Whistling Kite gone fishin…. and punk spider snacking

[Dennis]

Hello,

With my EM200 mount temporarily out of commission whilst the control box is back with Takahashi in Japan for repair, I’ve turned my hand to a bit of day time photography. Here are a few birds in flight shots from Tangalooma on Moreton Island and my latest backyard macro from today.

In-flight shots with 7D and 300mm F4 L. Macro with 100mm F2.8 lens.

Thanks for looking!

Cheers

Dennis

[RickS]

Some great shots there, Dennis!

[Larryp]

Great photos!

[leon]

Some beautiful captures Dennis, its good to do something different at times, well done.

Leon

[lacad01]

Great shot of the spider :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Rick, Laurie, Leon and Adam, I appreciate your comments.:)

@Leon – not quite as big as your recent B52 and C17 subjects from Darwin eh!;)

Cheers

Dennis

[FlashDrive]

Great Photos ... very sharp and clear.
Especially like Photo 4 of the Bird ...looking down ..!!

Flash ..!! :hi:

[leon]

Na mate, not quite, :lol: but excellent captures. :thumbsup:

Leon :thumbsup:

[iceman]

Holy cow, stunning images.

Love #3 and the last one.

[ourkind]

Beautiful images I went straight for spidey and I thought it was awesome, but I wasn't expecting the others to be jaw dropping as well !!!!

[firstlight]

Spectacular images Dennis. I don't know how you do it but you keep raising the bar every session. Love the shot with the fish, the spider is cool, but hte first image is marginally at number 1 for me.

[Osirisra]

Nice Shots!

[Dennis]

Thanks Col, Leon, Mike, Carlos, Tony and Ken, for your nice words of appreciation.:)

A nice white lens with a red ring, the AF on the 7D and the strong headwind that restricted the birds to manageable regions of airspace really helped for this session, not forgetting the important ingredient of plain good luck!;)

I stuffed up the Manual settings on some of the in-flight shots. Adobe Lightroom indicates that they were 1 ½ stops underexposed, so I was lucky to pull out the detail from the shadows without too much loss of image quality.

It is an excellent location to practice BIF photography as the Kites tend to loiter over the jetty at Tangalooma where the local staff feed the Pelicans and sometimes the Kites get scraps of fish too.

Increasingly a flotilla of Pied Cormorants attend the Pelican feeding sessions and on this occasion, a Pelican grabbed a Corm in its beak and forced the poor creature to give up its fish!

Cheers

Dennis

[Derek Klepp]

That last pic is a ripper

[Dennis]

Thanks Derek – it’s good to see native Australian birds consuming native Australian flora and spreading the seeds accordingly!

Cheers

Dennis

[AstroJason]

Amazing shots Dennis!!! Jaw dropping stuff. All so sharp and crisp! How cool is the spiders little mohawk hairdo?!

[gary]

Hi Dennis,

Only got around to looking at these now but these would stand easily against
the highest quality wildlife images from somewhere like the BBC Natural History Unit.

5 stars.

Best Regards

Gary

[Dennis]

Thanks Gary – I appreciate your nice comments, despite the consequential, self-conscious blushes!:)

Cheers

Dennis

[Deeno]

Stunning collection of images!
Truly top shelf.....

[multiweb]

They are all unbelievably sharp and in focus. The spider and the last one are amazing. :thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thank you Deeno and Marc, I appreciate your comments and am pleased that you enjoyed the photos!:)

Cheers

Dennis

[RB]

Incredible, so sharp.
Lovely work Dennis.
The kids loved the last one when I showed them.
You should have heard their reaction !

:thumbsup:

[Dennis]

Thanks Andrew, lovely to hear from you and I’m pleased that your children enjoyed the last image – that shot was a very lucky grab and I was very pleased with how it turned out.:)

Cheers

Dennis

[jjjnettie]

I love your work so much Dennis.
These are so beautiful. You have that magic touch with your captures.

[Dennis]

Thanks Jeanette, I appreciate your lovely comments. With the controller of my Tak EM200 mount still in Japan for repair, it is nice to have a day time hobby too, especially one that involves optics!;)

Cheers

Dennis

[spearo]

Well done Dennis
Love the BIF series.


Were they freehand or off a tripod?
Can I ask what settings you used onthe BIF?
ISO/speed/ap etc
thanks
frank

[Dennis]

Hi Frank

Thanks for your words of appreciation!

This series were all free-hand. In terms of camera settings, as a starting point I began with the traditional “Sunny 16 Rule” which harks back to the days of film photography before through-the-lens metering (TTL) became popular.

It goes something like this. On a sunny day and with an ISO 100 film in the camera, you set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed equal to 1/100 (i.e. the reciprocal of the ISO rating of the film). The closest setting my 35mm film cameras had to 1/100 sec was 1/125 second so I generally used 1/125.

The constraints was that it had to be a sunny day and between say 10:00am and 2:00pm (brightest daylight), otherwise you would have to modify your exposure settings to take into account the different lighting encountered in the early morning, evening or when shooting in shadows.

This led me to base my (manual) setting for birds-in-flight at 1/1600 sec, ISO 400 and F5.6. If I left the camera in an auto-exposure mode (P, Tv, A), it would generally tend to expose for the bright background skies leaving the bird either severely underexposed or even rendering it as a silhouette.

I usually start at this setting and check the histogram and then adjust accordingly for dark birds against a bright sky or lighter toned birds against dark foliage etc. The Whistling Kite series were taken with the 300mm F4 and I used 1/2000 at F5.6 with ISO 400 on that particular day.

Cheers

Dennis

[spearo]

Thanks Dennis
much appreciated
cheers
frank