This years first visit to Crabtree Nature center

One of the pretty creatures at Crabtree nature center.

This years first visit to Crabtree Nature center was great. We went there when the weather was great. The only this was, there were not too many birds as we went there around noon, and birds usually hide out to keep out of the heat and come hunting later on in the afternoon.

One of my favorite dragonfly photos.

For trips like these, I usually go big. I was expecting to photograph birds so I brought along my Canon 400mm f/5.6L lens. Realizing that I needed a macro lens for my secondary lens the least time I went, I went and brought along my Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. The last time I went I just brought my 400mm with my 50mm 1.8 and boy did I regret not bringing a macro lens along. This time I was smarter.

A similar shot I did that won a Brookfield Zoo award last year.

This trip my 400mm mostly stayed in monopod. I was using the 100mm macro more than I expected to use it. There were a ton of dragonflies and I just snapped on. I am so glad I had my macro with me. I caught some pretty cool close up shots of dragonflies just standing on a leaf, and it seemed like the dragonflies just stayed put whenever I got close.

A bird shot I took while on our way out.

My 400mm never really became useless that day. On our way out we saw a couple of birds hanging out by the feeders. It's pretty nice how Crabtree Nature center set up their bird feeders. They are by the Entrance and near the washrooms by the visitor center. You'd pass them by before you leave and you usually will see a lot of birds by them, fighting over the food.

My last shot of the day.

I will definitely go back to the nature center when it becomes cooler. Maybe I will see different species of birds next time. Other than that the trip was worthwhile.

Shooting through a glass window

Winter is here and oftentimes it really is very cold to go out and shoot, especially wildlife. The day I shot these shots, I woke up and looked out my window, and there were a ton of birds eating in our bird feeders outside our house. It is really nice to have a bird feeder especially during winter to keep the birds well fed when food is rare during this cold time of the year. 

Perfect timing to get two birds in one shot.

So I cleaned one of the glass panels near our door with glass cleaner to take dirt and smudges off the glass so I can view the birds clearer through it. I grabbed my Canon 6D and attached my Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens to it so I have enough reach to shoot the birds outside.

This bird was really persistent on hanging on to the feeder.

I knelt down behind the glass panel and started to view the birds through my viewfinder. With a 400mm attached, I had to back up a bit from the glass panel to properly frame the birds. When I finally got in position I now began to set my settings in the camera.

This guy was waiting for its turn to eat.

I set my mode to shutter priority. Birds are fast moving animals so I am going to need a fast shutter speed for these shots. Also considering I'm using a 400mm lens, the faster shutter speed will minimize the camera shake when I take shots. I set my speed to around 400th/sec. I am not moving that much as I was kneeling down behind the glass panel, If I was standing up or moving I would've used a shutter speed that's faster than 400th/ sec. I also set my ISO to 320 which is enough to give me an aperture of around f/5.6 to around f/8...my lens is an f/5.6 lens so I had to put that into consideration. Also since I was shooting in snow I had to bump up my exposure compensation to +1 because snow will affect my metering to underexpose because the camera thinks that I am shooting in bright light.

In situations where you need to shoot behind glass, set your focus to MANUAL mode. By doing this you have the control on which to focus on instead of the camera focusing on the glass panel. You have to be quick enough to refocus when your subject moves though. It's hard at first but it's really to get used to.

After a bit of post processing, I saturated the colors a bit and gave the subjects more pop. I was glad to not go out into the cold to capture these shots.

More bird shots from the Canon 400mm f/5.6

The 400mm's sharpness is so visible in most shots like in this one. The feather details are still seen from this bird from about 20 feet away.

Fall is almost here and I am scrambling to get the most use out of my Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens. As you all know, the 400mm is not your everyday lens. You only use it for specific stuff like birds, and some sports. I don't do a lot of sports shots, so I mainly use it for birding.

Every weekend I try to go to my favorite nature centers to photograph wildlife. Some weekends I have luck some weekends I don't. Patience is a trait that you should have when birding and I have trained myself heavily to have lots of it when birding. If you have the right tools, the patience and the luck, then birding is a very nice hobby.

This bird was shot in our front yard. It didn't really mind having its photo taken.

A lot of times, I didn't even have to go to a nature center. All I had to do is wait in our front yard and the birds come along. So somehow it really is just pure luck. I have photographed closeups of birds in our front yard. Sometimes they get spooked by the flash, but a lot of times they really don't pay attention to it.

As I have said in a previous post, a nice thing to have when birding is a flash extender. Flashes when used correctly give the birds a lot of color and contrast. It's also a perfect tool to correctly expose birds when you are shooting them against the light, especially when they are flying.

 This fellow kept on coming back for the free food.

 I heard splashing then I saw this guy with a frog in its beak.

 This one just went into a branch above me and stayed till I pressed the shutter.

 This fellow was kinda shy.

This one kept on going back and forth the tree trunk and the feeder.

In the next couple of weeks I'm going to try to get the most out of my 400mm this season. Then I suppose it's time to put it away when the snow comes. Hopefully birds are still around when there is snow so I can continue to use it.

The Rachel Carson National Wildlife refuge

While at Kennebunkport Maine, we wanted to check out the birds in that area...and there's no better way of doing that other than going to the Rachel Carson National Wildlife refuge. It's about 2 miles away from where we stayed during our vacation. So we packed our stuff and headed that way.

This guy was basically posing in front of us.

He then flew a bit further.

We got there at around 10 am. The weather did cooperate this time. We got rain the past week, like almost everyday. We parked the car and got our stuff.

The trails were actually good. Not muddy from the previous rains, and the trail wasn't searing hot. It was the perfect temperature. No mosquitos either.

This is a view from one of the platforms. You can see the sea from a couple of miles away.

The center had an information building where we got a poster and tons of info regarding Rachel Carson. We learned about the different things they do in Maine to preserve their wildlife. It really was similar to nature centers here in Illinois.

The trail basically is a loop of around 1 mile which was really enjoyable to walk. There are a lot of viewing platforms where you can take shots of birds going around their daily business. There was also a mini lake where I'm pretty sure there are days where the birds go there and look for food. During our stay, we didn't see any though.

 

I only had like 3 seconds to shoot this before the bird was gone.

Bords here in Maine seem to be less cautious towards humans.

 Tall grass in front of the lake. I knew I had to shoot this before we left.

I highly recommend the nature center to visitors around that area. Make sure you have a really long lens though when you go. I had my 400mm when we did.

More samples from my Canon 400mm f/5.6

A blue Heron diving for food.

So I've been really digging this Canon 400mm f/5.6 that I recently purchased. I have also purchased a carbon fiber monopod to basically use with it. The 400mm has a neat tripod collar that I use to attach it to the monopod. I've gone out to use it a couple of times to shoot birds in our local nature center, and usually I go home really happy. As I've said in my review, the 400mm f/5.6 has excellent focusing abilities. I activated the additional focus points on my Canon 5D MK2 to compliment the ai servo mode to capture birds in flight, and still works excellent with an aftermarket teleconverter attached.

A cormorant flapping its wings.

Robins are excellent to take pictures of. They are everywhere plus they are not so scared of people.

I caught this one with a fish in the birds mouth

The excellent focusing on the 400mm allows you to shoot birds in flight, slow or fast.

Most of these shots are cropped. Even when the images are cropped, the subjects still look pretty decent. The superb optics of the 400mm give you the ability to sharpen or crop your images with minimal image quality loss, even when paired with a teleconverter.

I think I'll use it more often this summer. I've never had this much birds shots since I started photography.

My first hummingbird shots

Fall of last year we went to our favorite botanic garden in Glencoe Illinois to take photos of the last blooms of the season. The weather was getting chilly and the flowers were on their last blooms. Also wildlife is starting to get rare, with a couple of birds and bees and animals going around gathering food to get ready for the cold winter. My friend from work told me a week earlier that hummingbirds are now frequenting some of the spots in the garden. I have never photographed a hummingbird in my life...this will be my first attempt. 

As soon as we got to the garden, we saw a bunch of photographers waiting for the birds. All brandishing their cameras of choice, from medium formats to point and shoots. My camera of choice was my 5D MK2 equipped with my favorite 70-200 IS USM f/2.8 with my Kenko 1.4x DGX 4 attached to it for the extra reach. The telephoto 200mm range will now become a 280mm...I think that'll be enough for what I'm gonna use it for. Of course my f2.8 lens with the teleconverter attached is now an f4 lens. Still not bad for the maximum aperture. We had plenty of sun that day which translates into faster shutter speeds for me. Excellent when capturing hummingbirds.

As soon as we get to one spot, 2 hummingbirds were already flying around. With hummingbirds you really have to have a very keen sense of hearing and sight. These birds aren't big enough to be noticed and they also fly really fast! The busy landscape of bushes and flowers doesn't help too as it helps to hide these little birds. 

I set my camera to aperture priority to let me set it to the maximum aperture that I can so I can have the maximum speed that my camera will allow me to have with the lighting conditions. I know I should've set it to shutter priority so I can specify my speed but it was getting darker in the late afternoon that I am not taking any chances with underexposed photos. I was thinking, it's better to get a blurred hummingbird picture than to get a very dark image of it. Next time I'll remember to bring a flash.

I handheld my camera waiting for the hummingbirds and managed to take some shots while they flew in front of me. 

This hummingbird just froze in front of me for about 4 seconds. Enough time for me to snap this. 

I was lucky with this one. The sun was shining directly into the bird that my camera allowed to have a 2000/sec shutter speed to freeze it in motion.

This season I have my longer 400mm ready for any birds that might come along. I'll be ready to take it with soon when I hear the hummingbirds are back in the gardens!

Bird shots using my 70-200mm IS USM

Over the weekend I had promised myself that I will do a photo shoot of the birds outside our house. We recently purchased a bird feeders and put them in front of our house, knowing that I would be able to shoot birds closeup using this method. I had been birding for the past couple of days, this though will give me real closeups of the birds outside.

For this shoot I chose to use my Canon 50d for the frames per second speed. It's faster than my 5d mk2 which makes it an excellent body for birding. I equipped it with my Canon 70-200 IS USM lens. For this setup, a long range of 200mm is enough as the birds will not see me behind the camera. I will be watching them from the inside so the 200mm reach is enough compared to using the 200mm on a real outdoor birding trip, that is why a lot of birders wear camouflage jackets. Birds do not come close when they see you a couple of feet away from them so staying indoors and watching them through my glass door is a smart idea. Having said that, I would have to trigger my camera with a wireless shutter release so I installed my yong nuo rf-602 to the body. I then attached the tripod collar of my lens to my ballhead attached to my tripod. I then pointed the camera to the bird feeder where I anticipate the birds to feed from.

My simple setup. My fiancee took this with her phone while I took a short break. She even caught a bird flying down on the right side of the feeder.

There are a couple of different approaches when it comes to this kind of setup. For this particular one, I set my focus point to where I think the birds will be. I then set the bird feeder to the center of my frame. Then I used the one of side focus points of my camera to be where my autofocus will be...here's where it all differs. Usually you can set your lens to manual focus for this kind of setup so you can shoot the camera even if the focus isn't locked on...a very good idea if you are really sure where the birds are going to land and stay a few seconds. A very good idea to capture birds in motion that fly by really fast.  Also you can set your focus mode to ai servo...which doesn't restrict you to shoot even if the focus isn't locked on. Either way it's really up to you what you think will work. For these shots I used auto focus, with my focus point on the left side with AI focus mode so I still have the focus lock to let me know when the focus is dead on. I made sure that my camera is perfectly perpendicular to both sides of the bird feeder for the focus to perfectly work...this helps out a lot if I set my focus to manual.

That day was overcast...but the light kept changing. I set my camera to shutter priority and set my speed to 320/sec. Good enough as I 'm not taking shots of birds in flight. ISO was set to 400. First few shots were ok, I then decided to attach a speedlite to my camera, setup the speedlite to HSS, ettl mode. The speedlite gave my shots a lot of color compared to the shots that didn't have it, so the speedlite worked out pretty good.

After a couple of shots I decided to upload my photos and these are the best 2 that I got:

The birds have excellent hearing. They can hear the lens motor focus and they fly away. Some of them get used to it even with the flash and eat while you take a couple of shots. 

I was waiting for a hummingbird to stop over the other feeder but none came. Although when it comes I will be ready. Hopefully before winter I have a couple of shots of them.

So this is how I spent my weekend :)