More Hints. And An Interesting Spray and Pray Comment-conversation ...

What’s Up?

My streak of making at least one keeper every morning since at least March 22 was in jeopardy on Tuesday Morning … After drenching rains on Sunday and Monday afternoon, I dared not drive off the pavement. There were no cranes near the road and no vultures in the vulture tree. I drove the side streets looking for a new flower to photograph and found nothing. I got home very early on a beautiful still morning and poked around our butterfly garden for a bit. When I was just about ready to give up, I decided to use the Laowa 2X lens to photograph a single Coral Honeysuckle flower. The streak is alive.

I received e-mails of interest for both the Bosque and the Homer Bald Eagle IPTs.

I was glad to learn today that that multiple IPT veteran Larry Master sold his Canon Extension Tube set and his Canon 70 D last week.

Six folks tried yesterday’s quiz, and nobody came within a country mile of the right answers. The $20 is waiting for your correct answer. See the additional clues below and take a shot.

An Interesting Spray and Pray Comment-conversation with Adam Rubinstein

Hi Adam,

Thanks for your excellent comments.

“Spray and pray” is a bit of a pejorative

Had to look that one up — “expressing contempt or disapproval.”

I was about to disagree strongly with you till I looked up spray and pray — “Spray and pray is a derisive term for firing an automatic firearm towards an enemy in long bursts, without making an effort to line up each shot or burst of shots. This is especially prevalent amongst those without benefit of proper training.”

But, we are shooting aren’t we? And when we hold the shutter button down with an action shot it is best to pretty much do so without regards to framing carefully. So let’s call it a push.

and perhaps we should come up with a different term? Press and hold? I’m with you on all points and the greatest challenge now with all of these high FPS bodies is that a short press yields so many images that it becomes laborious to cull them.

The cranes flap took less than one second …

Of the remainder images, none of them really wow me as 70 is the money shot.

Agree.

Gail Bisson’s plover is pretty sweet and not only was she on eye level, had beautiful composition, bokeh, and razor thin DOF, it was a pretty unique image.

It is a wonderful image and I love shorebirds but as two folks pointed out, it is missing one thing …

Since picking up my R5 (through one of Artie’s sponsored dealers),

Everybody who deals with Steve Elkins at Bedford walks away very happy!

I’ve had to modify my “press and hold” technique to short taps. The 20 FPS of the ES rapidly fills the card and can easily saturate the buffer.

From where I sit, photographable action rarely lasts long. You will never see my holding the shutter down haphazardly. If anything, I tend to do the opposite … I have never hit the buffer with my a9, a9 ii, a7r iii, or a7r iv. It’s left-over from film days: “I’m Jewish and every time I press the shutter button it costs me 47 cents!” My brain does not forget …
Like the a9(II), I’ve been simply wowed by the number of in focus images as compared to even the top-flight DSLR’s of yesterday.

That is what I have been saying and that is why Arash switched …

Perhaps one significant advantage of the R5 over the a9(II) is the rapid wake up from sleep mode/image review.

If that is/was a problem then you did not read the big SONY e-Guide carefully enough; we use a setting that makes that a non-issue … The huge advantage of the R5 is the 42MP as compared to the 24MP of the a9 ii.

It’s much faster to the draw that way (I’ve been looking for a timed comparison). For example, yesterday I was walking by a pond and noticed an egret suddenly taking to flight. With my a7riv, it would have woken up sometime after the bird was already downrange and a high percentage of the images would have likely been OOF. The a9(II) would have likely captured a lot more photos and all of them would have been in focus though it would have started later than the R5.

Or not ….

27 images in that short burst and all were in focus.

Great. I am hoping to get my hands on an R5/RF 100-500 asap as a loaner …

with love, a

Sandhill-Crane-adult-vulture-tree-_A9B5613-Indian-Lake-Estates-FL-1

Sandhill Crane adult and vulture tree

Sandhill Crane Adult and Vulture Tree

Because I see them flying across the canal from the South Peninsula to the South Field, I believe that this bird and its mate — feeding nearby when I made this image — are the parents of the two swimming colts. Both of those young cranes perished when they were fairly large, about two weeks apart. They have been missed.

Win Twenty Dollars!

In yesterday’s Win Twenty Dollars! blog post here, I posted this with regards to the featured head portrait image of the surviving Mother’s Day crane colt:

If you are the first to leave a comment noting the exact focal length and the aperture that I used for this image, you will win a $20 discount on any item in the BAA Online Store. Phone orders only.