Beach Butt-Advancing Illustrated ... Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM Lenses in Stock at Bedfords! And Bathing Gull (and Tern) Tips

Your Call?

Which of today’s two featured avian images is best? All are invited to leave a comment and let us know why they made their choice.

Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM Lenses in Stock at Bedfords!

The personable, helpful, and always eager-to-please Steve Elkins let me know yesterday that Bedfords just received more than a few Canon RF 24-70mm f/2.8L IS USM lenses. Grab yours here right now to secure one. Remember that if you spend more than $7500.00 and use the BIRDS AS ART code at checkout, you earn a free copy of the R5/R6 Camera User’s Guide. Spend less and shoot me an e-mail to learn of your discount. The R5 and R6 are Canon’s best-ever bodies for flight photography and the RF 100-500 lens is a great all-around lens for bird photography. The 24-70 is the landscape photographers dream lens.

By e-Mail From Hawaii’s Best Best Photographer

Aloha Artie,

It’s been a while. I always enjoy your blog; it’s the first thing I read each morning! Better than all of the sad Covid news that’s going around.

I sold almost all my EOS cameras and lenses (except for the 500mm f/4 that I bought from you years ago 🙂 and switched to the Canon R5. I bought it through Bedfords and used the BIRDSASART code to get a great discount. Steve Elkins was wonderful to work with. Many thanks for all of this. I’m ready to order the R5 Camera Users Guide from you. Somehow I didn’t know you were giving discounts on the Guide for purchases from Bedford’s. So, what do you need as proof of purchase? I spent $7577 for my new gear at Bedfords Order #45765.

Hope to see you out here one of the days.

All the best,

Jack Jeffrey
Pepeekeo, Hawaii

(Note: Jack received his R5 Guide for free.)

What’s Up?

I spent most of Thursday packing up for my upcoming four-morning trip to Jamaica Bay. Today is Friday 20 August and I will be headed west very early. Wherever you are, and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day.

Please note that it is best to click on each blog image to view it larger. For unknown reasons, the images — even the verticals that are not rendered larger, look sharper once they’ve been clicked on.

Remember that you can find some great photo accessories (and necessities!) on Amazon by clicking on the Stuff tab on the orange/yellow menu bar above. On a related note, it would be extremely helpful if blog-folks like me, who spend too much money on Amazon, would get in the habit of clicking on the Amazon logo link on the right side of each blog post when they shop online. As you might expect, doing so will not cost you a single penny, but would be appreciated tremendously by yours truly. And doing so works seamlessly with your Amazon Prime account.

This blog post took about 90 minutes to prepare and makes 232 consecutive days with a new one. Please remember that if an item — a Delkin flash card, or a tripod head — for example, that is available from B&H and/or Bedfords, is also available in the BAA Online Store, it would be great, and greatly appreciated, if you would opt to purchase from us. We will match any price. Please remember also to use my B&H affiliate links or to save 3% at Bedfords by using the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout. Doing either often earns you free guides and/or discounts. And doing so always earns my great appreciation.

Please Remember

With income from IPTs now close to zero, please, if you enjoy and learn from the blog, remember to use one of my two affiliate programs when purchasing new gear. Doing so just might make it possible for me to avoid having to try to get a job as a Walmart greeter and will not cost you a single penny more. And if you use Bedfords and remember to enter the BIRDSASART code at checkout, you will save 3% on every order and enjoy free second-day air shipping. In these crazy times — I am out at least forty to sixty thousand dollars so far due to COVID 19 (with lots more to come) — remembering to use my B&H link or to shop at Bedfords will help me out a ton and be greatly appreciated. Overseas folks who cannot order from the US because of import fees, duties, and taxes, are invited to help out by clicking here to leave a blog thank you gift if they see fit.

New and Better Bedfords Discount Policy!

You can now save 3% on all of your Bedfords photo gear purchases by entering the BIRDSASART coupon code at checkout. Your discount will be applied to your pre-tax total. In addition, by using the code you will get 2nd day air shipping via Fed Ex.

Grab a Nikon AF-S Teleconverter TC-14E III and save $14.99. Purchase a Canon EOS R5 and your discount will be $116.97. Purchase a Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and save a remarkable $389.94! Your Bedford’s purchase no longer needs to be greater than $1,000.00 for you to receive a discount. The more you spend, the more you save.

Money Saving Reminder

Many have learned that if you need a hot photo item that is out of stock at B&H and would enjoy free second-day air shipping, your best bet is to click here, place an order with Bedfords, and enter the coupon code BIRDSASART at checkout. If an item is out of stock, contact Steve Elkins via e-mail or on his cell phone at (479) 381-2592 (Central time). Be sure to mention the BIRDSASART coupon code and use it for your online order to save 3% and enjoy free 2nd-day air shipping. Steve has been great at getting folks the hot items that are out of stock at B&H and everywhere else. The wait lists at the big stores can be a year or longer for the hard to get items. Steve will surely get you your gear long before that. For the past year, he has been helping BAA Blog folks get their hands on items like the SONY a9 ii, the SONY 200-600 G OSS lens, the Canon EOS R5, the Canon RF 100-500mm lens, and the Nikon 500mm PF. Steve is personable, helpful, and eager to please.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs (remember those?) and dozens of photographers 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.

Image #1: Butt-advancing image Image courteous and copyright 2021: Clemens Van der Werf

Beach Butt-Advancing

Advancing on your butt with the lens resting across your thighs is not as difficult as the look on my face might indicate 🙁

As detailed in yesterday’s blog post:

It is always best to get on the ground sooner rather than later. Flushing a flock of birds as you approach will not help your chances. Then set the lowest shutter speed that will enable you to make sharp images and have a chance to freeze slow-developing action … For me that is 1/500 sec. or thereabouts. Next for me with my Sony gear is to dial the ISO until I see faint Zebras on the subject. With your Zebras set properly as noted in the a1 SONY Alpha a1 Set-up and Info Group e-mails and in the SONY Camera User’s Guide, getting consistently excellent exposures is child’s play. (Note: a1 Group members receive a free copy of the SONY User’s Guide for reference.)

Next I set my AF method. For both of today’s images I went to Tracking: Spot S/AF-C. E-mail #23 to the a1 Group — coming soon — will detail recent changes I have made to further simplify how I used the AF system. Next I place the lens on my thighs and push myself forward with both of my hands (made into fists). You need to be careful that the lens does not fall off into the sand. With practice it becomes easy. One of my main goals is to isolate a single bird or a feeding situation. Such situations are most often found on the edges of the flock, so I go left or right as needed, often to stay on sun angle. On cloudy days like 15 August, you are not restricted by sun angle. Once I get into position, I brush the sand off my hands on my long-sleeved shirt.

Thanks to Clemens for allowing me to share this image with you here.

Image #2: artie Knee-podding image Image courteous and copyright 2021: Clemens Van der Werf

Knee-podding

I use this technique often. I rest the proximal underside of my left forearm on the back of my left knee and the distal upper portion of my left thigh. It yields a relatively low perspective while enabling me to eliminate potentially distracting elements in the background that would come into play if you worked with the lens on or near the ground. And it allows for the use of shutter speeds as slow as 1/60 second as long as the subject is still.

Thanks again to Clemens for allowing me to share this image with you here.

This image was created on 29 July on one of the Jacksonville IPTs. While seated on wet sand using the knee pod technique, I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 452mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1600. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/1600 sec. at f/6.3 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 6:25pm on a cloudy afternoon. Center Zone/AF-C Bird/Eye Detection AF was active at the moment exposure and created a sharp-on-the-eye image. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a larger, often inexplicably sharper version. Image #3: Laughing Gull, adult flapping after bath

Bathing Gull (and Tern) Tips

When you see a bird dipping its breast and head into shallow water, it will almost always flap at some point. Get closer or zoom in to create dramatic images of the splashing water, or move back and zoom out to create images of the after-bath flapping. It is best to move back or zoom out more than you think is necessary to avoid clipping the wings. I kept ten of 13 sharp images from this series with only one tiny primary tip clipped. There were so many interesting images that choosing just one was difficult.

This image was created on 29 July on one of the Jacksonville IPTs. While seated on wet sand using the knee pod technique, I used the hand held Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 535mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1600. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/1000 sec. at f/6.3 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 6:31pm on a cloudy afternoon. Tracking: Flexible Spot/AF-C Bird/Eye Detection AF was active at the moment exposure and created a sharp-on-the-eye image. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a larger, often inexplicably sharper version. Image #4: Laughing Gull, juvenile preening after bath

After Bath Preening

Do you need to see a bird’s eye or eyes in order to have a successful image?

Typos

With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.