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Cover Image courtesy of and Copyright 2021 Brian Sump (Sump scores!) The BIRDS AS ART Canon EOS R5/R6 Camera User’s e-Guide |
The BIRDS AS ART Canon EOS R5 Camera User’s e-Guide: $75.00
The guide is 82 pages long: 21,458 words. More than 50 DPP 4 Autofocus-depicting screen captures. And a 31 minute 44 second educational video. This guide took three and a half months of hard work and a ton of help from at least seventeen very helpful and generous folks.
The guide covers — in great detail — all Menu Items that are relevant to bird, nature, and wildlife photography. It does not cover video. The section on AF methods and the AF Gallery has been expanded from the R5/R6 AF e-guide. It remains the one of the great strengths of this guide. I share my thoughts on what I am sure is the single best AF Method for photographing birds in flight. As most of you know, the guide includes a simple and easy way to change AF Methods that was introduced to me by Geoff Newhouse. In the AF Gallery you will see exactly how Face Detection plus Tracking AF works. In the Educational R5 Gallery video, I share my favorite R5 images along with dozens of bird photography tips and techniques.
In addition, I teach you how to get the best exposures with your R5. Detailed instructions on using the great In-camera HDR and Multiple Exposure features will be appreciated by creative folks who like to have fun. The three shutter modes are explained in detail as well. Bruce Dudek solved the can’t-get-to-Auto ISO problem that had stumped everyone at Canon. This information is of course shared in the guide. You will learn how to set up your EVF (Electronic Viewfinder) and Screen toggle options. Not to mention that the mysterious performance of the Q Button is revealed and simplified. Brian Sump’s images reveal how well you can do when using the R5 with EF lenses using one of the three Canon EF-EOS R Mount Adapters (as Donna did with Image #1 below). You will learn how I use Customize Dials to put either ISO or EC on the Thumb Dial and how to set up and save Custom Shooting Modes (C1-C3) that can remember both your Customize Dial and Customize Button settings! That is something that none of the SONY bodies do. 🙁 Near the end of the guide I share my all-important MY MENU items with you.
Like all BAA educational materials, the R5 guide is written in my informal, easy-to-follow style. I am quite proud of this guide and look forward to hearing your thoughts on our hard work.
You can purchase your copy of the BIRDS AS ART Canon EOS R5 Camera User’s e-Guide for $75.00 here in the BAA Online Store or by calling Jim in the office weekday afternoons at 863-692-0906 with your credit card in hand.
San Diego IPT Late Registration Discount
If you are interested in traveling to San Diego to improve your photography and enjoy the phenomenal Brown Pelican photography this month, please shoot me an e-mail for IPT #3 late registration discount info. The photography has been consistently and astoundingly good.
Homer Late Registration Discounts
If you are interested in traveling to Homer, AK with me in FEB/MAR 2023 to photograph Bald Eagles, shoot me an e-mail for late registration discount info. Several folks are in the process of registering so do not tarry. The first IPT is looking sold out as I await the last two deposit checks.
What’s Up?
Day 4 of the 2nd San Diego IPT was quite amazing. With a big surf and a 15-20 mph wind from the east, the IPT boys and girls enjoyed a fabulous morning of pelican flight photography. Again, for me, the Sony 400mm f/2.8 GM lens with the a1 proved to be deadly. The flight action was still hot and heavy just before 10:00am when John Dupps, who had taken an exploratory walk with his Nikon 80-400/Z9, let the pelican photographers know that my La Jolla friend Laurel Strohmeyer had a Peregrine Falcon on a fairly clean perch inside of 55-feet with a distant ocean background. The entire group spent the next two solid hours creating probably more than 10,000 images of this handsome adult raptor, probably a male. It flew from the perch several times but always returned. I am hoping that I will find it in the same spot for the next two weeks. Though I managed to miss the ruffle five times, I kept 172 peregrine images out of the more than 2,000 that I created. In addition, I kept 72 very fine pelican images, most of those flight shots.
Conditions on Tuesday morning ranged from cloudy-dark to cloudy bright with a bit of a drizzle here and there. Mind you, the forecast for Tuesday had been for a 100% chance of rain all day. We did not see another photographer all morning.
On Tuesday evening, we enjoyed a fine thank you dinner at Beaumont’s Bird Rock Eatery in La Jolla.
Today is Wednesday 11 January 2023, the last morning of this 4 1/2-day IPT. The forecast is for partly cloudy skies with a gentle east breeze. We will start at the main pelican cliffs. I will be meeting the group at 7am. This blog post took more than two hours to prepare and makes two hundred eighty-eight 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.
It is looking as if Homer may be sold out fairly soon. Please do not forget to use my B&H or Bedford’s affiliate programs for your new gear purchases.
My plan is to continue to post every day until the streak reaches one year and one day and then go back to posting every other day.
Please remember to use the B&H and Amazon links that are found on most blog pages and to use the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout when purchasing your new gear from Bedfords to get 3% back on your credit card and enjoy free second-day air FedEx. Please, also, consider joining a BAA IPT. You will be amazed at how much you will learn!
You can find some great photo accessories (and necessities, like surf booties!) 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 who, like me, 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.
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 earn 3% cash back at Bedfords by using the BIRDSASART discount code at checkout for your major gear purchases. Doing either often earns you free guides and/or discounts. And always earns my great appreciation.
Induro GIT 304L Tripod
Out of production for more than two years, BAA just sold its last one. The good news? We have located two more new-in-the-box tripods. They will be available for shipping at the end of January. Best to order yours now to be sure that you get one. We will not run your card until your item ships. The 304L was my go-to tripod for more than a decade. Best to grab order yours right now to avoid being disappointed.
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Images courtesy of and copyright 2022: Sanjeev Nagrath |
Wow!
We abandoned the main pelican cliffs on Monday in search of more action and found it in spades after a 1/4-mile walk. When repeat client Sanjeev Nagrath showed me a series of images on the back of his R5 of a pelican in flight carrying a huge fish in its pouch, I was mega-excited. Sanjeev first studied with me at Nickerson Beach and Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge last summer. You can see three of his fine images in the Like Bringing a Bazooka to a Knife Fight blog post here.
I encouraged Sanjeev to purchase a 600mm lens for his upcoming trip to Africa after he told me that many had advised him that this 100-500 would be “more than enough.” He was thrilled that he did, and I was thrilled that he used the BIRDSASART discount code at Bedfords. Anyhoo, he is still relatively new to using the 600 and has not done much flight photography with it. Using a tripod-mounted 600mm lens for flight photography is a skill that takes years to perfect, and even then, properly framing large-in-the-frame birds is a tricky proposition. As a result, several of the images of the pelican were mis-framed, and the focus was off slightly.
He showed me the images on his laptop at lunch on Tuesday. We decided to work with the two images above and see if we could create something memorable. I loved the flat flight pose in the _J7A4898 image (on the left above), but the left primaries were clipped. My plan was to grab the primary tips from the _J7A4903 image (on the right above) and to resize and warp them to reconstruct the missing primary feather tips in the base image, _J7A4898 (after expanding the canvas right and below).
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Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Sanjeev Nagrath |
Sharpening the Image
I sharpened the bird selectively using the masking feature of Topaz Sharpen AI and then selected the bird’s face with the quick Selection Tool (W) and the Lasso Tool (L) and sharpened that selection with a Contrast Mask. Be sure to click on the optimized image below to see the (quite amazing if I do say so myself) final image.
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This image was created by repeat client and friend Sanjeev Nagrath on Monday 9 January on Day 3 of the 2nd San Diego IPT. He used the tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Canon RF 600mm f/4 L IS USM lens and the highly touted 45MP Canon EOS R5 Mirrorless Digital camera body. ISO 500. Exposure determined via test image and blinkies evaluation: 1/2000 sec. at f/4 (wide open) in Manual (M) mode. AWB at 10:15am on cloudy-bright Lightbox of a morning. Full screen Eye Detection AI Servo AF (as detailed in the EOS R5/R6 e-Guide) was active at the moment of exposure. Click on the image to enjoy a larger version. Image courtesy of and copyright 2022: Sanjeev Nagrath |
The Optimized Image
I am quite proud of the image optimization. I have been coming to La Jolla for more than 50 years, and had never seen a pelican flying with a large fish in its pouch.
The Sanjeev Pelican Image Optimization Video
I created an informal video of the entire image optimization process. The video includes the following:
The two raw conversions
The Topaz DeNoise noise reduction.
Adding canvas right and below using Content-Aware Crop
Painting a Quick Mask of the primary tips from _J7A4903
Moving that selection on a layer roughly into place on the base image, _J7A4898
Re-sizing and warping the added wingtip feathers and refining those with the addition of a Regular Layer Mask
Flattening that Layer and sculpting and refining the feather detail using the Clone Stamp Tool
Sharpening the bird selectively using the masking feature of Topaz Sharpen AI
Sharpening the face using a Contrast Mask
The un-edited video detailing the entire process is available to you for a mere $10.00. Do understand that it was created in a restaurant not a recording studio. That said, everything I said is legible and as always, the directions are easy to follow. All of the techniques used are covered in detail in Digital Basics II.
To purchase a copy of the video, you can send a PayPal for $10.000 by clicking here, or by calling Jim at 863-692-0906 weekdays (Friday before noon).
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The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II).You can order your copy from the BAA Online Store here, by sending a PayPal for $40 here, or by calling Jim or Jennifer weekdays at 863-692-0906 with your credit card in hand. Be sure to specify Digital Basics II. |
The BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II)
The techniques mentioned above and tons more great Photoshop tips and techniques — along with my complete digital workflow, Digital Eye Doctor Techniques, and all my personalized Keyboard Shortcuts — are covered in detail in the BIRDS AS ART Current Workflow e-Guide (Digital Basics II), an instructional PDF that is sent via e-mail. Note: folks working on a PC and/or those who do not want to miss anything Photoshop may wish to purchase the original Digital Basics along with DB II while saving $15 by clicking here to buy the DB Bundle.
Folks who learn well by following along rather than by reading can check out the complete collection of MP 4 Photoshop Tutorial Videos by clicking here. Note: most of the videos are now priced at an amazingly low $5.00 each.
You can learn how and why I converted all of my Canon digital RAW files in DPP 4 in the DPP 4 RAW Conversion Guide here. More recently, I became proficient at converting my Nikon RAW (NEF) files in Adobe Camera Raw. About three years ago I began converting my Nikon and Sony RAW files in Capture One and did that for two years. You can learn more about Capture One in the Capture One Pro 12 Simplified MP4 Video here. The next step would be to get a copy of Arash Hazeghi’s “The Nikon Photographers’ Guide to Phase One Capture One Pro e-Guide” in the blog post here. Today, I convert my Sony raw files in Photoshop with Adobe Camera Raw.
You can learn advanced Quick Masking and advanced Layer Masking techniques in APTATS I & II. You can save $15 by purchasing the pair.
Typos
With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.
Image #1 Brown Pelican is good and well made! Image #1A is okay but not as good as Image #1!