Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

Stuff

We are re-adjusting to life with electricity and lights. Yesterday we cleaned our main fridge/freezer — it really needed the Clorox spray! — and defrosted the stand alone freezer. We hope to get Jim into the BAA Online Store this morning though we will likely not have phone or DSL service until at least September 25. If you have Frontier providing you any services, do your best to find someone else. They are beyond pathetic.

If you missed the announcement of the new, expanded UK Puffins and Gannets 2018 IPT with the the Bempton Cliffs pre-trip in yesterday’s blog post, please click here.

The Streak

Today marks fifty-six days in a row with a new blog post — Irma be damned! This one took about ninety minutes to prepare. With all of my upcoming free time (or not …), the plan right now is to break the current record streak of (I think) four hundred eighty something … Good health and good internet connections willing.

Everybody’s Doing It…

Everybody’s buying and selling used gear on the BAA Used Gear Page. Sales recently have been through the roof. Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog or via a BAA Online Bulletin is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They recently folded. And eBay fees are now in the 13% range. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly–I offer free pricing advice, usually sells in no time flat. In the past few months, we have sold just about everything in sight. Do know that prices on some items like the EOS-1D Mark IV, the old Canon 500mm, the EOS-7D, and the original 400mm IS DO lens have been dropping steadily. Even the prices on the new 600 II and the 200-400 with Internal Extender have been plummeting. You can see all current listings by clicking here or by clicking on the Used Photo Gear tab on the right side of the yellow-orange menu bar at the top of each blog post.

Latest Used Gear Kudos

via e-mail from Robert Blanke

Hey Artie. Thank you again–the 5D s sale makes four cameras sold at fair prices and commissions, with the first three going in one day! Cheers Robert

Used Gear Sale from the past month

Robert Blanke sold his Canon EOS 5Ds body in like-new condition for $2249.00 in early September.
Ron Paulk sold his Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens in like-new condition for $9,899 with lots of great extras in early September.
Lisa Tri sold her Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Zoom lens (the original IS version) in near-mint condition for the BAA record low price of $898 in early September.
IPT veteran Joe Messina sold his Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens with Internal 1.4x Extender in excellent plus condition for the BAA record-low price of $7,900 in early September.
Ivan Kuraev sold his Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens in near-mint condition for $1699 and his Canon EOS 5D Mark IV in excellent near-mint condition for $2499 in early September.
IPT veteran Mike Ross sold his Canon EOS 7D Mark II with the Canon BG-E16 Battery Grip all in mint condition for $1,099 on the first day it was listed in early September.
Ray Stranagan sold his Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens in excellent condition for $3999 in early September, just three days after it was listed.
IPT veteran Richard Bohnet also sold his Canon EOS 5D MK III (with an L-bracket) in near-mint condition for $1449 and his Canon EOS 7D in excellent condition for $279 in late August.
IPT veteran Richard Bohnet sold his Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens (the “old” 1-4) in excellent condition for an even $500 in mid-August.
Multiple IPT veteran Carlotta Grenier sold her Canon EOS-1DX camera body in excellent condition for $2358 and a never used Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sports Lens for Canon EF in better than like-new condition for the BAA record low price of $998.
Eric Karl sold his Canon EOS 5D Mark III body in very good plus condition with extras for $1,300 in mid-August.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

BPN member Isaac Grant is offering a used Canon EOS 7D Mark II DSLR camera body in near-mint condition for $879. The sale includes an extra Canon battery (a $64 value), the front body cap, the camera strap, all the CDs and cords, the original box with everything that was in it, and insured ground shipping via major courier. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made. Photos of the body are available upon request.

Please contact Isaac via e-mail or by phone at 914-629-3820 (Eastern time).

Both Patrick Sparkman and I used and loved the 7D Mark II until about two years ago when we both committed to using full frame Canon bodies. We both made some truly great images with it. Two of my three 2016 Nature’s Best honored entries were created with the 7D II, one still, and one video. artie

Booking.Com

I could not secure the lodging that I needed for last year’s UK Puffins and Gannets IPT in Dunbar, Scotland, so I went from Hotels.Com to Booking.Com and was pleasantly surprised. I found the rooms that I needed with ease at a hotel that was not even on Hotels.Com, and it was a nice hotel that I had seen in person. And the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward.

Thanks to the many who have already tried and used this great service.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of folks 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… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

This image was created on the morning boat trip to Staples Island on the 2017 UK Puffins and Gannets IPT. I used the hand held Canon EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM lens, the Canon Extender EF 1.4X III, and my favorite puffin hotel photography camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/2500 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode. Daylight WB. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: zero. The center AF point/AI Servo/Expand shutter button AF was active at the moment of exposure. The selected AF point was placed on the roof of the shack. Click on the image to enjoy a larger, inexplicably sharper version. Image #1: The (optimized) Puffin Hotel

Photographing from the Boat

Photographing from the boat on the way to the morning landing is not easy. Some days it is rough. Some days the boat is crowded. If you know the ropes, you can get a good spot somewhere along the railing. The captain almost always will give one side of the boat a chance, and then, by turning the boat around, the other. I’ve made some nice scenic images, some nice images of the bird cliffs, some nice images of various structures on the islands, and rarely, some nice images of single birds either in flight or on the water. On rare occasion when the captain pulls the boat into a small cove, you can even get good photographs of Black-legged Kittiwakes on the nest, sometimes with chicks. These pre-landing sight-seeing cruises average about 30 minutes as we wait for the tide and sea conditions to be good for landing or as we wait for the researchers to open the island.

The Puffin Hotel

Sometimes we look but we do not see. I’d been noticing this little wooden shelter for years before finally doing something about it last July. Why? Perhaps because I rarely have anything more than the 100-400 II in my hands. But at 700mm, I saw the chance for something interesting. When I shared this with the group at dinner, folks said, “Oh, that’s so cute.” Everyone asked, “Where did you get that?” The next morning I got to point out the little shack as we circled Staples Island.

The Image Processing

The image processing was fairly straight-forward. First I leveled the roof using the Ruler Tool. The puffin standing on the rock with the blue hose on it was headless as it was preening its back so I decided to give him a head borrowed from another puffin. I ran my NIK Color Efex Pro 30/30 recipe on the whole image. That is something that I rarely do.

Image #2:The Puffin Hotel This is an unsharpened tight crop of the converted TIF.

Image #3: The Puffin Hotel This is an unsharpened tight crop of the optimized TIF.

Sharpness Help Needed

Here is how I prepared the two JPEGs above:

Working at 100% I set the Crop Tool to 2×3 proportion and cropped the images as you see above.
Next I cropped the images to 900 pixels high.
Then I sized them to 450 pixels tall in Word Press. That is how they are presented above. Neither image has been sharpened.

Question #1: Comparing Image #2 with Image #3 are you seeing one as discernably sharper than the other?

Question #2: How would you rate the sharpness of the image that you see as the sharpest. If you see a difference between the two, be sure to specify which image you are referring to.

Question #3: How would you rate the overall sharpness of Image #1, the sharpened optimized image. Best to click on the image to enlarge it first …

If In Doubt …

If in doubt about using the BAA B&H affiliate link correctly, you can always start your search by clicking here. Please note that the tracking is invisible. Web orders only. Please, however, remember to shoot me your receipt via e-mail.

Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂

To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.

As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.

Amazon.com

Those who prefer to support BAA by shopping with Amazon may use the logo link above.

Amazon Canada

Many kind folks from north of the border, eh, have e-mailed stating that they would love to help us out by using one of our affiliate links but that living in Canada and doing so presents numerous problems. Now, they can help us out by using our Amazon Canada affiliate link by starting their searches by clicking here.

Facebook

Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack.

Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).

Stuff

With our clean-up work done, Saturday was a relaxing day of enjoying our new living room air conditioning. Next in line is waiting for the insurance claims folks to call and visit. We still have not seen a Peace River Coop utility truck in the backyard so we will be without power for at least another day or two or three or … That means that the BIRDS AS ART Online Store is currently out of business. The forecast for Sunday is hot and still.

The Streak

Today marks fifty-four days in a row with a new educational blog post — Irma be damned! This one took about two hours to prepare. With all of my upcoming free time (or not …), the plan right now is to break the current record streak of (I think) four hundred eighty something … Good health and good internet connections willing.

Everybody’s Doing It…

Everybody’s buying and selling used gear on the BAA Used Gear Page. Sales recently have been through the roof. Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog or via a BAA Online Bulletin is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They recently folded. And eBay fees are now in the 13% range. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly–I offer free pricing advice, usually sells in no time flat. In the past few months, we have sold just about everything in sight. Do know that prices on some items like the EOS-1D Mark IV, the old Canon 500mm, the EOS-7D, and the original 400mm IS DO lens have been dropping steadily. Even the prices on the new 600 II and the 200-400 with Internal Extender have been plummeting. You can see all current listings by clicking here or by clicking on the Used Photo Gear tab on the right side of the yellow-orange menu bar at the top of each blog post.

Used Gear Sale from the past month

Robert Blanke sold his Canon EOS 5Ds body in like-new condition for $2249.00 in early September.
Ron Paulk sold his Canon EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM lens in like-new condition for $9,899 with lots of great extras in early September.
Lisa Tri sold her Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM Zoom lens (the original IS version) in near-mint condition for the BAA record low price of $898 in early September.
IPT veteran Joe Messina sold his Canon EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM Lens with Internal 1.4x Extender in excellent plus condition for the BAA record-low price of $7,900 in early September.
Ivan Kuraev sold his Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens in near-mint condition for $1699 and his Canon EOS 5D Mark IV in excellent near-mint condition for $2499 in early September.
IPT veteran Mike Ross sold his Canon EOS 7D Mark II with the Canon BG-E16 Battery Grip all in mint condition for $1,099 on the first day it was listed in early September.
Ray Stranagan sold his Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS II USM Lens in excellent condition for $3999 in early September, just three days after it was listed.
IPT veteran Richard Bohnet also sold his Canon EOS 5D MK III (with an L-bracket) in near-mint condition for $1449 and his Canon EOS 7D in excellent condition for $279 in late August.
IPT veteran Richard Bohnet sold his Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM lens (the “old” 1-4) in excellent condition for an even $500 in mid-August.
Multiple IPT veteran Carlotta Grenier sold her Canon EOS-1DX camera body in excellent condition for $2358 and a never used Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Sports Lens for Canon EF in better than like-new condition for the BAA record low price of $998.
Eric Karl sold his Canon EOS 5D Mark III body in very good plus condition with extras for $1,300 in mid-August.

New Listing

Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM Lens

Australia and New Zealand Sale Only

IPT veteran Barry Barfield from Down Under is offering a used Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM lens (the “old five”) in excellent condition for $5015 AUD ($4050 USD). The sale includes the lens trunk with keys, the front leather cover, the rear lens cap, a Max 4 LensCoat, a Forest Green Hoodie, and insured ground shipping to Australia and New Zealand. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made. Photos are available upon request.

Please contact Barry via e-mail or by cell phone at +61.418780575.

The 500 f/4s have been the world’s most popular telephoto lenses for birds, nature, wildlife, and sports for many decades. I owned and used and loved my “old five” for many years. If you live Down Under and don’t have the cash for the 500 II and can handle the additional 1 1/2 pounds (exactly), then this is your next best option. artie

Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM Lens

Price reduced $100 on September 16, 2017.

Multiple IPT veteran Duncan Douglas is offering a lightly used Canon 500mm f/4L IS USM lens (the “old five”) in like-new condition (but for some small scratches on the bottom of the original lens foot) for $4099 (was $4199). The sale includes the original box, lens trunk, the lens strap, the front leather cover, the rear lens cap, a 4th Generation Designs CP-51b replacement foot with all the wrenches, the original Canon lens foot, and insured ground shipping via major courier to US addresses only. Your item will not ship until your check clears unless other arrangements are made. The lens was cleaned and checked by Canon in May, 2017.

Please contact Duncan via e-mail or by phone at 201-400-3804 (Eastern time).

The 500 f/4s have been the world’s most popular telephoto lenses for birds, nature, wildlife, and sports for many decades. I owned and used and loved my “old five” for many years. We have sold more than a few recently for $3999 and even two for $3799. Duncan’s lens is priced just a bit higher as it is in pristine condition. If you don’t have the cash for the 500 II and can handle the additional 1 1/2 pounds (exactly) then this is your next best option. The 500 II goes for $8999 so you will be saving a cool $4,900 and getting a virtually brand new lens to boot. artie

Booking.Com

I could not secure the lodging that I needed for last year’s UK Puffins and Gannets IPT in Dunbar, Scotland, so I went from Hotels.Com to Booking.Com and was pleasantly surprised. I found the rooms that I needed with ease at a hotel that was not even on Hotels.Com, and it was a nice hotel that I had seen in person. And the rates were great. If you’d like to give Booking.Com a shot, click here and you will earn a $25 reward.

Thanks to the many who have already tried and used this great service.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of folks 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… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

Please Don’t Forget …

As always–and many folks have been doing a really great job for a long time now–please remember to use the BAA B&H links for your major and minor gear purchases. For best results, use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would of course appreciate your business.

This image was created on the morning of Monday, September 12, 2017 after Irma had visited the long night before. I used the hand held 24-105mm f/4L IS lens (now replaced by the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II) at 24mm, and my favorite post-hurricane camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop as framed: 1/40 sec. at f/11 in Av mode. AWB. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: zero at W. Center AF point/AI Servo/Expand/Rear button focus on one of the upper support struts on the left and re-compose. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. A: The “Before” view of the kiddie corner of my lap pool from inside the pool cage

The Before

As detailed in the recent My Personal Pool Cage Miracle Times Two! blog post here, this is what I woke to on the early morning of Sunday September 10, 2017 after Irma had visited that night. A good part of the crown of the fallen oak tree had landed atop the pool cage while another substantial section occupied Jim’s wildflower/butterfly garden — you can just see part of the split rail fence on the right side of the frame.

This image was created on the evening of Saturday, September 16, 2017. I used the Induro GIT304L Grand Series 3 Stealth Carbon Fiber tripod/Induro BHM2S ballhead/Wimberley P-5 plate-mounted 24-105mm f/4L IS lens (now replaced by the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II) at 65mm, and my favorite post-hurricane camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops as framed: 1/8 sec. at f/11 in Av mode. AWB. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: extrapolated to +1. Center Flexi-zone Rear button AF (in Live View for mirror lock-up and 2-second timer) with the AF box on on the blade of the hand saw and re-compose. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. B: the two Corona tools that Jim and I used for the initial clean-up

The Clean-up Tools

While we could have just waited around a week or so for the insurance claims folks to come by, Jim and I decided to start the clean-up work. I remember saying to Jim, “The best way to approach large, seemingly impossible tasks is one branch at a time.” And that is exactly what we did. We only had what looks like a meager set of tools, one ten-inch hand saw and a set of loppers. But boy oh boy, those two tools were both rugged and efficient. Amazingly, we used the loppers on branches up to about 2 1/2 inches in diameter; the larger stuff fell to the hand saw. With the latter a three-inch branch was a piece of cake even for me. A four-inch branch required a minute or three of effort. And a five-inch branch, about the largest we tackled, might take as long as five minutes. Jim was a lot faster than I was. Many times with the larger branches, it would be impossible to keep the saw moving once you got half-way through. The trick there was to extricate the saw blade and start from the opposite side of the first cut. The hand saw only cut on the back stroke. Once you got the hang of it it really did cut like the proverbial hot knife through butter. You can check out Corona Loppers here and Corona hand saws (and more) here.

This image too was created on the evening of Saturday, September 16, 2017, again with the Induro GIT304L Grand Series 3 Stealth Carbon Fiber tripod/Induro BHM2S ballhead/Wimberley P-5 plate-mounted 24-105mm f/4L IS lens (now replaced by the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS II) at 28mm, and my favorite post-hurricane camera body, the Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +1 1/3 stops as framed: 1/6 sec. at f/16 in Av mode. AWB. LensAlign/FocusTune micro-adjustment: zero at W. Center Flexi-zone Rear button AF (in Live View for mirror lock-up and 2-second timer) with the AF box on one of the upper support beams and re-compose. Click here to see the latest version of the Rear Focus Tutorial. C: The “After” view of the kiddie corner of my lap pool from inside the pool cage

The After

I’d guess that Jim put about twenty hours into this project, with about 15 for me. The hard work felt really good despite the hot, still days. We did most of our work in the early mornings or late afternoons. Most sessions were followed by a cooling visit to the pool. We both wound up napping for too long in the afternoons. You can see one of our two huge brush piles just beyond the split rail fence on the right. Each measures something in the vicinity of 50-60 feet long, four – five feet high, and eight to ten feet deep.

Why did we do it? I guess that our main reason was that there was not much else to do. It did not hurt that we wound up removing several hundred pounds of the crown of the downed tree from atop the pool cage. And Jim can now get back to work on his garden. There are still some large branches on top of the pool cage including one e three that split off the large tree that still stands. You can clearly see the trunk of that tree in the left center of the frame about ten feet from the pool cage. If it had fallen onto the pool cage, the damage would have been measured at least in thousands of dollars …

If In Doubt …

If in doubt about using the BAA B&H affiliate link correctly, you can always start your search by clicking here. Please note that the tracking is invisible. Web orders only. Please, however, remember to shoot me your receipt via e-mail.

Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂

To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.

As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And please remember that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.

Amazon.com

Those who prefer to support BAA by shopping with Amazon may use the logo link above.

Amazon Canada

Many kind folks from north of the border, eh, have e-mailed stating that they would love to help us out by using one of our affiliate links but that living in Canada and doing so presents numerous problems. Now, they can help us out by using our Amazon Canada affiliate link by starting their searches by clicking here.

Facebook

Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack.

Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right :).