madredhen

<p>In defense of the OP's decision, I feel exactly the same way. I started with a Nikon then went fully into Canon for many reasons but have always missed the Nikon color and when borrowing other peoples' Nikons I still see the difference. If I weren't stuck with a beloved flawless 600mm lens I'd switch to Nikon in a heartbeat. When you go as far as you can with lenses and still can't get the color you want it's pretty frustrating. Photoshop doesn't fix everything.</p>

<p>One thing you want to keep in mind in terms of focus is that in nature photography, the animal's eye must be sharp. This sounds like some arbitrarily-assigned rule but it's not, it's just how people perceive images and sharpness. So focus on the eye or on a part of the animal at the same distance as the eye. Another thing you can do to increase sharpness is to increase depth-of-field by trying to avoid shooting wide-open (at the widest aperature). It's much more difficult to get a sharp eye at f/2.8 than f/8 because at f/8 you have increased sharpness in front of and behind the exact focal point (greater "depth of field"), meaning if you focus on a squirrel's nose, the eye, which buggs out toward you, would still appear sharp even though it's not on the same plane as the nose. </p>

<p>In terms of spending your money, just saving it 'til you have a better idea of what you NEED (not just want) is probably your best bet. If it's burning a hole in your pocket, and you're focusing on shooting the types of images I've seen in your file (close-up of birds and small mammals?) you need a longer lens, and the general rule in bird photography is to get as long a lens as you can afford. Bird photography is in my opinion the most costly of photography hobbies, and I say hobby because chances of ever making back what it cost you to buy the gear is almost none. 2k is a lot to throw down for a hobby. Another good option for spending money is travel. In my opinion, just getting out and shooting as many photos as possible is the best education you can get because where are you going to find a decent wildlife photography course? Shoot, look at the photo critically, and try to make a better shot the next time. If you don't know how to make the photo better, post it here with the specifications and someone will undoubtedly tell you ways to improve. As far as spending your money on travel, there are wildlife photography expeditions available that might be a great learning opportunity, or a great way to get someone more experienced to take you under their wing. If you don't want to go with an expedition (expensive!) a trip to somewhere that has a ton of wildlife might be another option. You can't go wrong with the Florida Everglades, you'd have more birds and other creatures to shoot at than you could dream of, and you don't need a long lens there- birds will let you get very close. Having a few really great keeper photos is a good way to bring up your morale and inspire you to shoot shoot more and better, if you ever need such inspiration.</p>

<p>I'm a wildlife photographer, but was out of the technology loop the last few years, being content with the cameras and lenses I had, and have just now jumped back into it after buying a Canon 40D and having it die on me about a year later. I've read through the 5d mk ii vs 7d discussions in the equipment forum but want to know what wildlife photographers feel about it. Right now I'm shooting with a 10D, and have been for a year, it was always just a backup body but turns out to be the workhorse when everything else is busted. I LOVE it but the ISO is just not up to snuff. To be honest I would turn tail and go Nikon, especially with the build quality of recent Canons, but my 600mm is unparalleled and irreplaceable and I don't have any extra money. Here's what I care about for my shooting, and keep in mind I do occasionally shoot weddings and sports and flying birds, and if anyone that has a recent Canon body could throw in their 2 cents about what they feel is the current BEST CANON BODY FOR WILDLIFE I'd appreciate it.<br>

Here's what matters to me.<br>

High ISO capability/low noise<br>

Build quality and trustworthy against failure<br>

Sealed against dust/competent in moisture and cold<br>

I vastly prefer a CF card over SD because I'm less likely to lose/break the CF<br>

QUIET SHUTTER NOISE (what idiot thought it was ok for their most wildlife-worthy cameras to scare the birds? I had a 20D for years. That level of noise is unaccaptable if I'm going to throw down cash again.)<br>

Video. I sold my video camera to buy this body so it's gotta shoot video. Throught the 600. Yumm.<br>

Fastest possible AF in all lighting situations.<br>

Large LCD that reviews a high-quality image. The 40D's reviewing of thumbnails was worthless.<br>

Cost<br>

Sensor size. I'd love to go full-frame for the first time in my life. But what's your opinion?<br>

JPGs. I usually find RAW a waste of time and drive space. But i like the idea of the RAW button.<br>

I don't care about megapixels. 8 is usually plenty for me.<br>

Viewfinder. I have glasses and the 10D and 20D viewfinders are hard to use making me rely more blindly on the AF. I seem to remember the 40D being better.<br>

On/Off button not accidentally getting switched! Come on.<br>

Dust-free sensor<br>

High fps, of course<br>

Anything else you might think handy.<br>

Thank you very much for your input.</p>

 

<p>I use and love my Bushnell window mount, it's more for a lightweight scope but I put my 600mm on it, which weighs around 15 lbs. When using a heavy lens I attach the window mount, then roll the window down until the base of the mount is resting firmly against the door frame before mounting the lens so that glass alone is not supporting all that weight (window seems very likely to break in an exciting moment if you don't). It marrs the tinting on my window, which is a kind of thin stick-on layer, so be warned if you have such tinting. I bought it used at a pawn shop for 9 dollars and have used it to take thousands of photos using the truck as a blind, as long as the vehicle is turned off it gives me vibration-free images. Don't know if it's the best choice for you but it's been perfect for me. </p>

<p>I carry-on all my fragile darlings like bodies and lenses and laptop and batteries in the lightest bag possible because weight has become even more of an issue than size in many cases, and you don't need a bulletproof case when the gear never leaves your side. I like to fly Southwest because they're cheap to begin with then allow 2 checked bags without a baggage fee, it adds up to a lot of money still in my pocket, they're also very relaxed about what you try to carry-on. I use a large messenger bag for laptop and lenses, and a spacious day pack for bodies and more lenses and some clothes. I stiffen the sides and bottom of the messenger bag with cardboard pieces so that it sets upright.<br>

THEN comes the checked luggage. I bought a big 36" Eagle Creek duffle and stuffed a cardboard sonotube used for pouring concrete into it (I did not first use it for concrete). I packed 3 light stands, a tripod, 2 lights, accessories, and the power box with my clothing for the week into the tube, it held up excellently though they managed to tear a hole in the duffle by dragging it behind something. It sometimes was sorted into the oversized luggage area, sometimes not. Physics-wise, the tube gives a lot of protection because it's very difficult to squash, especially with the added support of all the debris I filled it with, and there was no way the tripods or stands could be damaged in that. I left the bulbs in the lights with caps on, though I don't recommend it, and miraculously everything survived in perfect condition except the duffle bag. Sonotubes are available at places where they sell concrete, construction, and home hardware goods. I wanted PVC but nobody had it in that size, and it probably would have been prohibitively heavy anyway. I also packed a rolling backpack with spare bulbs and clothing for 2 more weeks, but mostly so that I would have the wheels to set that 36" duffle on. It was a real trick to get those and 2 carryons down a couple blocks and onto 3 busses and 2 planes, I'd recommend a cab.</p>

<p>Jason I agree with you 100%, and I think it's the area. I come from a small town and expectations there are completely different than most of the banter here. That said I greatly appreciate being held to higher standards and having that level of critique, because I'm a perfectionist myself, even if I don't live in a perfect world.</p>

<p>Thank you very much for the responses! I was able to tack one together with Windows Movie Maker for now but I'll switch to one of your recommendations. Thank you!</p>

<p>I think your lens is similar in size to my 600mm f4. The case is indeed worthless except for shipment. I haven't used the case in years, the lens stores very well set upright on the floor in the closet. I've used 2 bags for hiking, flying, and general schlepping and I find that the larger one is more useful for storage in a car but the smaller is better sometimes. <br>

The larger bag is an old Eagle Creek rolling backpack that I've had almost a dozen years, I believe it's currently called the Switchback and it has a detatchable small daypack (which I used almost every day for about 5 years, and it's still going). The lens with camera attached fits perfectly upright inside the pack and as a result the whole thing is easy to insert and remove from the pack with the lenscap attached. Fairly comfortable to wear like you're going backpacking. And the newer versions are lighter than mine. With tightening luggage restrictions I was sometimes forced to downgrade to my smaller bag for carry-on. This lens is NEVER going through checked luggage.<br>

My smaller bag is a Tom Bihn Brainbag (local Washington State company), and the lens with cap and camera detatched just barely zips in, but this bag is very water and sand-tight so I always have the option of breaking everything down and sealing the bag. With camera attached, the camera sticks out the top, but I wear it like that often, just watch out swinging your shoulder around a doorway! Scary. Having a minimal bag like this is very lightweight if you're reaching carry-on weight limits for certain international flights (which you will with a 500mm f4). This bag is much less useful for storing everything, attached, in a car or while traveling, so if I can take the weight I take the larger bag. If I'm hiking on a hot day with good footing I take the Brainbag. If I have my druthers I travel with both and switch out daily depending on conditions. <br>

I recommend either as far as durability. The Eagle Creek has withstood 12 years of real abuse and shows little of it, above that it still works perfectly. The Tom Bihn took a month backpacking Europe and was unfailingly comfortable and fillable. I felt like Mary Poppins pulling clothing and gear out of that bag. It's still 100% after 3 years with me. It's true what they say about good luggage lasting a lifetime. Mine should be in rags by now.</p>

<p>I've made movies out of stills in Windows Movie Maker before and found it to be very difficult to manage, are there any better programs? I need total control, but of course something that's fairly fast when handling hundreds of images. Browsing through my cousin's wedding in Lightroom at a high speed I realized I had something I'd told them I just couldn't juggle....photos, AND video, coverage of everything from the rehearsal to when they had to shut down the dance floor because the cops came, and I wouldn't have to go through hours of video to edit it together, it's 15 minutes of stop-motion theatre. But I want the most manageable program available. Suggestions?</p>

<p>Rick Zots-<br>

Would it be better to use the 40D on high iso (flashless) and the 20D for the flash since the 40D has less noise? I'm in the same boat with the 2 cameras, 40D and a 10D right now and much as I'd like to use the 40 more than the other, it has much better ISO than either the 10 or 20 so I'm going to try dedicating it to low-light and using the other- my backup really- for flash.</p>

<p> You have to pay more for a ticket that has flexible dates, but in this case that would be warranted, and you could charge her for it up-front that way, and it might save you money in the end if the prices do go up. I dunno about other companies, I use Southwest and they have Anytime flights where you can change the flight same-day and fly standby on available flights or cancel and get a full refund or re-book. <br>

I have friends and family in the military and yeah, they aren't very concerned with getting folks home on time. </p>

<p>Sounds about right...here they should be nesting soon, so probably nesting and rearing chicks through May and June. I don't know when they leave but that's probably right. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.nature.org/animals/birds/features/art17705.html">http://www.nature.org/animals/birds/features/art17705.html</a><br>

Winter...approx. september-march</p>

<p>Galveston Bay.</p>

<p>Texas Hill Country is now full of buntings. Any state park with a river in central Texas. Neal's Lodges in Concan, north of Uvalde, has cabins, camping, feeders, and water that Painted Buntings and much much more come to every day. Very enjoyable and designed with birders in mind. Fort Clark in Brackettville is purported to have the most painted buntings (compared to what I'm not sure) and they have camping, maybe more. You can get close at feeders/waterers, and other places if you hide in a blind, but to find a nest you will probably need a birding guide unless you are going to spend a lot of time searching. Buntings in many places are not nesting yet.</p>

<p>Once you get into small birds you need big expensive lenses and I cannot recommend it because the cost is so prohibitive and the money will never come back. If you don't have the money for the big lens, find a way to get closer to the bird and be happy with that, shooting from a blind can allow great creativity because you typically have a lot more time with the bird. </p>

<p>BUT since you want birds in flight, which fill more of the frame with their open wings and are easier to find with a mid-range telephoto, you can make good pictures with a 300 or 400 anyway, you don't always want 500 or 600. Important is fast focusing and aperature. Nikon and Sigma are good. No more than f4. F2.8 is preferred. Fixed-length lenses are usually sharper and faster but zooms these days can be very good too. Something like 100-300 will probably make you happy and is available in f4 but is more expensive than the 150-500 (which is too slow at f5-6.3). There are no reasonable 400mm options to my knowledge. My BEST CHEAP recommendation: change your Tamron for a Sigma 70-200 f2.8, the Tamron is too slow at focusing, I know because it's what I have and I used to have the Sigma and the Sigma is faster. Use a 1.4x teleconvertor, or if you have to, a 2x, to get the magnification you need. The 2x will get you a 400mm f5.6 without dropping $800 PLUS you keep that sharp, low-aperature lens on your camera to use when the birds are close enough because let's be realistic, if you have both a 70-200 and a 120-400 you're going to leave the smaller lens at home or in the car rather than carrying 2 heavy lenses with you, and that 70-200 f2.8 is the BETTER lens. </p>

<p>If you have a lot of money and want to carry something heavy get a 400, 500, or my preferred, 600mmf4. But they are not always better for birds in flight and they are always expensive and difficult to travel with.</p>

<p>Digiscoping is for birders who have very nice spotting scopes, and cheap p+s digicams. This is an awkward but effective way to approximate a DSLR with long lens using what they already have. They are basically pairing high-quality glass with a competent image sensor. If you already have the big guns in the way of camera lenses, digiscoping is redundant. There is already a spotting scope attached to your camera. <br>

There are many countries where carrying expensive equipment makes you a target. Say, the United States for example. I do not use camera bags for carrying gear, and usually stow the immediately-accessible equipment in a brightly-colored messenger bag that a thief would look really obvious stealing. This won't work if you're trying to camoflauge yourself from birds, but unless you're really well-hidden those are going to see you coming anyway.</p>

<p>If you're considering spending $700 to put together a digiscope kit, consider spending that on a bodyguard or insurance or a guide that's not afraid to take on a real photographer.</p>

<p>I use 3 diff blinds. <br>

1. a pop-up hunting blind the size of a 1-man tent. There are lots of styles to choose from, they're not too expensive, you can sit on a camping stool and have plenty of room and be well-hidden........IF you're out in the open and have room for it, which I almost never do. Also it's virtually impossible to make a tent-sized blind be the same color and structure as your habitat without making it semi-permanent and possibly inviting in some vermin. Mine features some handy sewn-on fake leaves that slap against it in any breeze and frighten the wildlife. I do recommend this method, but only if you can take the time to disguise it with branches and such, cut off any stupid fake leaves, and place it where there's room for a large blind. </p>

<p>2. Camoflauge-printed burlap and a handful of clothespins. If you're in a tighter space, in the brush, or have any trees handy, this stuff is much better. Cloth will work but the burlap lets in more light and appears to the animals to be more natural. (tight-weave cloth blocks out the light and looks solid, and underbrush is not solid, unless a solid animal is in it.) After a while I got used to the motor oil smell it comes with, thinking of it as "the smell of the hunt". The wildlife didn't seem to recognize the smell as anything frightening, probably because all it ever did was click at them. It's portable, bring enough for yourself and drape it over extra equipment behind you, clip it up to the branches with enough room inside to move without shaking your cloth, and voila. You are invisible. I usually tuck any extra cloth under me so snakes can't come in while you're shooting. Clothespins are a generally handy item that I always pack with me now, for holding branches or grass away from the lens.</p>

<p>3. Truck, with window mount. By rolling the window down far enough that the window mount is resting on the door and NOT putting weight on the glass, merely secured to it, I can put a 600mm f4 on a Bushnell window mount and not break anything. A vehicle is often your best camoflauge. If you can park close enough to where your subject will appear, do it. If the wildlife is wary the first time, do it repeatedly at the same time of day until you gain their trust. You can move around alot in a vehicle without giving yourself away, and it's easier to switch to a different window than to move anything in other types of blinds.<br>

Happy shooting!</p>

<p>Please let me know if anyone knows of a good camera repair shop in or around Malaga that would be able to fix a Canon 20d with an itchy trigger finger (will not stop firing, the button is broken in some way). Thank you!<br>

Por favor, necesito arreglar mi Canon 20d en o cerca de Malaga, si sabe usted de una tienda donde pueden arreglar cameras digital, dime pronto por favor. Muchas gracias.</p>

Do you have a dslr with a crop factor from a smaller sensor? That's an important bit of information because if you do, it changes the width that you'd get out of the lens.

Those of you saying that it is a hawk and not a buzzard, there may be a language problem. Note that we use the

word "buzzard" in the U.S. to mean a vulture but in parts of europe a buzzard is a hawk. A nice website to cross the

language barrier is BabelBirdy: http://babelbird.bavarianbirds.net/birdy_e.html You can type in a name and translate

it for some parts of the world. For example, a Common buzzard is Buteo buteo, which we know as a hawk- the

European equivalent of the red-tail. As far as I know there are no "buzzards" in the Cathartidae family, it is an

American common name misnomer given by the same folks who named the American robin after the very different

European Robin.

Maybe you could take one week and devote each day to photographing something that evokes that day- "Monday" or "Tuesday". I do try to photograph months, but that's easier ;)

As for longer-term projects, I decided to photograph 100 species of birds one year, and it did become obsessive, but forced me out in bad weather and really kept me motivated. If you have a favorite subject, or someone dear whose favorite subject you'd like to capture, it can be good motivation to make a number goal because it forces you to work hard and try new things. Keep quality standards high and put them together at the end as a gift. Maybe without the pressure of a financial project you'll have the time and devotion to create something even better.

Check also that your camera is not bumping the saturation in-camera, and if the photos go through any kind of process when you download them from the camera make sure they are not altering things. If you're picky enough to pick out that line, you should be the only one altering things. It looks to me like a computer-made abberation and not a lens-made one.

I think I'm going to test this. RL, I think you're right about the mass, higher density should increase damping. There are so many factors that I don't know how to compare them without testing. I've been reading up. So what we need is a material that both absorbs vibration AND maximizes stability. Say my base structure is a boulder with a jagged surface. The finer the grain, the more contact with the boulder, the better, right? Rock-steady. However some of the vibration is coming FROM the camera, from the mirror or shutter, so I need a material that will carry the vibration away from the camera and won't reflect it. Something like water would carry the vibration, but when it reached the rock it would be reflected. Any reflection from the rock would be reduced by having a greater depth of beanbag. But I want that without compromising stability. I've read that materials with a surface-treatment may increase damping- I think by friction against their neighboring particles that reduces shifting. One article included perlite and vermiculite (for buildings) and maybe the high-friction surfaces of these would help. Would the air pockets in this volcanic rock increase or decrease the reflection? Mixed with sand could it increase stability and absorption while decreasing weight? Thoughts? How should I set up a comparison test of this?

Here's the question that's been vexing me. It's often impractical to take a

tripod on the trail or while traveling by train, etc, and there's usually

something that you can find to lean a lens on, but what's the best thing to use

to damp vibration? I've heard beanbags, but what's the best filling; sand,

rice, seed, beans, silicon beads, styrofoam beads, etc? I'm of course looking

to use the lightest possible materials, but I also want to know what the other

good options are if I have to use whatever I can find in town/nature. Is there

a physicist in the house?