in low-speed burst mode again. Now how cool is that!

This all may be very boring to all of you reading this, but I’m as giddy as a school girl! I now have the camera set-up so that I get completely different settings instantly by selecting which button to push to start the auto-focusing, other than drive mode, and it takes me less than a second to switch that if I need to.

I haven’t had a chance to test out the entirely new settings yet, but I was able to test out switching between the auto-focus set-ups last week. I shot a few Canada geese and gulls in flight that I won’t bore you with. However, I will bore you with these. There were three crows perched in a tree, and I tried to get a good photo of all three of them at once, using my regular set-up.

American crows

When one of the crows took flight, I simply slid my thumb over to the other rear focus button to change all the auto-focus settings, and got these.

American crow in flight

American crow in flight

I had to work on those two in Lightroom, since they were underexposed quite a bit as far as the shadows under the crow’s wings. I shouldn’t have to do that any longer, now that the camera will also change metering modes and add two stops of compensation automatically. Woo hoo, every photographer’s dream come true, instant access to different settings to fit changing situations!

What I have the camera set to right now is a starting point, I can tweak any and all of the settings as I work with the camera set-up this way more often. I have also chosen some of the settings as a way of testing them out, since I’ve never tried them with the 7D yet, such as auto white balance. That setting didn’t perform well with the 60D, but as I keep saying, the 7D is an entirely different animal with a completely different metering system. I can always fix white balance issues in Lightroom for now, and change the saved camera settings as needed.

As good as all of what I’ve been talking about so far is, there’s still a lot more that the 7D can do. There’s three available programmable shooting modes that I haven’t touched yet, I’ve been holding off until I learned more about the camera. I made a mistake when I first began using the 60D, I set-up the one programmable mode that it has well before I knew what I truly needed the setting to be. Now that I use the 60D for landscapes and macros only, I should go back and completely reprogram that camera. I will at some point this winter when I have the time. In the meantime, I’ll work on getting the 7D set-up.

For example, I can set the 7D to keep the shutter speeds within a range that I define. It would be great to be able to tell the camera to never let the shutter speed drop below 1/1250 second when I’m shooting flying birds, and to raise the ISO instead of dropping the shutter speed. Since I’m often alternating between portraits and action shots, I haven’t made use of that option yet.

The opposite of that is the portrait shots of critters standing still. Right now, the camera is set to keep the shutter speed at 1 over the focal length of the lens as the minimum shutter speed. For example, with the 300 mm lens and 1.4X extender, the camera won’t drop the shutter speed below 1/400 second until the ISO reaches the maximum I allow it to go, 6400. I could get better portraits if I set the shutter speed lower for stationary subjects, and brought down the ISO for better resolution. To tell you how great the 7D is once again, I could go into the menu, and tell the camera to do just that, lower the shutter speed and ISO, but that wouldn’t work if the bird took flight, or the critter that had been sitting still…

Red squirrel

…suddenly took off running.

Red squirrel on the run

As you can see, I could have used a faster shutter speed to freeze the squirrel as it ran as it was already. The important thing about that last photo is that the auto-focusing of the 7D kept up with one of the quickest critters that there is, they go from zero to top speed as quickly as any critter can, other than possibly a hummingbird.

Anyway, I still have more decisions to make before I take the time to program the three available modes that the 7D has. Changing just about every setting that the 7D has would take some time, since I can adjust just about everything that the camera does and save those settings as one of the customized modes. But, I could see setting one up for the lowest possible ISO, and therefore the highest possible resolution, by using the image stabilization to overcome a slower shutter speed, and using that setting for just portraits. Then, I could set the second mode for the very best birds in flight, with a much higher minimum shutter speed for birds in flight or other action shots.

This is probably boring all of you, but I have one more example of how customizable the 7D Mk II is. The camera has a setting to prioritize getting the shot, even if it’s slightly out of focus, versus the camera waiting for the auto-focus to lock on to a subject. That’s best explained by using an example. Let’s say that a small bird lands close to me, I get the bird in the viewfinder and as the camera is still working on getting an auto-focus lock on the bird, I press the shutter release. I have the camera set to go ahead and shoot the image then, as I never know how long that a bird is going to stay in one spot. That often results in a slightly soft image, but by changing that setting a bit, the images I get are useable most of the time.

But, the Canon engineers didn’t stop there, there’s a second setting that applies to images shot in either of the burst modes that changes the bias in either direction after the camera has shot the first image in a burst. So, going back to my example of the bird that landed next to me, I have the first bias setting set towards getting the first shot quickly, but I have the bias for any subsequent images shot in a burst set to wait for the camera and lens to get the best possible auto-focus lock on the bird, so those images will be as sharp as possible. I often notice that the camera pauses while shooting a burst when a bird moves, as they so often do, twisting and turning as they look around. That pause that I notice is the camera getting the focus as sharp as possible again because the bird moved, even a little bit.

I know that my description of what the camera can do aren’t very good, so perhaps a few images will help me explain it better. I deleted the first image in this series, as it was slightly out of focus, but I held the shutter release down and let the 7D do what it does so well, track this nuthatch…

White-breasted nuthatch

…as it found a seed that either it, or some other bird had stashed under a vine…

White-breasted nuthatch finding a seed

…the 7D continued to track the nuthatch…

White-breasted nuthatch with a sunflower seed

…with the camera pausing the shutter from time to time as the nuthatch moved, so that the auto-focus could track the nuthatch and all the images other than the first one were good and sharp…

White-breasted nuthatch

…even as the nuthatch hopped its way down the tree trunk.

So, the techno-geek in me that loves the 7D Mk II may be boring to most of you, but as you can see, having the camera set-up the way that I do helps me to get the shots that show the behavior of the wildlife that I see. In this case, it was the nuthatch finding a seed under a vine.

That brings me to another series of photos, this time, of a blue jay.

Blue jay finding a kernel of corn

Blue jay finding a kernel of corn

Blue jay swallowing a kernel of corn

Blue jay

In a recent post, I said that most of the winter resident species of birds here in Michigan are known to cache food when food is plentiful, and retrieve the food that they have cached at a later date, when food may not be as plentiful. However, I can’t help but wonder how many times that the food cached by one bird is found and eaten by another.

It’s now Saturday afternoon, and I went out for a walk today. There were actually a few rays of sunlight for a change. To update how cloudy it has been, the stat from the local meteorologist from his blog yesterday said that we had just 6.8% of the available sunshine over the past 12 days. The trade-off was that it was cold, with what seemed to be a bitter wind blowing today, only because the past few weeks have been so mild here. It was actually a fairly typical winter day today, but it felt colder than it really was because it has been so mild. Oh, and about that 6.8% of sunshine, I must have blinked at the wrong time, because I don’t remember seeing that much sunshine recently. I knew that I shouldn’t have gloated when we had over double our average sunshine back in November. 😉

I thought that it was going to be one of those days when I didn’t shoot a single photo, but a house finch decided to pose for me.

Male House finch

He was soon joined by a friend, but I couldn’t get enough depth of field to get them both in focus.

Male house finches

And, I also shot this photo, although the jury is still out on it as far as whether it’s any good or not.

Testing the composition

I had lost the best light by the time that I shot that version of it, still, I kind of like the lines formed by the paved road and trail with the snow-covered grass in between them. Like a dummy, I had carried only the 7D with the 300 mm lens and 1.4X extender. More on that in a second. I tried shooting the scene at 420 mm, but that was too tight. So, I removed the extender to get down to 300 mm, but by the time that I had, the sun was behind a cloud again. At 300 mm, the image was too wide, so I cropped to somewhere in between the 300 and 420 mm versions just to see how the lines in the image appeared.

I had taken only the one camera and lens because I didn’t want to subject the rest of my gear to the elements today. The 7D, 300 mm lens, and both Canon extenders are weather sealed against dust and moisture, still, I find myself being much more protective of all my photo gear than I used to be. If there’s even a hint of mist outside, I carry the birding set-up in a dry bag meant for kayaking even though the birding set-up is built to handle a little mist. It’s a bit ironic, don’t you think, that I spent a lot of money for weather sealed photo equipment, then, I’m more protective of it than what I was of the stuff that wasn’t weather sealed. That’s because I did spend so much on it, and because I love it so much.

Another thing that struck me as ironic today, I don’t hang a bird feeder up somewhere so I could get really close to the birds, as I want to catch the birds in their natural setting, acting naturally. Yet, in the two series of photos above, both the nuthatch and blue jay were eating seeds that obviously came from a bird feeder originally.

I’m in a good mood and feeling humorous, so I guess that it’s time to post these two photos, of mallards taunting a cat.

Female mallards taunting a house cat

Female mallards taunting a house cat

The mallards could have hung out towards the center of the pond, well away from the cat, but they chose to swim around in front of the cat, just out of its reach.

I may as well post this one now as well, even though it isn’t at all related to anything so far.

Model A Ford

I knew that I’d been saving photos for a reason, this time of the year, the birds are all hiding. I know that because I watched this woodpecker making a place for it to hide.

Male downy woodpecker excavating a hole in a tree

Male downy woodpecker excavating a hole in a tree

Male downy woodpecker excavating a hole in a tree

It took me a number of tries to get that series showing the woodpecker tossing out the wood chips from its work inside the tree and the chips blowing away in the wind. I missed a few times before I got that one.

Male downy woodpecker excavating a hole in a tree

Male downy woodpecker excavating a hole in a tree

I’m sure that on a cold, windy day as it was today, that the woodpecker was staying snug and warm in one of many holes that they make just for that reason. The holes that they aren’t using at the time, as well as old nesting cavities, are used by other species of small birds over the winter also. So, when you’re out in the woods and you can’t seem to find any bird anywhere, it could very well be that they are all snoozing inside of a tree someplace.

On one of my walks earlier this month, I spotted this.

Slime mold or fungi?

But, I hadn’t taken the macro lens with me that day, I returned with it the next day for this one.

Slime mold or fungi?

And, since I was already down on the ground, I shot these two also.

Lichens

Lichens

I seldom know what I’m shooting, but it always amazes me how much life fits into a small spot, and the wide variety of forms that the life comes in.

The park that I walk in around home has been decorated nicely by some of the other people who also walk there, here’s a very small sample, just because it was so cheerful.

Early Christmas cheer

I’m so easily amused, all it takes is sparkly bright colors. 😉 Or, it could be playing hide and seek with a bird that refuses to allow me to shoot its picture.

Blue jay hiding

I did much better with this red-bellied woodpecker.

Red-bellied woodpecker

Including another shot where you can see its tongue if you look closely.

Red-bellied woodpecker

I hope that this woolly bear caterpillar is wrong as far as the weather prediction!

Woolley bear caterpillar

According to folklore, if the woolly bear caterpillar has more black area than orangish-brown then the winter is going to be long, snowy and cold. If the caterpillar possesses more orangish-brown area then the winter is going to be mild. I much prefer this forecast model instead. 🙂

Woolly bear caterpillar

After the past two harsh winters, it’s hard to believe that until today, I was still finding flowers to shoot.

Dandelion flower

Dandelion flower

It’s also hard to believe that I shot this in December in Michigan.

Daddy longlegs

Okay, time for a confession, I was wrong, daddy longlegs are indeed members of the arachnid family, meaning that they are spiders. I used to think that they were, but shortly after I started blogging, I read on many other blogs that they weren’t spiders, that’s what I get for not checking that information out myself. They are part of one of the oldest families of spiders, and not as well-developed as other spiders, but they are spiders. For example, daddy longlegs have only one pair of eyes, when many of the later to develop species have up to four pairs of eyes. Other differences are that Opinions (the family of spiders that daddy longlegs are in) have no venom glands and therefore pose no danger to humans. They also have no silk glands and therefore do not build webs. Also, the feeding apparatus (stomotheca) differs from most arachnids in that Opiliones can swallow chunks of solid food, not only liquids.

With that settled, it’s time to wrap this one up, and I’ll do so with one of my attempts at a more artsy type of photo, even though it’s another one that I don’t know if I got it right or not.

Autumn colors in the winter

That’s it for this one, thanks for stopping by!

December 19, 2015 | Categories: Birds, Flowers, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Photography, Photography tips | Tags: Birds, Hiking, Insects, Nature, Nature photography, Photography, Photos, waterfowl | 26 Comments