What’s Up?
I am somewhere in South America. I hope that you are well. Jim and Jen are at the office most days to help you with your mail order needs and Instructional Photo-Tour sign-ups. I still need folks for San Diego, Japan, Galapagos, the Palouse, and the Bear Boat (Grizzly Cubs) trips. Among others 🙂 Please e-mail for couples and discount info for all of the above. Click here for complete IPT info.
I will have intermittent internet access for the rest of my South American adventure. I get back home late on December 25, 2016. Best and great picture making, artie
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: 374!
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, 374 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.
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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: Bufflehead drake
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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.
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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 #2: Bufflehead drake head
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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.
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This image was created by Dan Cadieux with the hand held Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L Macro IS USM lens and the greatest ever value in a digital DSLR, the Canon EOS 7D Mark II. ISO 1600 Image #3: Hummingbird Moth
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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.
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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 800 Image #4: Northern Pintail drake
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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: Pine siskin diving!
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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 #6: Purple Finch females
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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: Snowy Owl on post
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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 3200 Image #8: Snowy Owl in flight right at you
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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 #9: White Admiral Butterfly
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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 🙂
Thanks as always to all who commented. And again to Dan for sharing his work. Don’t forget that you can see lots more of Dan’s work on BPN have hi him comment on your images as well.
For me, the diving siskin is beyond amazing … And yes, Neat Image rocks!
a–briefly online in Lima
Love the Snow owl in flight most. Gives me encouragement that I can create similar images down her in South Africa as I have exact same equipment (bought after 3 months of investigation and at that time Artie’s use of same camera and positive vibes on the tool). I believe I have created similar spectacular, but more noisy than Dan’s. Could be my Lightroom workflow. This blog has shown some directions to investigate. Thanks Dan, Also Artie for giving different photographers some space on your blog. I think we would all love the new 5IV but this shows we do not have to lust that much. My only gripe with the 7DII is the jump in auto-focus points when moving from one zone to to next (Artie has complained about this before). Does Canon not yet have a software upgrade for this.
Daniel,
Marvelous images, I specially like the one of the owl flying towards you. I see that one is at ISO 3200, I have a 5D MK3 and looking for more reach thus considering the 7D mK2 but was concern about the ISO noise. After looking at your images not anymore. They are very very good.
spectacular!!! so glad i have the same camera, thanks to Artie!
All fabulous images, these! However, the exposure settings are not revealed. Dan, do you shoot in manual mode, or any other?
Thank you Ajit. Yes, all of these were in manual mode.
These are all so beautiful. There is no way to choose two. And something new for me–I had no idea buffleheads had such beautiful iridescent feathers. They just look black from a distance.
These are all so beautiful. There is no way to choose two. And something new for me–I had no idea buffleheads had such beautiful iridescent feathers. They just look black from a distance.
Dan,your images make the holidays more joyful.
Thank you John.
Wonderful pictures Dan! I also shoot with a 7D Mk II on similar subject matter, mostly shorebirds, ducks and wading birds here in Nova Scotia (birds we have to work for, not like those lucky guys in Florida!). I routinely shoot at ISO 800 and above without thinking about it due to needing higher shutter speeds with my handheld Sigma 150-600 F6.3. I am keenly aware of all the negative publicity about the 7D’s poor ISO performance and for the first few months after I traded my old 7D for the new 7D Mk II, I was disappointed as well in the ISO performance. That is until I took Artie’s advice and ran my images into Canon’s DPP 4 software first before moving on to Lightroom. What I inadvertently found was that Adobe’s Lightroom hasn’t got a clue how to handle the inherent noise in the RAW 7D Mk II images! I found that 7D Mk II images taken straight into Lightroom were terribly noisy and thus required extensive work to try to improve them. However, if taken into DPP 4 first and saved off to TIFF before Lightroom the Canon software took care of the noise beautifully. Also, when I attempted to apply Artie’s recommended ISO noise adjustments in DPP 4 – per Artie’s and Arash’s DPP 4 guide – the recommended ISO settings for the Mk II were already defaulted! Therefore very little if any noise adjustments were needed. Now, I mostly just touch up the exposure and maybe white balance, accept the defaults for noise and save to TIFF before moving the image to Lightroom for cataloging and/or further tweaks. This works well for me and I have much less frustration. Now if I could figure out how to magically correct for camera shake……
I’m pretty sure Daniel uses (or did) use Lightroom as his primary digital workflow. So as the point of Daniels gallery and ISO 800 or higher has less to do with noise removal as does exposing well to the right in camera. Any tips Daniel might have for any noise removal of these beautiful images shared here would be good (if much). But I’m guessing it’s more about getting more data in the fifth box of the histogram with out major clipping for better exposure especially at higher ISO’s then it is noise removal software. If your images are consistently noisy, perhaps its due more to under-exposure then camera/ software.
That being said, Canons DPP is excellent software, but as for Noise removal (and Arash agrees) Neat Image is one of the best noise removal programs available, regardless what camera you use. An excellent Photoshop/ Lightroom Plug-in.
Hi Paul, and Bobby, thanks! I do use Lightroom (but not for noise reduction – I use Noiseware plug-in for that), and have yet to try DPP. Believe it or not, I only use noise reduction, if needed, on the out-of-focus backgrounds and foregrounds, almost never on the subject or perch. The link that Artie included above to my post-processing describes my workflow more in detail, and although it was with the old 7D it pretty much remains the same with the 7DII, except ISO 1600 is the new ISO 800 🙂
Dan, thank you for these beautiful images! A lovely Thanksgiving present.
Glad you like them. Happy Thanksgiving! You guys celebrate it late, or perhaps it’s us that are early!