Another attempt at wildlife

[Monza76]

Look at picture 2 and 3 again, these were shot at full speed on continuous. Gannets sometimes make less than elegant landings, shot number 2 is braking for landing, shot number three is using the cliff to stop forward motion. I don't know how they keep from falling off the ledges (450' above the water).

Harriet, I used your DS and shot a combination of metering from the mass of birds on the top of the stack and then going one stop under. That way I didn't end up blowing all of the highlights.

The cheap FA lens I was using works very well in most circumstances but here it was prone to fringing because of the extreme contrast. One of my companions had an Olympus 50-200mm f2.8-3.5, his was sharper with better colour ($1000 lens vs $250 lens) but even with his 2.0 crop factor he only had a 400mm equivalent compared with 450mm, not a lot but still enough for extra detail.

Overall it was a great day, 3.5 hours at the sanctuary and then caught the moose on the way home. BTW, of the first group of shots, onlynumber 1 was cropped a little, that will tell you just how close we really were to the animals.

Thanks for the comments.

Ira

[thekman620]

Good shooting Ira. Love that 2nd shot.....and the moose. We don't see either of these on this coast. I used that 100-300 a couple of years ago, and it is a pretty decent lens. Only real bad part was like you said about fringing. Look forward to seeing more wildlife...cheers...Don

[Dal1970]

Great shots Ira.



Love the moose...



You and your companions are waaay closer to the edge than I would go (hate heights) - but proves its worth by the shots you produce.





Dal

[inneyeseakay]

Wonderfully done series... I really like how you caught the bird landing in number two. Great set!

Nick

[ennacac]

You have to love that DS Ira, very nice shots of the birds landing and the Moose is great.

Tom

[danielchtong]

Monza76 wrote:

Yes there is some fringing and they aren't all sharp. The Gannets were shot at the Cape St. Mary's bird sanctuary, the moose was munching at the side of the Trans Canada highway (uncropped).

Ira

Ira,
Love your wildlife shots. Did a quick search on 'Cape St. Mary' Wow it is cool place to see and certainly one of the unspoiled corner of Canada if not the world. You cannot blame the lens given the harsh lighting and contrast condition. Your buddies with Olympus may not be doing that much better.
Thanks for sharing the pict and info'

Daniel

[kashka]

Nice shots,Ira...I really like #2..the way you caught him coming in for touchdown :-)..and of course I am partial to moose shots..as they are one of my favorite subjects up in Riding Mountain Park here in Manitoba..Keep them coming!
lisa

[mtngal]

Ira - glad you've had so much fun with that DS (I know I sure did)- I still occasionally regret selling it instead of the K100. Keep posting pictures!

[bilybianca]

Ira, you haven't posted much lately, but when you finally do - WOW. Of course I'm a little biased towards the... ...elk.:-)But honestly the Gannet shots are more thrilling with all the action. And getting depth in landscape pictures is something you master better than most photographers.

Kjell

[Monza76]

Thanks all,

The old FA 100-300mm does fine if you know its limitations, in this case the fringing and a tendency to overexpose. The fringing is relatively minor and the overexposure was cured with a simple adjustment of -1.0EV and meter on the mass of white birds.

Kjell, I don't know if this fits with your comment but I hardly ever take horizontal landscape shots anymore, I tip the camera into vertical ("portrait") position and then try to get enough foreground into the picture to give it some reference in space. It works much better for me than the traditional methods that I could never seem to get right.

BTW my total count for that day was over 400 shots (most are trash).

Ira