What’s Up?
After a great day’s rest I am getting up early to do the Inca Tern/Peruvian Pelican day trip. And purchase a rain top for the trip.
Gear Questions and Advice
Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of the folks whom I see in the field, and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear, especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
The Streak: 336!
Today’s blog post marks a totally insane, irrational, illogical, preposterous, absurd, completely ridiculous, unfathomable, silly, incomprehensible, what’s wrong with this guy?, makes-no-sense, 336 days in a row with a new educational blog post. There should be no end in sight until my big South America trip next fall. Or not… As always-–and folks have been doing a really great job recently–-please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. For best results use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the new BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would appreciate your business.
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 800 Image #1: Pectoral Sandpiper, juvenile in golden light.
|
Thanks Dan!
Dan Cadieux, a Canadian federal government employee, lives with his wife Chantal in Ottawa Canada. He is the proud father of two boys and two girls and an avid bird/nature photographer in his free time. He is a skilled, hard-working moderator in the Avian Forum at Bird Photographers.Net. As of 1:54 pm on September 21, 2016 he had started 2928 threads and posted 20,903 comments. Many of his threads include one of his great images posted for critiquing. In most of the comments he is critiquing the work of others telling what he likes, what he does not like, and offering suggestions for improvement. He is an invaluable member of the BPN staff. You can learn more about Dan here.
You can see more of Dan’s old 7D images here and learn about his post-processing here, both on the BAA Blog.
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #2: Eastern Kingbird, pair at nest.
|
Today’s Cadieux Collection
Today’s collection of excellent and beautiful Dan Cadieux images were all created at ISOs of 800 or higher with the Canon EOS-7D Mark II, often noted as being very poor at the higher ISOs. How do Dan’s images look to you? Best advice: expose to the right! Remember, it ain’t the lens and it ain’t the camera body. It’s what’s in the head, mind, and heart of the person holding the gear.
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 800 Image #3: Semipalmated Sandpiper, juvenile.
|
Your Favorite?
Please leave a comment letting us know which two of Dan’s images you like best. And feel free to leave a question for Dan.
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 800 Image #4: Cedar Waxwing, high key.
|
Dan and the Old 7D
If you missed the gallery of Dan’s image created with the original notoriously bad Canon EOS 7D, you can view it here.
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #5: Spotted Sandpiper, juvenile teetering with tail raised
|
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #6: Semipalmated Sandpiper, juvenile flapping after bath–high key.
|
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #7: Veery.
|
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #8: American Tree Sparrow
|
|
|
|
This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 800 Image #9: Bohemian Waxwings
|
Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂
To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.
As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.
Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack!
Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right 🙂
Cedar Waxwing high key. It takes my breath away.
I enjoy reading about how you make your images and now how you process them. Thank you.
All Great Images! My very favourite is the American Tree Sparrow.
Great images by Dan as always! I especially like the high key cedar waxwing. I don’t know why so many people get down on high key images. They are always high on my list.
It is interesting, I checked my bookmarks and still have his tutorial bookmarked on using the original 7D. It’s not generally about the gear, it’s the photographer. Make the best images you can with the equipment you can afford.
With photography skills like this, why in the world is Dan wasting his time working for the Canadian government? Same thing was true of Artie working as a school teacher — way back when.
Amazing images… I loved all of them..
Dan always enjoyed your work on Naturescapes and after seeing these they are all great Love em all
Fredster
My two favorites are the Pectoral Sandpiper for light, color, and composition and the pair of Bohemian Waxwings for the interesting subject positioning, soft light, and overall picture.
Side note – I got my car stuck in snow on a roadside cliff in North Truro, Massachusetts when a flock of Bohemians came south. Snow goes from a car-pliable mush to solid pretty quick around sunset in February, but I got my life bird(s). Fantastic bird.
Dan’s work reminds me of how I am floored by your work in The Art of Bird Photography I & II. You did great things with film, as he has done with the 7D (and now the 7D II) and it really does come down to proper exposure.
Masterful use of the post-processing tools helps, as exhibited by Dan and yourself, in expanding the quality of the image. I am also amazed at how you and probably Dan, can perform these edits lightning fast. As Glen mentioned, I would be interested in knowing if Dan’s workflow has changed.
Lastly, I am time-and-time again convinced that micro-adjusting lenses is the real deal, and it is something I will be purchasing and practicing.
Great work Dan and thanks for giving Artie permission to share.
Hey Scott, thanks, and you are welcome! See my reply to Glen re: workflow. You are correct that good post-processing is important to make an image shine, but as Artie says, and I agree with him, is that you need a good file to work on. “Junk in – Junk out” were his words, and the trash bin gets filled with those rather than attempted rescuing 🙂
BTW, those Bohemian Waxwings were taken during my very first outing with the 7DII back in January – what a great species to have show up to christen the new camera!
They are all great images. No need to point out a favorite as the reason for differentiating them is inconsequential.
Amazing images!!!!
The Kingbirds are my favorite. Quite a photograph!!!
JT
In my experience, ETTR is definitely necessary to get this kind of results with the 7Dii. Is Dan using the same RAW development and processing workflow that he used with his 7D images, or has he adopted Arash’s DPP workflow? These are gorgeous images and reflect amazing field craft and artistic talent. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Glen, thanks! I’m still pretty much using the same RAW workflow as before, but with a few tweaks in settings as I now use LR6 and CS6 and they have different, often better, algorithms than the versions I previously used. I have never used DPP, so I can’t comment on that.
Thanks for the reply above and here, Dan.
I did spend a little bit of time on your blog, which is another great resource for photography and practical things like wearing long sleeves and pants; how is your elbow, by the way?
I’ve seen Artie using the trackpad on his MacBook to make edits and I have been floored by the proficiency and accuracy of those edits. These are things I would only attempt with a stylus pen or very awkwardly with a mouse. What input device do you use when making your edits?
There are a lot of northern originating birds that I would love to come up and attempt to see; Snowy Owls and Bohemians are still local rarities for me without some driving. Gyrfalcon would be a great sight, too.
The elbow is 100% back to normal. It took a few weeks, even after the prescription, for the swelling to fully subside, but all’s well now. As for editing, I just use a good old fashioned mouse. I do work zoomed in big for better accuracy. We’re pretty anxious to see what this winter will bring us up here, it’s never the same two years in a row!
Oh, and thanks for visiting my blog too – it’s not updated nearly as often as Artie’s, but I do enjoy working on it when I do post something new.