Photographing dark colored birds

I love the slate colored dark eyed junco. It's a winter bird to the US, coming down from Canada to spend the cold months with us. They like to hang out low to the ground, hopping around and looking for food. Their perky mannerisms can warm even the coldest day.

This is my first winter watching the dark eyed juncos, and I've wanted to get a nice photo of one of these snowbirds. It's been a challenge. They have dark gray to black feathers on the upper half of their body, and white feathers below. For some reason, in most of my previous shots, their dark feathers came out noisy and lacking detail. I think it's due to the fact that the lower half of the tree in my yard, where they like to hang out, is usually in the shade, so that plus the winter light makes for low shutter speeds, and I just couldn't get enough light into the camera. Plus, I usually am shooting through the glass of my windows, degrading the quality of the shot.

This time, I opened the window up to shoot. It was chilly but I finally got a decent shot of my snowbirds!



I think the main keys were good lighting and shooting unobstructed.

Project 365: Jan 20, 2008

"Love"

Light painting. I used a flashlight with purple tissue paper over the end to paint the word "love" in the air in a dark room. I used a remote timer and an 8 second exposure. Flipped the word in Lightroom, and voila. I made a few other exposures like this for other little projects. :)

Tips for Shooting Snow

It's that time of year! Photodoto has some tips for shooting snow:

Cameras are designed to expose for a nice, even medium grey. Grey, not white. So snow throws off the camera’s metering system, which tries to make the snow a nice shade of grey.

To compensate, you need to add light, which may seem counterintuitive on a bright day:

• If you are using a camera with a snow setting, use it.
• If you are using a camera without one, use exposure compensation to add one to one-and-a-half stops in the plus direction.
• If you are using a manual camera, do one of two things. Either use a spot meter to measure the actual light on a bright spot in the snow or else open the aperture one or more stops beyond what your averaging internal meter suggests.

More great tips: Perk up photos of snowy scenes with these simple and practical tips - by photodoto

Fixing Cluttered Background

Photodoto has an easy tutorial for quickly fixing cluttered backgrounds. (Consider this a "note to self" post!)

The Digiscope Setup

Santa brought me a spotting scope and camera adapter for Christmas :) w00t!

There haven't been many birds out today to test it out, but I did get a few shots this morning. Here's a female house finch:



These small birds fill about half the frame with the magnification of the spotting scope, versus maybe 1/10th of the frame with my 300mm Canon lens. I think the shots are likely more crisp out of the 300mm lens, but with the extreme cropping required for close-ups, distortion occurs. It's nice to be able to preserve most of the detail of the shot even after cropping by using the digiscope setup.

I need to do some research on the best camera settings when using a scope. I'm currently using aperture priority mode, so that the camera chooses the correct shutter speed. The aperture shows as 00 on the camera, and of course it is manual focus as no lens is attached to the camera. Focusing is done via the scope.

The camera attaches to the scope via a camera adapter and a T-ring in place of the camera lens.

It's a little awkward trying to look downward into the camera viewfinder. I can see why people have said that it's easier to digiscope with a point-n-shoot camera, particularly one with the flip-out rotating LCD screen for those odd angles. I bought that adapter for the scope, too, and will try it with my Canon Powershot A70.

For working indoors (shooting through the window), I think the dSLR setup is OK. It's probably a bit clumsy in the field, but I'll have to try it. The point-n-shoot setup will likely be easier for field shooting.

The pictures I've taken so far have tended toward over-exposed. I'm shooting in RAW, so fixing that is simple in Adobe Lightroom, but I'd like to figure out how to get it right in-camera. Unfortunately, there are no test subjects in my tree right now, as landscapers are outside doing who-knows-what, scaring the birds away.

I'm very encouraged by the shots I've been able to get so far! It will take some practice to learn to maneuver the scope on the tripod (I also see now why all of the photography books I read encouraged spending money on a good ball-head tripod... my $35 3-way pan head is hideously clumsy and difficult to maneuver. It's fine for taking family portraits, but very difficult to use when trying to follow a bird moving around in a tree). A good tripod will likely be my next semi-major purchase.

Fun with Christmas Lights

Fun with Christmas Lights:



(click the photo to see more)

Shutter-priority mode
Exposure: 2 sec (2)
Aperture: f/13
Focal Length: 50 mm
ISO Speed: 100
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire

Halloween Photo Tips

DPS has a nice bunch of tips for getting the best of the spooky Halloween photos this year:

Halloween Photography Tips

Go forth and have a scary good time!

What is Bokeh?

What is bokeh?

In photography, Bokeh is a Japanese word - the transliteration of a Japanese word for "blur" - describing the subjective aesthetic quality of out-of-focus areas of an image projected by a camera lens. For example, in some images the background may be deliberately caused to be out-of-focus to reduce distractions and to emphasize the primary subject.

-- Wikipedia -Bokeh

I've seen the word "bohek" mentioned on the DPS forums a lot lately, but didn't really know what it meant until I came across an article posted by newbie (who doesn't seem to be a newbie at all!). The article is called "Bokeh Lesson from a Patient Bee" and I found it to be hugely helpful in explaining and demonstrating what good vs less than good bokeh looks like.

newbie goes on to give 4 detailed lessons on what makes good bokeh, including descriptions, examples of camera settings, and illustrative photos.

Very helpful! Thanks, newbie!

The Moon - Take Two!

I shot the moon again tonight. Turns out, the best picture I got was using the settings from this moon photography article, but kicked up to ISO200 instead of 100. From the couple hundred shots I took, here's what I found:

• Anything over ISO200 generates way too much noise, so much that the outline of the moon is affected and it becomes pretty much unfixable.
• Sunny f/16 doesn't catch enough light (f/16 and 1/00 or 1/125 shutter speed) - at least not at the first quarter moon. Maybe it would work for a full moon. Someday I'll try it.
  
• Manual mode is a necessity, at least with my lens. Shutter priority wanted an aperture of 5.6, and none of those shots turned out. Aperture priority was calculating 30 second shutter times - obviously way too long.
  
• Metering mode didn't seem to affect anything. I need to read up on this again.
  
• Auto exposure bracketing was helpful. Tonight, I set it to 2 stops either way.
  
• I removed the polarizer filter tonight and got much better shots than the other day.

I had much brighter shots tonight (due to removal of the polarizer filter?), and by increasing the blacks one notch in Lightroom, I was able to get rid of all that weird green noise. (It didn't work as well on my shots from the other day, as they weren't as bright and there was more noise in them). So - in the end, for both of these photos, I notched up the blacks by 1 or 2 to get rid of the noise in the blacks, and cropped them. I could probably even crop them further, but I like a little bit of darkness around them.


Exposure: 0.067 sec (1/15)
Aperture: f/16
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 0/3 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire


Exposure: 0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture: f/8
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 200
Exposure Bias: 2 EV
Flash: Flash did not fire

Hoorah for the moon! I think I like the first one better. Its detail seems finer. Thoughts?

Photography Causes Sleep Deprivation

Photography causes sleep deprivation - news at 11.

:) Actually, my love of thunderstorms and subsequent desire to capture the all elusive lightening bolt on film (thanks to my new hobby) causes sleep deprivation, at least when a t-storm rolls in late at night when I'm about ready for bed.

I tried to snap some lightening last night. No, I don't have a tripod yet (well, I didn't as of last night! I picked up a cheap one on sale at Best Buy today, until I get my dream tripod from B&H Photo), and no, the shutter release cable I ordered hasn't arrived yet, but that didn't stop me from trying! There wasn't much streaky cloud-to-ground lightning going on last night, though, and I don't think I caught any. I haven't pulled the images off the memory card yet, but I'm pretty sure I hit an oh-fer last night.

I did, however, find some good resources on photographing lightning, for the next time I try!

How to Take Lightning Photos by Matthew Cole - there were a lot of lightning photography how-to's out there, but for some reason I found this one the most helpful. Maybe because his explanation of the process and f/stop explanations made the most sense to me?

Lightning Probability Radar - a map from the National Weather Service (USA) showing the probability of lightning strikes over 3 hour time blocks. Go find a storm!

Current National Radar (USA) - found this link in Cole's article. I like it because it's simple, easy to read, and easy to zoom in on your area (just click the map).

I read a lot of other articles, but didn't bookmark any. Most sites were specific to how to photograph lightning with a film camera. I'd love to find some information specific to digital SLR's. If you know of any good sites for tips on how to photograph lightning, let me know!

Taking Pictures Through Windows

T3 offers up some tips on how to take great pictures through windows.

Sometimes, you just can't get an outside shot of your subject. With a little attention to detail, though, you can take great snapshots through windows (even through the windows of an airplane!). One tip not mentioned here - if possible, make sure the window is clean. Also, avoid shooting through window screens if possible.

My Summary:

1. Position your camera right against the window.
2. Shield any gaps between the lens barrel and the window with your hand (or wear a baseball cap or brimmed hat) to prevent reflections off the glass.
3. Turn off the flash.
4. Make sure you are focusing on your subject and not the window itself. Auto-focus often focuses on the closest object (in this case, the window). If that happens, use manual focus to focus on your subject, or set your focus manually to infinity.