Sharp-tailed Grouse -- Tough Customers! Mint Canon 600 II

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Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II Lens

Steve Vige is offering a Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II lens in near-mint to like-new condition for a very low $5,675.00. The sale includes the front lens cover, the rear lens cap, the lens trunk, the lens strap, and insured ground shopping via major courier to lower 48 addresses. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made.

Please contact Steve via e-mail at e-mail.

The 600mm f/4 lenses have been the state of the art super-telephotos for birds, nature, wildlife, and sports for many decades. When I was using Canon and could get it to my location, my 600 II was always my go-to weapon. It is fast and sharp and deadly alone or with either TC. With both the 600 III and the RF 600mm f/4 going for $12,999.00, and used 600mm versions IIs very hard to find, you’d do well to grab Steve’s pretty much new lens ASAP. Add the EF to RF adapter and you will kill with any Canon mirrorless body. artie

What’s Up?

Though it was a bit colder on Tuesday morning, and much windier than the previous day; it turned out to be our best session with the Sharp-tailed Grouse. But they are very difficult to photograph. After the first edit, I kept about 1% of the 8000+ images I made. When I do the second edit, I will probably get down to 30 or so as I kept lots of similars that need to be more closely evaluated. I had several good chances for fights where I got the birds in the center of the frame and sharp, but the NW wind pretty much wrecked all of them 🙁

Today is Wednesday 24 April 2024. It is supposed to be sunny with no wind this morning so we are hoping to do even better than yesterday. As I fly home on Thursday, this will be my last day in the blind. I Have learned a ton about both species and a ton about working out of a pop-up blind — not my usual style. Decades ago I did an article for Birder’s World magazine entitled “No Reason to Hide.” On the other side of the pond, a blind is called a hide.

Wherever you are and whatever you are doing, I hope that you too have a wonderful day.

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This image was created on 21 April 2024 near Mercer, ND. Seated in a large pop-up blind, I used the lowered Robus RC-5558 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 2000. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/320 second at f/4 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was perfect. AWB at 6:45:51am just after sunrise in the shadow of the blind. Tracking: Expand Spot/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version. Image #1: Sharp-tailed Grouse — tight head, face & neck shot

Headhunting

I’ve been a headhunter for forever. I pride myself at being able to get close enough to free and wild birds to create tight images showing the details of the face, head, bill, and neck. Yes, long lenses and teleconverters help. One of the big challenges when creating these types of images is getting the perfect head angle, generally perfectly square to two or three degrees towards. Another challenge occurs when you include a bit of the front end of the bird’s body in the image. The best policy in those cases is to use a smaller aperture so that you have enough depth of field to cover the body feathers. Image #2 would have benefitted from a bit more d-o-f but I did not have much light to work with.

It goes without saying that when the sun is shining that you want to be right on sun angle — when the light is bright, think tight!

This image was created on 21 April 2024 near Mercer, ND. Seated in a large pop-up blind, I used the lowered Robus RC-5558 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 2000. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/320 second at f/4 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was perfect. AWB at 6:45:51am just after sunrise in the shadow of the blind. Tracking: Expand Spot/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version. Image #2: Sharp-tailed Grouse squabble

Difficult, Difficult, Difficult

Yes, sharp-tailed are much more difficult to photograph than the prairie chickens. Two males will sit facing each other for minutes at a time. They do not give any dependable signs that they are about to battle. When the sun is shining, you need to be fairly close to sun angle (as I was for Image #2) else there will be horrific shadows. As though things are not hard enough, the relentless wind from the NW has ruined dozens of otherwise excellent images as the birds in the air will almost always be facing away from the light :-(.

Getting two fighting birds in the middle of the frame in no way guarantees success; I did get lucky here by getting at lease a look at the faces of both of the battling birds.

This image was created on 22 April 2024 near Mercer, ND. Seated in a large pop-up blind, I used the lowered Robus RC-5558 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 12800. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/30 second at f/4 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was perfect. AWB at 6:32:46am just before sunrise. Tracking: Expand Spot/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version. Image #3: Sharp-tailed Grouse on hillside in predawn light

Pushing the Limits

As we saw recently, 1/30 sec. is just about at the bottom of the range of shutter speeds for creating sharp images with the 600 lenses. And ISO 12800 is just about the upper limit for ISO (except when I need to go higher).

My double noise reduction technique worked beautifully with this high ISO (12,800!) image; the TIF is clean as a whistle. As detailed in the Digital Basics III video series. I will be creating the fifth and last video in Volume I this coming weekend and will be distributing it on Monday. Thanks to all for their patience. Volume II will be coming soon.

This image was created on 22 April 2024 near Mercer, ND. Seated in a large pop-up blind, I used the lowered Robus RC-5558 Vantage Series 3 Carbon Fiber Tripod/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mounted Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and the ridiculously amazing Sony a9 III Mirrorless Camera. ISO 3200. The exposure was determined by Zebras with ISO on the rear wheel: 1/3200 second at f/4 (wide open) in Manual mode. RawDigger showed that the raw file brightness was dead solid perfect. AWB at 8:02:30am on a cloudy morning. Tracking: Expand Spot/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy the larger version. Image #4: Sharp-tailed Grouse aggressive wing spread display

Confession

I removed a bird on the right of this frame. The Photoshop work is somewhat obvious. On Tuesday morning, I got the a similar pose with only a single bird in the frame. With the sun out.

Typos

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