Redwing

Especially for Trudie. A photo of one of the Redwings we had in the garden today. Is this waht you’ve been seeing?

The Snipe returned as well but I didn’t get a decent shot of it. The Redwings weren’t easy either as they are very timid, wouldn’t come too close to the house and scurry around quite quickly. This was shot through the window as well so isn’t as sharp as it could be… Time to start thinking about a bird hide!

Redwing

The Snipe that I spotted in the garden yesterday didn’t return, so while I was sat there with the camera set up I decided to take a few photos of the more common birds in the garden, those that are usually overlooked.

I think it will be a little photo assignment of mine now to get a nice photo of every species that we see in the garden here. It may take a while, but there’s no hurry. Here are a couple to start me off.

Song Thrush

Blackbird

Spotted a snipe in the garden this morning… Managed a blurry photo of it but I have the camera set up ready for its return. Bet it won’t come back now!

Snipe

I still haven’t quite got the hang on getting pin sharp photos with my longest lens. At 300mm it isn’t really long enough for bird photography either and hand holding it without image stabilisation isn’t easy, but I’ll get there. What I really need is a day out in the hills or along the estuary dedicated to photography so that I can get closer to the action. Having Morgan in tow really isn’t conducive to getting close to wildlife!

Red Kite

Red kite

Red Kites

If you look close enough you can see the reflection of me and Morgan in its eye!

Robin

Robin Red Breast

Friendly Robin

Morgan and I spent the afternoon in the dunes on Sunday. Yes, our noses were cold, but it was a lovely fresh, clear day and of course very quiet. We were treated to a nice sunset too.

An evening stroll

The beach is lovely in winter. Quiet, relaxed and just as pretty as in the summer.

Setting Sun

I mentioned HDR photography a while back and the fact that I’d like to give it a go.

Well, I’ve just been looking at Trey Ratcliff’s HDR photos and they are amazing.

Where the Sky is Torn Asunder: Copyright Trey Ratcliff and licensed under Creative Commons

The thing with HDR photos is that often they can be overdone and look surreal. There’s nothing wrong with that, afterall photography is art so anything goes. In fact some of the over-processed HDR photos can look really nice. Some of my favourites though are those that look real but just have an extra edge on a non-HDR photo.

Take Trey’s photo above. There is nothing surreal about it. Composition is of course good and the colour contrasts perfect, but in many ways it could be a non-HDR photo. In a way it is probably how your eyes would see such a scene as they scan around it. However, a camera wouldn’t. In a non-HDR photo the details in the shadows in the foreground would lost in darkness and the sky and probably the details in the snow would be blown out.

However, take several shots at differing exposures and merge them altogether using HDR techniques and you end up with something as captivting as this.

If only I could produce something half as good!

Just been checking out some of Trey Ratcliffs’ ‘Stuck in Motion video and think they are pretty cool.

Basically it is slow mo filmed on a  fairly cheap (although not that cheap) digital stills camera that can shoot at 300 frames per second. The footage is filmed at this speed and then slowed down to 30 fps to give a slow-mo video, 10 times slower than normal. Trey seems to think that this 10x figure is a magic number.

Ok, so slow motion is nothing clever, but when he combines it with a pan and moves the camera 10x faster than you would normally pan the result is pretty good. The video and therefore background pans at what appears to be a normal speed, but the people and other subjects in the video are all seen in slow motion. Clever stuff.

The Moments Between, Episode 1: Japan from Trey Ratcliff on Vimeo.

Check out more here: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/stuckinmotion/

With all this moth-trapping I’ve been doing, it is also nice to take some decent photos of each of the species that we catch. At the moment, the best lens I have for this is a Tamron 70-300mm with Macro facility. The results are OK, but not quite as sharp and ‘macro-like’ as I’d like and the magnification of the lens is only 1:2.

I’m therefore starting to look around for a new lens and have a few in mind, but can’t decide which would be best.

First on my wish list is the Canon EF-S 6omm f/2.8 lens. Being Canon, the quality should be good and the 60mm focal length will make it nice for portraits as well as macro work. It also fits in nicely between my current 18-55mm and 70-300mm lenses and isn’t ridiculously expensive.

Next up is the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM. The 100mm focal length may actually be a little better for moth photography as it will give me a better working distance, but at close to £500 it is getting a little too expensive for me! I’m sure it would be nice though!

Sigma do a similar lens, the Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro, which would hopefully give similar results to the Canon 100m lens, but at a more reasonable price. Sigma also do a 50mm f/2.8 EX DG Macro which I guess is comparable to the Canon 60mm, but again quite a bit cheaper.

Too many choices, has anyone got any recommendations or thoughts?