Animal Contest

[cooltouch]

Hey Gaeger,

Very effective use of light and shadow, and shapes, for the background on your second photo. It's the sort of image that causes a person to stop whatever it is they're doing and just stare at it for a moment.

[gaeger]

Thanks, cooltouch, I appreciate that comment. Now that I look at that background, seems like it's got some posterization to it.

From today -- very close encounters with great blue herons. Nikkor 300mm, Nikon D300.

[David]

Striped leaf cutter. K1000, Sigma macro lens, ASA 100 Fuji


Hannah and Cheever mudding, K1000, Sigma 35-80mm, ASA 200 Fuji


Hannah and Cheever hiking, Canon 8mp Elph. In my defense, my SLR was in another state.

[cooltouch]

Hey Dave, couple of questions --

Your Sigma macro -- can you give us more info about it?

And, that Sigma 35-80 really seems to do a nice job. Is this an older lens or newer, or?

[David]

Hi, Michael,

Both my Sigma lenses are (I think) new. I got them in 1996, maybe 1998, and I got them both new-in-box. They aren't Sigmas from back in the '60s or '70s, which I would consider the older ones.

The Macro is a 50mm F2.8-22 close-up lens. When I shot film, such as with the bug, it was able to capture the subject at 1:1 reality-to-negative sizing. Does that help?

David

[cooltouch]

Hey Dave,

Yeah it helps. Are the manual focus or auto? When I did a search on eBay for a Sigma 35-80, the only hits I got were for a new AF model. It's probably different from yours, given the 15 year time difference.

[David]

Hey, Michael,

Both are MF. Here is the Macro:

http://www.mflenses.com/gallery/v/lensgallery/japanese/sigma/sigma50.jpg.html

Aside from the mount, that is my lens exactly.

I can't find anything in the MFlenses.com database about my othre Sigma, but here's a picture from Flickr of some other guy's exact same lens:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ar_photog/2423572416/

[poilu]

welcome David, nice pics

[gaeger]

Nikkor 50-300mm ED, Nikon D300. Young marmot at Palouse Falls, Wash.

[Nordentro]

[Olivier]

I will not go to her dentist !

You caught the right moment.

[cooltouch]

Ever tried to photograph hummingbirds? Geez, it's hard.

The following photos were taken yesterday, late in the afternoon. In fact, it was right at sunset. Pics were taken with my Canon EOS XS (1000D) and with an EF 80-200mm f/4 zoom. The zoom was chattering, trying to keep up with those little guys and shutter speeds were slow. I used my camera's pop-up flash in the hopes of freezing some of the action. Of the twenty or so pics I shot of the pair of hummingbirds, only the following four are worth looking at at all, and they aren't all that hot.









Oh well, they were cool looking birds. Very unusual sight around here to see two hummingbirds dancing around the way they were.

[mo]

Nothing like a challenge... and at sunset! You can still see the fact they are birds...so I think not to bad.

[cooltouch]

Thanks, Mo. Well I have a few more that are at least reasonably sharp. These pics were taken late this afternoon. Canon XS with Canon FD 400mm f/4.5 IF and FD-EOS adapter.

Dove -- lots of them around this time of year.



Squirrel -- the neighborhood is positively infested with them.

[Himself]

Here is the red-winged blackbird/carouge à épaulettes in full flight.

[cooltouch]

[mo]

I forgot to change the F stop hence the bright background but I liked the look of "feed me" in the cats eyes... She is actually sitting on the bonnet of the car.

[cooltouch]

Well, Mo, the subject was exposed properly, so blowing out the background ended up being rather effective.

[Orio]

Michael, I would say that your shots are saved because you could still capture the "spirit" of that bird which is the very fast wing movement, and this gets through, as I opened the photos it was immediately clear they were hummingbirds.

I don't agree on the "diagnosis" however, I don't think that the problem were the hummingbirds, I think the problem was the zoom which was too slow to let you take a still photograph in the evening time: if you look at the shrubs, you see they show motion blur, which obviously comes from the camera. It's in those moments when you really appreciate the fast tele primes. You could perhaps switch to time priority mode and set 1/200 as shutter time, it would have given underexposed photos but still, and perhaps recoverable in raw.

In any case, even with the motion blur, I think #4 is a great shot.

[cooltouch]

Hey Orio,

Yes, I agree the zoom was too slow. As I mentioned, it was chattering, trying to keep up. I was using it and not a faster ultrasonic one I have because it has a constant f/4 aperture, where the ultrasonic one drops to f/5.6 when zoomed out. It was approaching sunset so the light was already marginal.

But as I look at the photos again, I see something else, too. If you look at the flowering plants, they are reasonably in focus in the first shot, but the remaining three show obvious evidence of camera shake. I was using the camera's pop-up flash, and I've found that this often happens during daylight when I'm using a flash, especially this pop-up flash, with moving subjects. Not for fill, really, but in the hopes of freezing the action. The attempt to freeze motion just doesn't work as well as I had hoped it would with a whimpy little pop-up flash during the daytime.

[mo]

[ciluuk]

Canon EOS 500D | Tokina SZ-X 80-200mm f/4

[walter g]

[Willem]

i think this one looks like the butterfly is sitting on a painting
shot with SMC-Takumar 4/100 macro


_MG_6380 by wimmelwimmel, on Flickr

[Olivier]

Steinheil Quinar 2.8/135 Alu version.