I'm all a Flutter

Much to my delight this morning I woke to find dozens of birds and even a squirel visiting our newly installed feeder. I purchased this about a week ago and after doing some thinking decided on a location for our first feeder and put it up about 4 days ago. These critters are really our first "seen" visitors. Yesterday was the first day that I noticed seeds (black oil sunflower) were missing. What I had originally set out to do ths morning was to just see how close I could get to these chickadees, nuthatches and titmice from my windows with the 300mm. It was about 15 shots into this that I had a revelation. There were so many birs coming and going making it hard to set up on one subject. I was getting many badly composed shots. It occurred to me that I should take advantage of all of this action and try out some stop motion shooting. I have zero experience with all of this so allot of guess work and out of the wazoo thinking.

The nice part about this is that the feeder is not going anywhere and neither are the birds so I have plenty of chances to fail before I get it right. Tomorrow is always another day.




I love the action that I got on this tufted titmouse with a full wing and tail spread and a nice face view,however I failed in a few regards. Over exposed and too slow of a shutter speed to stop the wing movement completely.

Tamron 70-300mm on all of these shots. I am still waiting on the Canon 70-300mm delivered.


f 5.6
1/200 sec.
ISO-1600
WB-cloudy
160mm
freehand (no tripod)
812-Warming filter

I did manage to stop the wing motion a bit better on this titmouse but I am not liking the color composition much ... this may be due to the filter but i am not 100% sold it is? I feel it came out pretty grainy as well. I am not impressed with this one either.

f 5.6

1/2000 sec.

ISO - 1600

WB-sun

180mm

Freehand

812-Warming filter

I am not sure what happened to create the feeding frenzy for this shot but I was delighted to see all of the action! I am still seeing grain on this shot however the lighting is a tad lighter that the previous one. I just am not getting it right. I will point out that the first shot was # 1726 and this last one here is # 1905 so It is not as if I took only three shots to come to this conclusion that I need lots of advice !! Side note is that allot of the discarded photos were simply due to bad composition. I do not think that anyone is interested in seeing what a chickadees bum looks like at 300mm :)

f 5.0

1/1250 sec.

ISO 400

WB sun

160mm

Freehand

UV filter

All shots were taken from about 30-35 feet from the feeder. The good news out of this whole mess is I did manage to find out that we have a Red Bellied Woodpecker living in the forest behind the house. I did catch an action shot of it departing the feeder but it is a bit blurry and did not want to post until I could capture a better shot. Of course if I get bored later, you may just see it anyway !

Please post comments if you have any advice that can help :)

The Iceman taketh away

For those of you who took a look at the last post and thought to yourselves.... hey picture taking blogging guy, why not just shoot a little later in the aftenoon when the sun will dance on the ice like Katarina Witt?

I tried just this very scenario about 10 minutes ago, the result is below....

While this was not the shot I was looking for this was a very fun pic to grab. "If you click the image and look at the blow up" you can actually count the rings of the droplets as they form and seperate.

f/5.6

1/800 sec.

ISO-200

148mm from about 5 feet to focal point.

Tamron 70-300mm lens without IS (image stabilizer)

Tiffen 812-Warming filter

No Tripod

I have to say, the tri/monopod is going to make shooting this sort of shot so much cleaner and stable.

Washout Blues

How do you shoot a white on white or, a tone on a tonal backround without getting a washout effect that is just bland and oh so vanilla while also keeping the subtle color variations?

This was shot at 11:30 this morning with the sun diffused by disiduous sugar maple branches.

Using the Tamron lens with no filter today:




I shot this one at what I would have shot a colorful backround in the same lighting.

f/4
1/125
ISO-100
WB-shade
70mm

I am wondering if I had used the warming filter if this shot would have popped ?




I shot this one with a little tweaking which I think came out better but I would have liked a little more Sparkle to the picture. It lost a little lustre while picking up the shadows, color accents in the sunlight and details in the ice itself.

f/6.3
1/400
ISO-100
WB/sun
70mm

Walk in the Town Forest

So here we go. I would like to present my pictures in a format that is inquisitive and maybe even for some a little informative. I am looking for folks kind enough to visit to both offer insight and advice as well as some visitors to have the ability to share the learning exprience by picking up a trick or two.

This little guy was a great model. I snapped over 100 shots at different settings. I used full auto mode first, out of fear he would fly off on me at the first snap but, as I rapid shot again and again he turned and preened more and more so I became a little daring and started to make adjustments in manual mode. In Auto focus I found the lens having too much trouble determining what the subject actually was as the AF setting is determined to grab hold of the absolute nearest image. The other issue was that I had the metered AF setting actuated as well. What the metered setting does is pick one of seven set points and focus on the nearest point regardless of the users subject. (In certain circumstances you can be creative with this feature by centering on the subject and locking the focus and then recomposing to offset your subject giving you a great creative effect, it can be a great feature just not in this particular application.) When trying to focus through a spiderweb of branches with these settings and the subsequent issues that ensue, you only have one choice if you want any chance at a great shot. Manual!! Believe it or not this little Chickadee was behind several of the branches similar to the ones that you see him standing on. With the settings chosen I was able to focus down to the point of them being nearly invisible or giving the appearance that they are actually in the backround to the picture feild.

I had several botched shots that I should have kept for this purpose but I deleted without thinking of this use for them. After all this is the point of the blog yes? Snap a picture, learn and show the "mistakes" as well as the "sucess".

Here is the quick and dirty on this shot as my offering for this subject.

EOS Rebel XS
Tamron 70-300mm (non IS)
Tiffen Circular Polarizing filter
f /5.6
1/250 sec.
ISO-800
WB was set to cloudy as it was a tad overcast.
Fully extended to 300mm
Free handed holding the camera.

The subject was about 8-9 feet away with the late afternoon sun over his left shoulder as you are looking at him. (I was standing on a waterfall wall) and had limited positioning options.

I find the color dull and perhaps a bit washed out with my settings/filter choice. The branch in front of his head (if you look at the back of his neck and up to the crown of his head) was not fully focused out of the picture leaving a fuzzy edge to the upper portion of the shot.

Canon EF and EF-S Lenses explained

As some of you may or may not have noted, I have two canon lenses listed. one of these (70-300mm) is an "EF" while the other (18-55mm) is isted as an "EF-S". I thought there might be some confusion as I had at first in whether these two different style lenses were compatable with my particular body camera. My concerns were dashed, in doing some research I found that both styles are compatable with my EOS XS body and both have substancial pros as well as cons to consider before making the decision to purchase. My Tamron 70-300mm macro telephoto is an EF mount.


Pre 2003, all Canon camera's were compatible with a standardised EF lens. EF stands for electofocus and refers to its lens mount. You can recognise EF lenses by its red dot, where you line up the dot on the lens mount to a similar looking one on the camera body.

However, if your Canon camera lens has both a red dot and a white square to line up the body to when mounting the lens, then it is an EF-S lens. EF-S is stands for 'short back focus'. EF-S lenses were first developed in 2003, when Canon bought out its EOS 300D/Digital Rebel/Kiss range of digital SLR cameras.


What are the main differences between an EF and EF-S lens?

•The differences between the two lenses are purely cosmetic. The EF-S lens has been made to sit deeper into the camera's body when connected. Hence the reason EF-S stands for short back focus, as there is less space between the lens and the sensor.


•The idea behind developing EF-S lenses in the first place, was to create a more cost effective solution (especially when talking about wide angle zoom lens), aimed at the mid range SLR camera user. Therefore, this is usually considered a good thing as far as beginners are concerned.


•Many experts have noticed no differences in the end result of the actual photograph.



Are there any disadvantages to EF-S lens?

•The main disadvantage to using an EF-S lens is that they are only compatible with Canon EOS cameras that contain both a red dot and a white square on the lens mount. The red dot means the camera supports EF-S lenses. Whereas the white square means it also supports a standard EF lens. Therefore, if in future you want to upgrade your digital SLR camera to a more professional model, you may need to also replace any lens that is an EF-S model



Considering this limitation, should you buy an EF-S lens?

•If cost is the main consideration when purchasing a quality lens, then yes certainly think about purchasing an EF-S lens. Personally I believe my EF-S 18-55MM f4-5.6 IS USM is a great multi purpose lens with no bad traits to note so far. I find this particular EF-S lens to be very sharp and high quality. When compared to Canon's L (professional) series, it was very low cost as well. Especially for someone first starting out in SLR photography.


•As explained earlier, if you're planning to upgrade your camera to a more professional body any time in the future, then you may want to stick to buying an EF lens, for compatibility reasons. EF lenses are compatible with all Canon EOS camera bodies. Whereas, EF-S is only compatible with mid range camera's (EOS 20D and Digital Rebel bodies) that support them.



How to know if your camera is compatible with an EF-S lens?

•Have a look on your camera where the lens mounts onto the body. If you see a red cirlce and a white dot / square, then your camera is compatible with the Canon standard EF as well as the EF-S lenses.

Getting started

Okay so I am delving into the world of D-SLR. I have owned and used a Nikon N60 for about 10 years. As the digital era came upon me I fought it for a while and then my amazing wife purchased me a canon Powershot digital ELPH SD630. I was aprehensive at first but, I bought right into it and took over 1000 pictures (much to all of travel companions dismay) with it on our first trip to Disney. I have been waiting for the prices of the D-SLR's to drop to a "reasonable" cost. I am not sure they are there fully, yet but, I am not so sure they ever will be as cheap as I am :) So we bit the bullet and purchased some equipment. Here is what we have to get started with.



I am using the following equipment:

Body :

Canon EOS REBEL XS 10.1 MP


Lenses:

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS (purchased with the body above as a kit)

Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 Di LD macro zoom lens

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Telephoto zoom lens

Filters:

Tiffen UV Protector

Tiffen 812 Warming

Tiffen Circular Polarizer

Tripod:

Vista Explorer 60" lightweight with 4x leveling capability.

Monopod:

Dolica WT-1003 67" lightweight ( I need to purchase a ballhead quick release but have no idea where to start on this and am open to budget minded suggestions)

Flash:

I have not made a flash purchase yet. I am leaning towards the 430EX II for cost purposes however, I am out of dinero at this point and may be looking at a birthday gift to expand on this portion of my toolbox :)

Other gadgets:

At this time I only have a Tamrac bag to carry the body with one lens (even at that the zooms are locked at 70mm)

I am open to suggestion and recomendation for alternative equipment or additions to the arsenal. I will be pretty satisfied with the 18mm setting for the time being but next year may want to explore the possibilies of dabbling in the fisheye realm.