Bulletins, Baby Bears, and More… « Arthur Morris/BIRDS AS ART

Bulletins, Baby Bears, and More...

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Handheld Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO lens with the EOS-1D MIII. Evaluative metering +1 stop: 1/500 sec. at f/4 set manually.

With its light silver nuchal collar (ruff) we nicknamed this baby Katmai bear “Lion Cub.”

I just got back from a nice extended weekend at the Midwest Birding Symposium.  Not much photography but lots of great speakers and lots of nice folks.   And I sold pretty much everything that I brought <smile>  Twenty copies of the soft cover “The Art of Bird Photography,” 40 copies of “The Art of Bird Photography II” (on CD only), and 36 copies of my Shorebirds; Beautiful Beachcombers.  You can learn more or purchase these here:  https://store.birdsasart.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=32.

I should have let you know well before this that BAA Bulletin 297 is on-line here:  http://birdsasart.com/bn297.htm, BAA Bulletin 298 is on-line here: http://birdsasart.com/bn298.htm, and the BAA Notes of September 15 can be found here:  http://birdsasart.com/notes9.15.09.htm.

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Tripod-mounted Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO lens with the EOS-1D MIII. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +1/3 stop: 1/160 sec. at f/6.3. Gitzo 3530 LS CF tripod with the latest model Mongoose M3.5.

This is the same bear as in the first image. The adults often give a good part of their catch to the young ones.  When the light was decent, I used the 400 DO lens handheld (as with the first image). As light levels decreased, I put the lens back on the tripod to ensure getting sharp images.  The 400 DO (diffractive optical elements) lens weighs less than 4 pounds with the tripod collar removed. Be sure to remove the tripod collar when hand-holding; this makes handling the lens easier both because of the lighter weight and the fact that the tripod collar and lens plate do not interfere with your grip. 

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Canon 70-200mm f/4 L IS lens with the EOS-1D MIII handheld at 124mm. ISO 800. Evaluative metering at zero: 1/500 sec. at f/5.6.

I manually selected a lower left AF sensor that I placed on participant George Brunt; this yielded a pleasing composition with the sharpest focus on the photographer.    See the image of George with an adult bear sniffing his tripod and the resulting firestrom here:  http://birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=45384 .  (You can see the image in the September 10th blog post below.)  And see more negative comments on this image in “Too Close to the Bear?” here: http://birdsasart.com/notes9.15.09.htm.

I’ll be back soon with some Katmai Quick Mask magic.

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