Stuff
Nothing too exciting on Thursday. I worked on blog posts, got some lodging work done for the Bear Boat IPT, enjoyed a nice, easy 1/2 mile swim, and had my chiropractor TJ McKeon work on both shoulders for a bit. Shopped and did my meditation walk at Publix. And again I ate well.
Mongoose M3.6 Heads in Stock
For the first time in months, we have Mongoose M3.6 heads in stock. We got our hands on six the other day; three were already accounted for and we sold another one yesterday. Call Jim at 863-692-0906 to order yours.
The Streak
Just in case you have not been counting, today makes 10 days in a row with a new educational blog post 🙂
Booking.Com
I could not secure the lodging that I needed for the UK Puffins and Gannets IPT in Dunbar so I went from Hotels.Com to Booking.Com and was pleasantly surprised. I found the rooms that I needed with ease at a hotel that was not even on Hotels.Com, and it was a nice hotel that I had seen in person. And the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward.
Canon EOS 80D Questions
Is anyone out there using a Canon EOS 80D? I never heard of it until five minutes ago. If you are using one or know anything about this camera body, I would love for you to leave a comment sharing what you know. How does it compare to the 7D II? How is the AF system for birds in flight? It seems to have a lot of fancy features that I would never use …
Gear Questions and Advice
Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of 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.
Please Don’t Forget …
As always–and folks have been doing a really great job for a long time now–please remember to use the BAA B&H links for your major and minor 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 BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would of course appreciate your business.
New Used Gear Listing
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Skilled photographer and BirdPhotographer.Net Avian Forum moderator Marina Scarr is offering a well-used (208,000 actuations) Canon EOS-1D Mark IV in excellent plus condition for the record-low-by-far BAA bargain price of $749. Having been covered by a protector screen, the rear LCD is in perfect shape as is the exterior of the body. There is a scratch on the focusing screen that does not affect the images or the performance of the camera. The sale includes the original box and everything that came in it as well as insured ground shipping via major courier to U.S. addresses. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.
Please contact Marina via e-mail or by phone at 813-263-4040 (Eastern time).
Two dependable, rugged 1D Mark IVs served as my workhorse professional bodies for several years; I really enjoyed their 1.3X crop factors, the fast frame rate, and the excellent image quality. Note: both of my 1D IV bodies had in excess of 300,000 clicks when I sold them years ago. artie
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This image was created on the first morning of the Finland IPT from a small blind with the Wimberley V2 Tripod Head-mounted Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens and my favorite bird photography camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +3 1/3 stops off the snow: 1/320 sec. at f/4.5 in Manual mode. AWB. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: -3. Center AF Point/AI Servo/Expand/Shutter button AF was active at the moment of exposure. The selected AF point was on the top of the folded wing below the upper back, right on the same plane as the bird’s eye. Black Grouse displaying |
Plus 3 1/3 Stops Off the Snow?
Yes sir. Yes ma’am. That’s what we needed to get a decent amount of data into the rightmost box of the histogram. Without blowing out any of the white feathers. At times, that yielded a very few blinkies on the snow: perfect. And here is a Manual mode reminder: the huge advantage of working in Manual mode in this situation, with the constant soft light, is that the size of the nearly all blue-black subject in the frame did not matter. If you were in an automatic mode like Av or Tv the size of the subject in the frame would have a huge impact on the exposure reading. When working in Manual mode you can just set it and forget it.
Advantage Wimberley
Some might remember that I decided at the last minute to bring the Wimberley head to Finland along with my beloved Mongoose. What a good call that turned out to be. I knew that in many of the blinds that we would be mounting our tripod heads onto bolts set into the framework of the structures. I could not have imagined the advantage that the Wimberley would provide. With the Mongoose M3.6, the clamp is at a given height and it cannot be moved. For photography on a tripod this is of no concern. After screwing the Wimberley onto the bolt, I was able to raise or lower the clamp — best done without having the lens mounted — to optimize the position of the lens in the blind window. I sacrificed a bit of balance when doing this, but everyone using a Mongoose was envious. At times I was able to raise or lower the clamp in order to improve an image design.
Black and Blue and Black and White and a Splash of Red Yield a Spectacular Image …
While the coldest spring in forever resulted in no Ruff photography, the accompanying snow provided fabulous conditions for photographing the displaying Black Grouse, at least for those who knew how to get the right exposure with the black birds on the pure white snow. Despite editing so stringently I wound up keeping more than 100 male Black Grouse images. I will be sharing a few more of those with you here over time. Remember that in a normal year the snow on the Black Grouse lekking grounds would have been long gone …
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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 please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
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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 :).
Hi Artie, I absolutely love this image and don’t really have anything to add, thanks again for sharing your wonderful images and insight.
Jake
Thanks Jake. I will have to post some more images of this species.
with love, artie
You asked for comments about the EOS 80D. I recently upgraded from a 70D, and I’m glad I did. The new camera allows me to shoot with the EF 100-400mm ii with a 1.4x TC and still use autofocus, which the old camera did not. There’s no comparison between the 70D’s 19 focus points and the 80D’s 45, especially shooting birds in flight using AI Servo mode. I’m shooting in the Pacific Northwest a lot these days, so the improved weatherproofing and overall sturdiness is much appreciated, as is the camera’s more solid feel. Even though it’s 25 grams lighter, it has heavier gravitas. The viewfinder is better, allowing a 100% view. It has higher dynamic range, shoots a higher ISO, and with 19% more pixels the noise is reduced significantly at higher ISO. The color depth is improved to 23.6 (as compared to 22.5 for the 70D.) Slightly better battery life. In short, where the EOS 70D had been a disappointment, especially in terms of autofocus, the EOS 80D is a delight.
Thanks John. I know nothing about the 70D either 🙂
Do you use 45 points for birds in flight?
with love, artie
Hi Artie,
I have had hands on with a Canon 80D a number of times. Primarily it’s my wife’s camera, which we bought to replace an older 60D. We are Canon users and I use a 7DII and 5DIII.
All of these bodies share the same battery, which is very handy.
I believe the camera model is different in the US to over here in the UK, and that is maybe why you haven’t heard of it.
The camera has a flip out and rotating screen on the back, which is very handy for some low shooting situations and extremely useful for shooting video with from a low angle, particularly as it has the touch screen as found on the new 5dMKIV. It also has the face-tracking capability found on the 5DIV. I believe you don’t shoot much video, and neither do we, but on occasions it’s a very useful tool to have, and we hope to do a bit more video to augment the stills.
In comparison to the 7DII it doesn’t have the same frame rate, but the image quality is fine, and equally on a par. Where it differs substantially is in not having that little joystick (as found on the 7dII and 5DIV) which once you have used is so hard to adapt to not having it. Therefore, moving the focus point around isn’t so intuitive if you swap between bodies as I do.
It also has less in the way of AF point group options (i.e. single point with four surround etc) than the 7DII but for some that may be fine.
A well known African wildlife photographer Grant Atkinson, has written a few blog posts about his experience in using the camera Link :
http://www.grantatkinson.com/blog/canon-80d-setup-for-wildlife-photography
Plus he has posted some very useful YouTube videos on how he has set up his 80D for wildlife photography. Link:
https://youtu.be/qjq64-cFv2Y
I thoroughly recommend them to you and anyone else wanting to know more about this camera (or indeed the 7DII and 5DMKIV).
I do hope this helps and thanks for your wonderful blog!
David (UK)
Many thanks Dave. artie
Fabulous image, Artie. The Black Grouse has blue-black feathers on it, your image looks completely natural. Good job photographing climate change 😉
Photographing against snow is something I must experience sooner rather than later.
Beautiful bird and nice shot. Many of our black birds have a bluish cast to the feathers even in bright sunlight, Look at the brewer’s and red-wing blackbirds.
Thanks Jerry for sharing your thoughts. With love, artie
Artie I like the black grouse but would suggest there is a blue cast in the black feathers. I noticed DPP seems particularly prone to this when I processed shots of black grouse.
Thanks Jon. I believe that there is some blue in the black feathers in life but I could be wrong. The image as presented is pretty much what I think I was seeing … If there is a BLUE color cast it is surely from the dull light, i.e., heavy clouds, and not from DPP 4 🙂
with love, artie
ps: I am pretty sure that I did take out lots of BLUE from this image.