Tricolored Heron Second Edit (with Fine Points)
Today’s mirrorless gear is so good and the frame rates so high, that it is often necessary to delete dozens if not hundreds of perfect images. I originally made about 800 photos of this cooperative wading bird working from the front seat of my vehicle at 1200mm with the big lens on a BLUBB. Sit beside me at my laptop and learn why I eliminated nine of the 21 first round keepers.
The two images today were my top picks.
Your Call?
Which of today’s featured images is your favorite? Why? I have a clear winner. I will share it with you along with my reasons in the next post.
What’s Up?
The main point of yesterday’s short blog post was that with advanced cancers, I believe that alternative medicine offers a far greater chance for a miracle than does Western Medicine, without the horrific suffering that goes hand in hand with chemo and radiation.
Photography down by the lake continues to be good. I’ve been managing to find at least one excellent situation each morning no matter the weather. Today is Friday 18 OCT 2024. I spent more than an hour with a perched Anhinga. I got lots of good ones but the great one I am after eluded me.
I’ve been following up with lots of a-1 folks on the firmware updates both by e-mail and cell phone. Using the new Focus Recall feature is becoming second nature for me and has been paying some very nice dividends already. As soon as I hit Publish, I am getting into the pool. Whatever you are doing, I hope that you too choose to have fun and enjoy life.
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This image was created on 13 October 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Working from the driver’s seat of my SUV, I used the BLUBB-supported Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens, the Sony FE 2.0x Teleconverter, and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera). The exposure was determined via Zebra technology with ISO on the thumb dial. ISO 1250. 1/800 sec. at f/11 (stopped down one-stop) in Manual mode. When evaluated in RawDigger, the raw file exposure was determined to be dead-solid perfect. AWB at 8:31:51am on a sunny morning. Tracking:(upper) Zone AF-C with Bird Face/Eye detection enabled performed perfectly even at 1200mm. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #1: Tricolored Heron non-breeding adult preening neck |
Rotating the Lens
Some telephoto lens beginners do not realize that they can get from horizontal format to vertical format simply by rotating the lens barrel 90°. When you are on a tripod, you need to loosen the tripod collar to do that. When on a bean bag, that step is not needed. As a general rule, I keep the tripod collar loose so that I do not have to worry about it getting stuck under the lens or prevent the lens barrel from rotating. With slower shutter speeds, I will sometimes rotate the lens, level it on the bean bag, and then turn and tighten the tripod collar and the attached lens foot so that it provided additional support.
As always when working on a beanbag, you must be sure that if your lens has a Direct Manual Focusing (DMF) switch, that you turn it off to prevent throwing off the focus.
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This image was created on 13 October 2024 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. Working from the driver’s seat of my SUV, I used the BLUBB-supported Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens, the Sony FE 2.0x Teleconverter, and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless Digital Camera). The exposure was determined via Zebra technology with ISO on the thumb dial. ISO 1250. 1/800 sec. at f/11 (stopped down one-stop) in Manual mode. When evaluated in RawDigger, the raw file exposure was determined to be dead-solid perfect. AWB at 8:31:56 am on a sunny morning. Tracking:(upper) Zone AF-C with Bird Face/Eye detection enabled performed perfectly even at 1200mm. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version. Image #2: Tricolored Heron non-breeding adult vertical front-end portrait |
Vertical Front-end Portraits
Executed properly, vertical front-end portraits like the one above can be very powerful. The framing in Image #1 above and the head turn are both dead solid perfect. Note that with the relatively distant background, working at f/11 did not bring up any unwanted background detail.
With Firmware v2.01 Bird Face-eye Tracking improved noticeably. Using Tracking: (upper center) Zone AF the tiny green AF box stuck to the bird’s eye like glue.
High Level Image Question
1/800 second shutter speed was fast enough for one of today’s images, but not for the other. Which one could have used a faster shutter speed. Why?
Typos
With all blog posts, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors.
Artie,
I vote for #2. Guess I’m more used to that pose than the other.
Two really great images of a tri-colored which are particularly impressive given that they were taken at 1200mm! Both are really fine captures albeit they convey different messages. I appreciate the tension and uniqueness of the first image (even with the slight motion blur) perfectly balanced by the relative serenity of the second one. A true Ying/Yang dynamic.
Thanks, Adam. Sony 600 GM + 2X + a-1 plus me plus a tripod and a FlexShooter Pro or a BLUBB = razor sharp images.
The second one is pretty darned good.
with love and hope to see you in Sebastian soon.
a
Are these screen shots of an editing program? rawdigger? I like #2…looking smug, yep here I am, take my picture.
AA,
Images #1 and #2 are sharpened 3200 pixels (on the long side) JPEGs created from my master files. I optimize my raw files in Photoshop as detailed in DB II and the DB III Video Series.
RawDigger only teaches us about exposure.
with love, artie
ps: Hope to see you on an IPT if I live long enough. You would learn an immense amount in many areas.
Love these images. There seems to be movement in image 1 that should have had a faster shutter?
The following is all thanks to Art and his perseverance with the Sony A1 firmware update issues.
I have two A1 bodies that until yesterday (18 Oct ) were running v1.32 . I use a windows PC that made the upgrades to 1.35 – – to 2.01 — to 2.02 seamless. You do need to reset up your entire Menu, which took a while for the first camera even with Arts Cams.Dat file applied, then copied across to second body, all without issue.
I use virtually all of Arts customised button settings, but went through every single item to fully comprehend what I was getting.
I also updated firmware on 70/200GMii and 200/600 lenses. All now working flawlessly with AF being “stickier” with Birds and Animals.
Thanks again Art.
Thanks for leaving a comment, Barry. You should do it more often 🙂
Nearly all of the buttons and dials are the same as before but for the two that I programmed for focus recall. So the learning curve should not be a problem.
Yes, there is some motion blur with Image #1. I improved it but only a bit…
with love, artie
I just love the image of the sand hill crane in flight!
Thanks, Pat. The bird got into a squabble with a vulture at my road kill feeder!
with love, a