A Dark Morning's Walk. ISO 5000 Is No Big Deal Anymore

NANPA Tidbit of the Day

Jaime Konarski Davidson clicked on this link in the Important Announcement from NANPA e-mail that NANPA sent to the membership yesterday and left this short comment that succinctly explains why so many NANPA members are very upset:

Obviously, I am vehemently opposed to this merger. Even more, I am beyond disappointed in how it all came to be IN SECRET. Announcing this merger to the membership without notice and rushing it all through just shows me how little respect you all have for the mission of NANPA and all of its members. The members (“governing members”) should be given ALL THE FACTS and background, pros and cons to this “joining of forces”. The membership should have a VOTE in this matter. Shame on all of you.

I am 100% against this merger and am ashamed, once again, for the manner in which this has been handled.

What Can You Do?

NANPA members, prospective NANPA members — I have heard from many such folks, and anyone who simply cares about what’s right and wrong in the world can comment by clicking on this link. Again, you do not need to be a NANPA member to comment. Please help.

What’s Up

After I hit Publish on yesterday’s blog post, I headed down to the lake with my photography gear for the first time in more than two weeks. It was cloudy and dark with a north by slightly west wind and there was not much going on. I photographed some pine tree bark with the 600mm f/4 and some vultures in flight with the handheld 70-200 f/2.8 GM II. I tried, but the results were lacking. When I saw ten cranes socializing on the South Peninsula, I drove over to chat with them. I tried but failed to make an interesting group shot. Knowing that the wind was from the north, I stayed ahead of them as they walked toward the marsh. When most of them took off, I had several decent flight chances. Today’s featured image was the best of the lot.

It began raining just before I got home at about nine It turned out to be one of the darkest, dreariest, ugliest, windiest days I’ve ever seen. Anywhere. Fortunately, I saw the weather through my office window as I sat snug and warm watching the NFL for most of the day. I got lots accomplished on the NANPA situation and on Tuesday’s Event Space Program.

Today is Monday 21 November 2022.This blog post took less than an hour to prepare and makes two hundred thirty-nine days in a row with a new, educational post just for you. Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a great day.

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Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs 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. And the same is true in spades when ordering new camera bodies or lenses. My advice will often save you some serious money and may help you avoid making a seriously bad choice. Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail. If you are desperate, you can try me on my cell at 863-221-2372. Please leave a message and shoot me a text if I do not pick up.

This image was created on 20 November 2022 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. I used the handheld Sony FE 70-200mm f/2.8 GM OSS II lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter (at 175mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera.. The exposure was determined via Zebras. ISO 5000: 1/1250 sec. at f/4 (wide open) in Manual mode. AWB at 8:08:15am on a cloudy dark morning. RawDigger showed the exposure to be dead-solid perfect. Tracking: Zone AF/C with Bird-Eye/Face Detection performed perfectly. Click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Sandhill Crane calling in flight

ISO 5000 Is No Big Deal Anymore

By exposing to the right (in this case by a mile, probably +3 stops on the sky alone), and running Topaz DeNoise as the first step once you bring a converted .TIF file into Photoshop, ISOs ranging from 5000 to 12800 (and even higher) can yield very useable results. The latest greatest mirrorless camera bodies from the top manufacturers lead the league in high ISO performance.

As the cranes are relatively slow in flight, I went with only 1/1250 sec. If I’d opted for 1/2000 second, I would have needed ISO 8000. At 1/3200 second, the aforementioned ISO 12800 would have given me the right exposure.

I chuckle when I think back to the film days when we were thrilled to learn that we could push process Fuji Velvia 50 one stop to ISO 100. With that, we could use 1/500 sec. for flight on sunny days! The times they have changed.

Typos

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