What’s Up?
I am somewhere in South America. I hope that you are well. Jim and Jen are at the office most days to help you with your mail order needs and Instructional Photo-Tour sign-ups. I still need folks for San Diego, Japan, Galapagos, the Palouse, and the Bear Boat (Grizzly Cubs) trips. Among others 🙂 Please e-mail for couples and discount info for all of the above. Click here for complete IPT info.
I will have relatively decent internet access for all but 22 OCT thru 11 NOV while I am on the Sea Spirit. Best and great picture making, artie
Gear Questions and Advice
Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of the folks whom I see in the field, and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear, especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
Selling Your Used Photo Gear Through BIRDS AS ART
Selling your used (or like-new) photo gear through the BAA Blog or via a BAA Online Bulletin is a great idea. We charge only a 5% commission. One of the more popular used gear for sale sites charged a minimum of 20%. Plus assorted fees! Yikes. They went out of business. And e-Bay fees are now up to 13%. The minimum item price here is $500 (or less for a $25 fee). If you are interested please scroll down here or shoot us an e-mail with the words Items for Sale Info Request cut and pasted into the Subject line :). Stuff that is priced fairly–I offer pricing advice to those who agree to my terms, usually sells in no time flat. Over the past year, we have sold just about everything in sight. Do know that prices on some items like the EOS-1D Mark IV, the old Canon 500mm, the EOS-7D, and the original 400mm IS DO lens have been dropping steadily and that big, heavy Nikon super-telephotos have been nearly impossible to sell.
You can check out all the Used Gear Listings on the Used Gear page here.
Used Gear Cautions
Though I am not in a position to post images of gear for sale here or elsewhere, prospective buyers are encouraged to request for photos of the gear that they are interested in purchasing via e-mail. Doing so will help to avoid any misunderstandings as to the condition of the gear. Sellers are advised to photograph their used gear with care against clean backgrounds so that the stuff is represented accurately and in the best light; please pardon the pun :).
New Listing
Canon EOS 5DS R
Sold in minutes!
Bill Hill is offering a like-new Canon EOS 5DS R in mint condition for an incredibly low $2599. The camera body and all listed items were purchased from B & H Photo in March 2016. EXIF indicates the body has only 1780 actuations on it. The sale includes the original box, cap, manual, software disc and Battery Charger, A Vello vertical grip BG-C9 and one Watson Battery. Insured shipping via major courier to US addresses only.
Your item will not ship until your check clears.
Please contact Bill via e-mail or by phone: 1-831-601-4066 (daytime) or 1-831-624-3300 (evenings). E-mail is preferred.
The 5DS R is the premier dSLR for landscape photography and as Patrick Sparkman and I proved, it is a great body for bird, wildlife, and nature photographers who have good sharpness techniques, especially those who make large prints; it’s image quality is unmatched. artie
The Streak: 364!
Today’s blog post marks a totally insane, irrational, illogical, preposterous, absurd, completely ridiculous, unfathomable, silly, incomprehensible, what’s wrong with this guy?, makes-no-sense, 364 days in a row with a new educational blog post. There should be no end in sight until my big South America trip next fall. Or not… As always-–and folks have been doing a really great job recently–-please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. For best results use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the new BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would appreciate your business.
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This image was created just before the start of the 2016 San Diego IPT on a cloudy afternoon with the hand held Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens (at 200mm) and the mega mega-pixel Canon EOS 5DS R . ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2 1/3 stops off the light gray sky: 1/500 sec. at f8. High Speed Synch on camera “fill” flash with the Canon Speedlite 600EX-RT and a Better Beamer with the flash set to 1:1 in Manual flash. Center AF point/AI Servo Expand/Shutter Button AF as originally framed was active at the moment of exposure (as is always best when hand holding). The selected AF point was on the bird’s breast. Brown Pelican white sky flight |
100-400 II Flight (and More) Versatility
Being able to zoom out to 200mm and include a strip of the distant shoreline added lots of interest to this image. With its close focus and great zoom range and its ability to create sharp images with the 1.4X III TC, the 100-400 II is by far the most versatile lens in my bag. Add in the fact that you can add the 2X III TC when working on a a tripod and create razor sharp images by focusing manually and you have yourself a great weapon. Not to mention it super sharpness and the great 4-stop IS system…
White Sky Flight Exposures
Meter off the sky and go 2 to 2 1/3 stops brighter for birds with some white feathers and set that exposure manually. For a dark bird, open up 3 to 3 1/3 stops and set that manually. In the latter situation, you will likely need to blink the sky totally to get a good exposure on a crow or a raven.
Flash-related Info
You can learn everything that you need to know about flash for nature photography in the “Flash Simplified” section of The Art of Bird Photography II (ABP II: 916 pages and 900+ images on CD only). That will include using flash as fill, flash as main light, manual flash, and high speed sync flash.
Flash-related Question
What was I thinking using 1/500 second to freeze a bird in flight? Most folks like to work at at least 1/1600 second… In other words, why 1/500 second in this situation?
Note: those who own The Art of Bird Photography II (ABP II: 916 pages, 900+ images, on CD only; the best ever digital photography how to you will find) can find the answer in the Flash Simplified section.
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San Diego offers a wealth of very attractive natural history subjects. With annual visits spanning more than three decades I have lot of experience there…. |
2017 San Diego 4 1/2-DAY BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tour (IPT) JAN 11 thru and including the morning session on JAN 15: 4 1/2 days: $1999.
(Limit: 10/openings 8)
Meet and Greet at 7:00pm on the evening before the IPT begins; Tuesday 1/10/17.
Join me in San Diego to photograph the spectacular breeding plumage Brown Pelicans with their fire-engine red and olive green bill pouches; Brandt’s and Double-crested Cormorants; breeding plumage Wood and Ring-necked Duck; other duck species possible including Lesser Scaup, Redhead, and Surf Scoter; a variety of gulls including Western, California, and the gorgeous Heerman’s, all in full breeding plumage; shorebirds including Marbled Godwit, Willet, Sanderling and Black-bellied Plover; many others possible including Least, Western, and Spotted Sandpiper, Whimbrel, Black and Ruddy Turnstone, Semipalmated Plover, and Surfbird; Harbor Seals (depending on the current regulations) and California Sea Lions; and Bird of Paradise flowers. And as you can see by studying the two IPT cards there are some nice bird-scape and landscape opportunities as well.
With gorgeous subjects just sitting there waiting to have their pictures taken, photographing the pelicans on the cliffs is about as easy as nature photography gets. With the winds from the east almost every morning there is usually some excellent flight photography. And the pelicans are almost always doing something interesting: preening, scratching, bill pouch cleaning, or squabbling. And then there are those crazy head throws that are thought to be a form of intra-flock communication.
Did I mention that there are wealth of great birds and natural history subjects in San Diego in winter?
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Though the pelicans will be the stars of the show on this IPT there will be many other handsome and captivating subjects in wonderful settings. |
The San Diego Details
This IPT will include five 3 1/2 hour morning photo sessions, four 2 1/2 hour afternoon photo sessions, four lunches, and after-lunch image review and Photoshop sessions. To ensure early starts, breakfasts will be your responsibility.
A $599 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your slot for this IPT. You can send a check (made out to “Arthur Morris) to us at BIRDS AS ART, PO Box 7245, Indian Lake Estates, FL, 33855. Or call Jim or Jennifer at the office with a credit card at 863-692-0906. Your balance, payable only by check, will be due on 9/11//2016. If we do not receive your check for the balance on or before the due date we will try to fill your spot from the waiting list. Please print, complete, and sign the form that is linked to here and shoot it to us along with your deposit check. If you register by phone, please print, complete and sign the form as noted above and either mail it to us or e-mail the scan. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via e-mail.
Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂
To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.
As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.
I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.
Be sure to like and follow BAA on Facebook by clicking on the logo link upper right. Tanks a stack!
Typos
In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right 🙂
As mentioned above, I took advantage of BAA’s used gear sales to sell a Canon 5Dsr. I got great advice from Artie on the price and sold it within minutes of the Blog being posted. The 5% charge is far below what the big houses get and the sale went smoothly.
Thanks Artie
🙂 And huge thanks to you.
later and love, artie
Hello Artie,
Hope you enjoy your South of Equator trip. This is the good side for Bio and Bird diversity.
Re The Art of Bird Photography II – can we not buy it in electronic form? I am in South Africa and apart from import duties I will occur there is a real change of the CD not arriving when posted.
There are many technologies of which one is Dropbox where one can transfer big files.
Regards
Johann
Please write Jim at the staffbaa@attnet and ask him if he can do it. He should be able to.
thanks and later and love and good plan.
artie
Speedlites have very fast flash durations. Using the flash allowed you to use a slower SS to ‘freeze’ the pelican in flight. It’s how we can ‘freeze’ people dancing in dark reception halls during weddings at 1/60-1/160 SS. It should be noted that most studio strobes actually work differently that speedlites and have much longer durations(slow burn out) and would cause lit motion blur.
HSS should have been turned on automatically when you rolled your shutter speed past sync speed. Since speedlites use pulsing and seriously reduce output during HSS you had to be at full power, even with the better beamer.
All sort of true but you never answered the question…
later and love, artie
Hi Artie,
I’m going to venture a guess here: any shutter speed faster than 1/500 and you could get a dark stripe where either the first or second shutter curtain was blocking the sensor when flash fired. I am supposing that you would need to turn on high-speed-sync to use faster shutter speeds with flash.
Be well,
Tony
Sort of close but no cigar 🙂
a