Imaging the Natural World

Albuquerque & Santa Fe

I attended a Canon arranged trip to Albuquerque and Santa Fe this past week. A group of us flew in on Tuesday and enjoyed a welcome dinner at our hotel in Albuquerque. We were all issued the new Canon 7D digital camera  and were able to choose from a wide variety of Canon lenses and accessories for our use for the next several days. I brought many of my own lenses with me so chose the 400mm DO optic. We spent the remainder of the evening being trained on the Canon 7D’s many functions. There will be much more on the camera and my impressions using it in a future post.

On Wednesday morning we were given briefings on the Canon Pixma desktop printers. Following lunch we were bussed to the Evans Movie Ranch in Santa Fe for an afternoon of shooting with the equipment. At the ranch we had access to all the buildings and Canon had arranged for several models in full western cowboy(girl) gear.

Evans Movie Ranch Desperado

On Thursday morning we received briefings on the Canon ipf professional ink jet printers and spent the remainder of the day printing images on the Pixma and ipf 24 inch printers.

That evening we were treated to a wonderful farewell dinner at the El Pinto restaurant.  There we were entertained by the operations director with a discussion of tequilas and a tequila tasting.  He also detailed the restaurant’s development and their extensive chile growing and processing.

Friday was the scheduled fly-out date but I arranged for an extra day’s stay in Albuquerque’s  old town district.

Old Town Albuquerque Shops

Super Telephoto Techniques

Canon 600mm f/4.0 IS

My first results with the Canon 600mm lens were a large disappointment not due to the lens but due to my lack of experience with the super  telephoto class of lens. With a little research I discovered that much of what  I thought I knew about obtaining sharp images was no longer appropriate.

Depth of Field Calculator for Your iPhone

Using depth of field as a creative tool in photography can make the diffenrece between a snap-shot and a photograph. Unfortuantely, the depth of field infromation that was once engraved on lens barrels has pretty much gone the way of the dinos in modern lenses. Instead the information is usually provided in tabular form with the instructions that are packed with the lens. You know, the piece of paper that often gets tossed out or lost.

There are several on-line depth of field calculators available but unless you are lugging your laptop with you along with your tripod and other gear, they really don’t help very much.  Enter the applications for the iPhone. An iTunes search will turn up several applications costing between $.99 and $3.99.

I really like the design of the f/8 DOF Calculator. It allows you to build a “camera” bag with the specific camera bodies and lenses that are part of your actual equipment. The camera body is simply selected from a drop down list. My Canon 1D MarkIII and D30 bodies were included. The lenses in your camera bag are created by specifying their maximum and minimum focal lengths, maximum aperture and closest focusing distance.

Main Display Page

Once entered, you simply select the body and lens combination you are using and use sliders to enter the data necessary to compute the depth of field. Buttons at the bottom of the main page let you select f/stop increments, distance units and scale. Everything you need to take advantage of depth  of field is calculated by this handy application.

Since I always have my iPhone with me things could not be more convenient.

Training Flights

Most wildlife photographers are not fortunate enough to earn their living by pursuing their passion, but that doesn’t mean they are not just as serious about making the most of an opportunity when it arises. The quandary we face is how to maintain the intimate familiarity with our camera equipment that wildlife photography demands when we can’t devote full time to the pursuit.

In my opinion there is little photography more demanding of equipment and the photographer’s familiarity with it than bird photography, particularly birds in flight. Like many endeavors, practice is key. Here in Southeastern Connecticut we are fortunate to have an abundance of osprey. These beautiful birds provide me with my training flights.

I currently shoot with a Canon 1D MarkIII coupled through a 1.4X multiplier to a 600mm f/4.0 lens. All this mounted on a Wimberly head. See my earlier post on the advantages of the Wimberly. Not only have I become familiar with my equipment while practicing on the ospreys, I have also learned, from hours of observation, how to improve my chances of  capturing images .

Large birds like the osprey behave much like aircraft when taking off and landing.

Osprey Landing Into the Wind With Dinner

 If the prevailing wind is in your face, you will have many opportunities for images like the one below. While great practice with your equipment, it hardly makes a satisfying image.

Besides observing the wind direction paying close attention to the the birds behavior can also bring dividends. While watching nesting pairs of osprey I have learned to pay careful attention to the bird in the nest.

Arriving With Dinner

Long before I am aware of the approaching mate, the behavior of  the bird signals its pending arrival. The added warning  gives me the just the time I need to prepare for the incoming landing. I take advantage of the pre-set focus capability of my 600mm lens to quickly prepare the camera for the birds arrival.

Pulling the Trigger

Confrontation Over Fishing Rights

I have had the great fortune of two separate visits to McNeil River Game Sanctuary in Alaska to photograph the brown bears. Both of those visits were in the era before digital photography had come of age. Besides the cost of the trip, there were severe weight restrictions for each passenger on the DeHaviland Otter that flew us to the camp site. All camping equipment and food as well as photographic equipment had to be brought in for the week-long visit and the state recommended carrying an additional week’s supply of food in case the plane could not return on schedule to pick us up.

While film weight was not a big factor, the cost of film and the fact that any resupply was at best 100 air miles away from camp certainly was a concern.  I don’t recall how many rolls of chrome film I brought with me on each of the trips, but I do remember anguishing over how many of each emulsion type and ISO rating to include.

When I actually got to shooting, I was always faced with decisons on which film to load and then the more daunting prospect of having to cut back on my shooting when I realized that half way through the vistit I had chewed up more than two thirds of my film. This made pulling the trigger a difficult decision and I had to begin passing up great shots in the hopes that something better was yet to come.

I See You Says One Cub at McNeil River

I would welcome an opportuntiy to visit McNeil River again with my digital equipment.  Just think of some of the great advantages the digital era has brought. Instead of carrying multiple film types, I can now dial in an appropriate ISO for the situation at hand .  As my flash card fills with images, I can delete the “losers” and make more room for “keepers”.  As the cards  further fill up, I can transfer the images to a portable storage device and reuse  the cards.

The digital world has indeed freed me from the anquish associated with tough decisions when faced with limited supplies of film and once-in-a-lifetime photographic opportunities like those at McNeil River. That being said, for photographers like me that have only recently weaned away from film, pulling the trigger still presents challenges, but that is yet another tale.

The Wimberly Tripod Head

Last night I was enjoying an old  (May 1988) copy of my favorite photographic magazine “Outdoor Photographer” . I always marvel at the change in equipment that time has wrought. This issue didn’t even mention the word digital let alone have any digital camera ads!  

An article that I found particularly interesting was written by Frank Oberle on his techniques and equipment for capturing eagles in flight. What I focused on was not the camera or lens that he used at the time, but instead his preference for the use of a pan head over a ball head tripod head for his long lens . It made me think how much I have taken for granted the contribution of my gimbaled Wimbelry head to successful in-flight bird photography.

I use the Wimberly to mount a 600 mm f/4.0 Canon lens and would be lost without it.  As much as it helps in obtaining photographs of birds in flight, it gives great peace of mind regarding control of that heavy lens. Before acquiring the Wimberly, I too used a three axis pan head and found that with careful tension on each axes, I could track moving birds but the fear was always that I would lose control of the forward-heavy lens and have it crash against the tripod or even worse the ground. This concern was always a distraction when I was shooting. The beauty of the gimbaled mount is that when properly balanced, the lens/camera assembly simply “floats” with no fear of loss of control.  An added benefit is that it allows swift and smooth tracking of animals in motion in all three axes.