It’s been said, certainly many times by me, that the secret behind good photography is an awful, awful lot of bad photography.
I’ve taken just a shade over two thousand photos in the last three days, the better of which many of you have seen (they’re all over on !birding@lemmy.world). Herewith, I present to you this other album, which I have entitled:
“Dang It.”
Who was shooting silhouetted birds against the sky a couple of seconds ago and forgot to reset the exposure settings? Was it me? It was me.
Birds hiding behind things. Be prepared for this to become a recurring theme.
Check out the detail on that rock. What’s that? A squirrel? I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
Servo AF: For when you already have a subject in focus, but when you press the shutter button you’d like it not to be.
Tonight, On: “Too Late To Look!”
Black bird. White snow.
Stella, do me a favor, will you? Set up a meeting with whoever programmed the R10’s subject tracking so I can slap him.
Bird butts.
Don’t give me that green square, you bastard. You’re a green square.
Servo focus tracking, my left pinfeathers.
I knew this wasn’t going to work but I was duty bound to try it anyway. This was a 1/50 sec exposure at ISO 3200, in the dark, hand held, and at 475mm.
Even in ideal conditions you can find new and innovative ways to screw up. I didn’t get a single decent picture of this damn robin. I took four of them. That ought to do it, right? This was the best.
Do you mind?
Again with the subject tracking. And they’re telling us pattern learning “AI” is going to take over the world tomorrow? I’m not buying it.
Those are some sure fine pine needles.
I have no idea what I was thinking with this one. This is a one fifteenth second exposure at ISO 3200. I may as well have gotten out my easel and paints.
The second photo in this burst was downright iconic. The first one, not so much.
I had exactly one chance to nab this bluebird and I never saw him again for the rest of the day. I’m still salty about it.
The autofocus would not let go of that fence. “Use manual focus, dummy!” I did. Do you have any idea how far away from the zoom ring the focus ring is on the RF 200-800? It’s like six inches. Do you have any idea why? No, really, I want to know.
Anyway, by the time I found it and cranked it in the right direction and then got the camera back on target afterwards, he was gone.
This lizard wasn’t even moving.
I guess there was something really interesting about that twig at the 9 o’clock position?
I use spot AF on purpose for this sort of thing. Apparently that’s only a suggestion.
“There’s that magpie again, right over there!” my wife said. Yes, there was. Was.
And finally: Hold still, damn you.
Hey, at least shooting digital is free. Never be afraid to embrace your failures… Unless you never learn.
You’ll get 'em next time, sport.
Yay, my life, lived by another.
You almost certainly know these things, but just for others enjoying this album who don’t:
-
On the white out photo at the top - you can recover a lot of the colour of the trees, and lose the mist like effect, using Tone Curves/Luminance Histograms/whatever your software calls it, especially if you start with RAW format. But alas, not always: the sharpness of the result can be rubbish, and strange colours can creep in. Alas in this one, I suspect the bird was never in focus
-
Does your camera have focus modes - tell it to focus at a particular point, or only choose focus based on an limited area, rather than “pick the closest thing in the frame to focus on”. Manual focus and birds has never (?) worked for me - I certainly haven’t even tried it for a long while. Happily, the focus modes are easy to get my fingers to on mine, and I’m forever swapping, if occasionally cursing that I’m in the wrong mode. And then the R5 MkII’s revelation - point/small area focus modes where the camera is given a little leeway to go out of those bounds if it really wants to, but not by very far at all, along with “obey me, that area alone” locked forms.
-
Great post!!
(and was that a nuthatch in the OP?)One thing I’d suggest though it to use the title to give some idea of the extensiveness of the post, including photo-count. Nothing ‘scientific’ mind you, but when browsing, it helps to set expectations for the reading audience. Cheers.
Loved the bird butts section!
I’m very much a fan of the spray and pray mentality in wildlife photography. One of them is bound to be in focus, right? This wasn’t at 475mm, but it was at 1/50s @ 286mm (572mm FF). Granted my subject was pretty still too.
