RickDB

<p>No nature pics last week so a great excuse to go for a hike on Paines Prairie - bison came on to the trail today which can be a bit unnerving when they are in front and behind...</p><div></div>

<p>Not what I thought it was! One of those shots that reveals something you didn't expect. Possibly a passing through Tennessee Warbler...</p><div></div>

<p>An Eastern Phoebe on the look out for a meal...</p><div></div>

<p>Anhinga surfacing for MiN...</p><div></div>

<p>Looks like MiN is off to a fine start for 2017. No ice on the Florida lakes, but a misty morning resulted in some beautiful dew bejeweled webs.</p><div></div>

<p>Not a very wintery scene from Florida yesterday - a Pileated woodpecker (m) in the San Felasco Hammock.</p><div></div>

<p>Makes the $9k price tag seem almost reasonable given the investment in equipment, labor intensity, and energy (I wonder what the carbon footprint is?). Then there's the fluorite optics, which utilizes a completely different manufacturing process from glass, and the electronics. It's quite remarkable how many technology disciplines are involved in the manufacturing of just a lens.</p>

<p>Clouded "super moon" colors Lake Orange orange. EOS 5D4 + 70-200mm f/4L IS at 160mm; 1/6s f/8 ISO 400.</p><div></div>

<p>A juvenile little blue heron shares a sunken log with a variety of turtles - autumn colors reflected in the waters.</p><div></div>

<p>A robust mushroom, it's been around for three days; Started off all white and yellowed with age. Perhaps some sort of Amanita.</p><div></div>

<p>My IR converted 40D works just fine; I had it converted at Kolari Vision and I sent along my EF-S 17-85 f/4-5.6 IS which they calibrated at no extra charge. As for artifacts caused by reflections, check out the Kolari Vision web site which lists how various lenses perform with IR converted cameras; some do much better than others.</p>

<p>A cluster of tiny mushrooms (<em>Coprinellus disseminatus</em> I think - some older ones had become quite inky). Six stacked images 5D4 + EF 100m f/2.8L IS + 12 mm extension tube + EF1.4xIII.<br> Note, the 1.4x telextender does not fit the lens without the extension tube and does not show up in the EXIF data.</p><div></div>

<p>Common yellowthroat (male) foraging for insects among the changing leaves.</p><div></div>

<p>Mark, you're right, in Live View the touch screen doesn't focus. Indeed the shutter button doesn't function in Live View; it's as if it hasn't achieved focus even if it was in focus before switching to LV. Time for a firmware update.</p>

<p>My Tamron 150-600 (manufactured before May 11, 2015) works just fine when shooting raw on the 5D4; I've not tried jpegs. Tamron recommends disabling the peripheral illumination, but I suppose that in camera correction would only be applied to jpegs.</p>

<p>Common yellowthroat (female) darting about in the scrub looking for insects.</p><div></div>

<p>For "high end" work I would think a full frame sensor would be essential. I moved to FF for architectural photography because the widest Canon Tilt/Shift lens at the time was 24mm, which on a cropped frame camera was not nearly wide enough. Now the T/S 17mm is available, which is great for interiors.<br> Having said that, the FF option with T/S lenses is not an inexpensive set up. An alternative might be to use a crop frame camera and create panoramas to get the wide angles - you will need at least a nodal slide (if not a full panoramic head) for interiors where parallax errors are not correctable. The down side is all the extra processing required. Of course, a crop frame camera may not be helpful for video. For high end work you will also need to budget for lighting.</p>

<p>Hi Mark, I can confirm you can control the camera while it is in video recording mode. Make sure your "Personal Hotspot" on your 'phone is switched ON - took a call to CPS to figure out why I couldn't connect the camera; The <em>failed to connect</em> message doesn't give you a clue!</p>

<p>Under "Operating the Camera Using a Smartphone" (Pg W-28 in the manual) it says:<br> [Remote Shooting]</p> <ul> <li> Camera's Live View image can be viewed using a smartphone. </li> <li> You can shoot using remote operation. </li> </ul> <p>It does not specifically mention what you can shoot. However on Pg W-30 it gives information about what happens when the wireless connection is terminated while recording a movie; if WiFi was disabled in video mode this would be a moot point. Sort of implies you can control movie operations with WiFi / smartphone. Could be really neat if you could change the focus point with you smartphone - I'll give it a go at the weekend.</p>

<p>Prothonotary Warbler in a dark thicket. EOS 5D4 + Tamron 150-600mm at 600mm; 1/125s at f/8 ISO 8,000 (25% crop). Not a great shot, just testing the high ISO capability of new 5D4 - I am impressed.</p><div></div>

<p>Thanks Laura for the ID - first time I've come across this one in my yard, so easy to miss with such a short life span. The amazing thing is how they all arrive at once, I guess their synchronization has something to do with a narrow range of temperature and humidity and perhaps the phase of the moon.</p>

<p>Several of these delicate mushrooms appeared simultaneously around my yard - and withered to nothing in a few hours.</p><div></div>

<p>Hurricane Hermine left tons of debris in my yard but and also left damp, humid conditions that mushrooms just thrive in; even hurricane clouds can have silver linings. Here are some small mushrooms growing on a rotting tree stump that seem to be a tasty treat for snails.</p><div></div>

<p>Taking a landscape photo to meet the MiN criteria is becoming more and more difficult these days; buildings, fences, power lines and, more recently, wind turbines always seem to get in the way. Here is a view, in IR to cut through the haze, untainted by the hand of man. The viewpoint is from a lovely 3.5 mile walk around the hill topped by Carreg Cennen castle in Wales.</p><div></div>

<p>Red Kites were so valued as street cleaning scavengers in middle age Britain that they were protected by Royal decree; kill one of these and you risked the death penalty! By the 16th century they were viewed as vermin and a bounty was placed on its head which resulted in its extinction in England by 1871. Protection and reintroduction since 1903 has been remarkably successful and there are now over 2,000 breeding pairs of these beautiful birds.</p><div></div>