I can hand hold that picture

Well, no, you probably can’t.  As much as wildlife photographers want to believe they have rock solid biceps and a shooting stance that anchors them with a firm foundation, long lenses and physics render this belief moot.  A long lens shakes and because it magnifies things (why else would you use a long lens, right?) every little shake gets magnified as well.  So you end up with blurred images.  And usually just when you don’t want them.

ISO 100, 300mm, 1/125 sec., f/11

Sucks, doesn’t it?  Just when the eagle does something interesting I’m trying to hand hold my longest lens at an aperture that at least gives me some depth of field but at a lousy 1/125 sec. when I should be at least using 1/600 sec or faster (see below for why).  Why would I do this?  Because I wasn’t ready and thought a snap shot would work.  Hey, my camera has in body stabilization – that should count for something, right?  No, not really.  The stabilization is meant to give you more latitude on aperture or shutter speed selection, not counteract the wrong decision.

Rule of thumb – shutter speed at least as fast as the reciprocal of your focal length.  In my case, a 300mm lens on a Four-Thirds camera, meaning a 600mm equivalent.  I thought I could just stand by my car, lean on the door, and let technology handle my bad judgement.  And I missed a good image opportunity.

Use a tripod.  Use a monopod.  Rest your camera on a really solid object.  Do something to eliminate those little jerks and shifts your hands and arms make when holding something.  Actually, use a tripod and be done with it.

How much difference does it make?  I continued to use poor judgement for at least half the images during the shoot so here’s a comparison.  These two shots were taken within a minute of each other.

ISO 100, 300mm, 1/160 sec., f/11 – tripod

ISO 100, 300mm, 1/160 sec., f/11 – hand held

Even on the computer screen the difference is very noticeable.  Bird images must be sharp – our eyes are too used to seeing details in feathers, eyes, beaks and claws.  When I use a tripod with this lens, use the mirror lock-up (to reduce vibration even more) and apply just a little post-processing sharpening, a correctly made image just works.

ISO 100, 300mm, 1/125 sec., f/11

Some photographers claim to never use a tripod – great, they have better muscle control than I do.  But I bet they don’t photograph wildlife.  You can get away with hand held images with short lenses, bright flashes (they freeze action), incredibly fast shutter speeds (1/1000 sec or faster) or an artistic decision that all your images will be blurred.  But to present reality as people are used to seeing it, many times a sharp image is important, by which I mean not blurred.  Long lenses are great tools but you have to use them correctly and respect their limitations.  Get a solid tripod and use it.  Hang your camera bag from it to stabilize it more.  Learn how to lock up your mirror and do so (except for you high-end Sony users with the semi-transparent mirror!).  Overcome your feeble, shaky hands with rock solid technique and produce the images that amaze viewers.

Depth of field? What depth of field?

Giving your images a distinctive and interesting look is always a challenge but there are several tools available.  Depth of field is a popular “art” tool that enables you to quickly bring the viewer’s eye to the exact subject you want them to pay attention to right from the start.  To use effectively, though, you need to understand what is the depth of field you’re going to get for your composition?  It’s a tricky question – each lens behaves differently based on aperture, distance from subject, focal length, etc.  You almost have to experiment with your bag of lenses and learn.  Or  you can look up the depth of field chart for your lens and memorize it.  My problem with the latter option is I have a hard time visualizing what a 3 inch depth of field or a 500 foot depth of field looks like.  I usually just play around with my lenses and see what they deliver.

It’s especially daunting with telephoto lenses.  The depth of field for these starts out short and seems to only get smaller.  Here’s an example:

I liked the little snowball sitting in the sunlight so I wanted to make an image of it.  I was sitting at a picnic table with my camera on my tripod, using my 300mm manual focus Olympus lens (from the OM film camera days).  On my digital Olympus body this is equivalent to a 600mm lens on a full format camera.  I’m about 10 yards from the snowball so this long lens really gets up close.  I think the aperture was around f/11 or f/16 since I was looking for maximum sharpness.  Notice the area that’s in focus – it’s a narrow band where the snowball is in the sunlight.  The grass in the foreground and snowbank in the background are completely out of focus.  Which is what I wanted – you eye should go right to the snowball.  But how much depth of field is really there?

100% crop from previous image

If I zoom in on the image you can see the depth of field is REALLY narrow; according to one online DOF calculator it comes in at 4 inches.  Which means if I was making an image of a deer’s face using this distance and settings, their eyes would be in focus but their ears and nose might not be – and this is at a small aperture (not that I expect to be 10 yards from our local deer, at least not unless I’m holding a handful of corn for them).  It does give a cool look, though, as it centers your eye right on the subject I want you to pay attention to.  Like most specialized tools – and a long telephoto lens is definitely that – you get the best results when know the lens’ limitations and operating within them.

In my youth as a photographer I was always trying to get maximum depth of field, especially with landscapes.  I’ve learned now that shortening it up can truly bring some interesting features to your pictures.  Just have to know when and how to use the technique effectively and what tools work best to deliver on it.

Landscapes at all levels

5×7″ Fuji Velvia slide

One of the iconic images of the western plains is this formation – Devil’s Tower.  I looked up some of Willliam Henry Jackson’s images of the monument and except for the trees nothing much has changed.  (Geologic time doesn’t lend itself to photographic motion unless you’re willing to leave your camera set up on a tripod for several thousand years and who’s going to change the battery?).  Call me traditionalist but I like discovering some of my images look very similar to the great photographers of the American west.  There’s a connection that spans the technology of photography to realize you have stood where these legends placed their tripods, looked over a scene they would find familiar, and made similar decisions as they about composition and exposure.  Using a camera similar to the one they used just reinforces the connection, especially when you’re under the dark cloth staring at the ground glass screen to focus and compose an upside-down image.

One tool I have that the 19th century photographers lacked is a way to portray the human element in the context of the landscape.  Long lenses were not readily available back then for a number of reasons – weight, sharpness, exposure times – so you rarely see telephoto images like we’re used to seeing.  Long lenses give me the ability to reach out to where people are in the landscape, to portray their interaction and scale as part of the grander scene.

These images were made with a digital camera, not a view camera.  Not only is it easier to move around and get the desired composition, but the range of lenses available brings a whole new dimension of possibilities.  The image on the right was made using a 600mm telephoto lens, something the 19th century photographers would have probably marveled at.   You have to wonder what they could have done with such tools.

Sort of like wondering what Einstein could have done with a personal computer….

Gradations

300mm OM Lens, ISO100, 1/250 sec., f/11

Wildfires in Idaho play havoc with landscape photographer in Montana looking for a clear sunset.  Instead, use a long lens to compress the distant hills to a flatter perspective and use the smoky atmosphere to add back some depth.  The sandbar of geese and pelicans in the foreground is just a design element to both break up the space taken by the lake and to accentuate the lines in the lower part of the image.  The trees serve as a transition point from lines below to curves above.  There really is no subject here; the whole image offers a study of space, shapes and tones.

Expectation as a mindset can stymie an outdoor photographer.  Flexibility within an expectation can open new vistas.  Rather than packing up and driving back to town, stand around, look around, think about what you’re seeing.  How does what you see affect you once you’ve let the frustration of not getting the weather you want pass over you?

I’ve seen this type image in many photo books and technical guides but there’s something about seeing it in your viewfinder that has an impact.  No photoshop tricks, no multiple images put together – depth really does show up this way as the most distant hills are the lightest and the nearest become darkest.  Our brain recognizes this perspective as meaning near to far, dimensionality in an otherwise flat world.  So we use it to portray on a plane what we see in 3D and everyone gets it.

Nice.

Bird loving

I’ve admired birds since elementary school – their colors, sounds, shapes, flight.  Freedom personified, as far as I was concerned.  I learned to identify a few here and there, nothing serious, but always maintained my attention to them.

Here on the plains the spring weather brings out birds in droves.  They wake us up with the sun gossiping with each other or trying to attract mates or warning off competitors.  They stroll around the yard vacuuming up worms and beetles.  They’re always zipping across the road in front of cars, chasing something to eat that is too small for human eyes.  All that energy packed into a few weeks of procreation and child rearing before the inevitable migration south in front of the inevitable winter cold.

Mourning dove and English sparrow

So we do what we can to show our appreciation.  I continue putting seed in the feeder and bring out the water dish.  All that nest building and food chasing requires energy and hydration.  A few nests get built in nearby trees but we’re not really an edge community.  No windbreak of cedars or cottonwoods on our golf course so the birds probably nest elsewhere and eat here where the picking is better.  Guess we’re the drive-in diner of the local bird population.

Grackle on water bath

There is one group that likes our place, though.  Barn swallows nest under our deck and eaves, starting this practice about the time we moved here.  Their presence is appreciated since they graze on mosquitoes and other flying bugs, keeping our time outside free of swatting.  Their architectural skills are impressive although their planning ability sometimes leaves them in precarious positions.

The first year we noticed them nesting on the dryer exhaust under the deck, a small mud assembly set on the angled aluminum.  It unfortunately didn’t endure the first spring storm, the rain literally washing it off the smooth metal.  I put a piece of wood at the spot but it didn’t appeal to them and we didn’t see them again that year.

A couple of years ago they decided building on top of our solar light under the deck was a good idea.  It was a more protected area since the deck planks were closer together and kept the rain out but a cylindrical nest on a small pipe is easily unbalanced and I watched for two years as they maintained it, raising at least three chicks each year.  Still, it didn’t look very secure to my un-swallow-like eyes.

The turning point, though, was the pair nesting under the front door porch.  The first year they built directly over the door, providing our guests with the image of a poop-streaked glass door as greeting.  The next year I put up netting to prevent them from returning to that place and the promptly build a new nest in the corner of the porch, using the netting as support.  No longer directly over the door they still suffered from the heat trapped in the porch, losing two chicks in the process.

Now it was serious – human vs. avian engineering.  I netted the whole of the ceiling of the front porch, leaving no corners or horizontal surfaces that would support a mud nest.  In return, though, I did put up alternative nests – wooden cups I’d found on the internet being made by another bird lover who cultivated swallow communities in his barn.  Seemed fair for both the nesting pairs front and back.  We get our front door and light back, the birds get new construction that just needed a little finishing touches.

The back pair figured it out immediately and started lining the cup with mud.  I expect soon there will be eggs followed by hungry chicks.

The front pair, though, were more stubborn.  Without even looking around they started putting mud right on a vertical under the porch.  That wouldn’t do.  Not only was their site not going to hold the nest but they would fall prey to the same summer heat as before.  I washed their starting effort away (you can’t disturb a nest with eggs but you can remove an incomplete one) and hoped they would look around back to find the second cup under the deck.

No, they moved next door onto the neighbors front door.  OK, fine, be that way.  I stopped worrying about them until the other day when I saw the neighbor out washing their building project away.  It got me to thinking about what they want.  They want a nest near the one last year and they will endeavor to build one somewhere nearby.  Why not just place another cup near our front door, away from the porch but still under the eave out of the weather?

I did that and waited, and waited, and watched.  Would they get the hint?  Was there some way to put up bird signage, “vacant here”?

Today I saw them flying around the front of the house busily.  Looking up at the cup I saw little dabs of mud around the corner, a sure sign they are on the job at a new location.  It’s great – both of us can be trained.  Now I’m looking forward to being fussed at by anxious parents in both the front and back yards!  And continuing my appreciation of birds, large and small.

Smile for the birdie

I’m getting ready for what has become my annual quest to photograph sandhill cranes over in central Nebraska and felt I needed some practice on long lens usage.  This year I’m not renting the 300mm, f/2.8 digital Olympus lens; rather, I’m opting for my 300mm, f/4.5 manual Zuiko lens purchased about a year ago.  I found the center-lens resolution in good light is about the same between the two so it’s my go-to tool this year along with the 1.4x teleconverter.  On my 4:3rds sensor it’s like having a 600mm and 840mm lens.

You don’t just pick up such a long lens and hit the field.  Sharp images require not only learning the slowest shutter speed limit to use but also how to dial in the focus (this is a MANUAL lens) and set the aperture.  So, today we wandered over to the zoo to practice making good images from a distance.  The sun was good in a clear sky and there was little wind so it promised to be a great practice day.

Once more I had to remind myself how to use a manual lens on a digital camera.  Set to Shutter priority and dial in a fast speed to counter shake (even on a monopod it’s very hard to hold the camera rock steady).  I usually aim for a minimum of 1/800 sec. but will go higher in good light.  Then open the aperture to focus, which on a plain focus screen takes some time to get used to the “look” of properly focused subjects.  Then stop down the aperture to get the exposure you want.  Here’s where the screen on the back is invaluable to make sure you’ve preserved the highlight and shadow detail.  Just keep adjusting and shooting until you find the right exposure for the light on the subject.

I feel like I’m ready now for the cranes.  One advantage is I will have my tripod instead of a monopod so that will help alleviate shake.  I just hope I won’t have to run the ISO up high to get fast shutter speeds – noise gets to be a problem above ISO1600.  We’ll see what the weather brings.

Oh, the joy of a long lens at the zoo?  You can make portraits you probably wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of in the forest…..

Cougar

Jaguar

Bengal Tiger

Fussy birds

When I was in elementary school my parents bought a set of cards for me, each with a picture of a bird on one side and information about that bird on the other.  I’m sure I asked for them – been a visual person for a long time – but have no idea where they found them.  What resulted, though, was a lifelong infatuation with birds.  Not serious enough to learn bird calls or join the Audubon Society or hang around the woods with Zeiss binoculars, but serious enough to learn to identify some of them by sight and sound, and a willingness to feed them around the house.

Those bird cards led to Peterson field guides, which I flipped through a lot, looking for colorful and showy birds to look out for.  I think where I grew up in the South the birds are very low-key, where the only really colorful ones were cardinals and blue jays, but I kept hoping to see scarlet tanagers, indigo buntings, and especially goldfinches.  What a wonderful palette nature has given these songbirds, who display their colors with pride.

Moving around a bit after college we managed to land in different parts of the country, and I’ve seen at our feeders a variety of songbirds, many I dreamed of one day seeing.  It’s fun to look out the window and discover yet another colorful avian that sends me running to my field guide to confirm what I’ve just seen.  All the time enjoying the regular visits by birds I once dreamed of seeing.

Goldfinches, for example.  As summer starts getting long in the tooth they have upped their frequency at the feeder – must be packing on some insulation for the winter.  They flit around, sparkling in the sunshine and brightening up the group of sparrows around the feeders.  So cute.  And apparently so bossy!

ISO 100, 340mm, 1/50 sec., f/5.6

I set my camera up in our sunroom with my long lens pointed at the feeder and used a remote shutter release to make some images of goldfinches the other day.  While sitting there watching them in more detail, I learned some of them really like to fuss at the others.  Don’t know if it’s territorial displays, unwillingness to share food, or just bad attitude but a few of them would stop eating to take time and run off any other goldfinch that approached the feeder.  It’s not like there’s limited space – the feeder has multiple perches.  I think they just like knowing they can keep it all to themselves.

ISO 200, 260mm, 1/160 sec., f/4

Of course, others usually figure out the bully’s technique and manage to find a way to co-exist on the feeder.  But it’s usually with one eye on the opposition while trying to grab a bite.

ISO 100, 294mm, 1/60 sec., f/5.6

Old vs New – what’s the difference?

Periodically I’m fortunate to get opportunities to photograph wildlife where I need longer lenses than I actually own.  At those times I rent one of Olympus’ longer focal length lenses.  Owning a 300mm or 90-250mm is mostly prohibitive at this point in my business so rental is a good way to not only get the images I want but also to evaluate the lens for performance and fit with my expectations.  In a previous post I discussed the 300mm f/2.8 Olympus prime.

In my reading, though, I continue reading about photographers attaching older, manual lenses to their digital cameras and finding some different qualities from their digital-designed cousins.  I’ve been wondering if this might be a way to extend my “reach” without breaking the bank so recently I purchased a used Olympus Zuiko 300mm OM lens, one designed for the 35mm OM film series Olympus is famous for.  With the adapter I purchased the lens fit on my E-3 just fine.  The loss of all automatic functions didn’t worry me that much as I usually keep my digital camera in Manual or Aperture mode and I’ve some experience with manual focus systems.  Besides, the viewfinder in the E-3 is larger and bright enough to support manual focusing even with a long lens.  What I was really interested in learning was whether the image quality would be the same as the newer, digital-designed lens.

On the 4/3rd’s sensor used by Olympus all focal lengths are doubled so any 300mm lens on my E-3 gives an image equivalent to a 600mm lens.  Previous experience with the Zuiko digital-designed lens reminded me I needed a high shutter speed (good guideline is 1/lens length so 1/600 sec at a minimum for me) and an aperture small enough to give some depth of field if I expected to make sharp images.  I didn’t think this situation would change with the manual 300mm and I was right.

Using the manual lens I kept the aperture open for focusing and then closed it down to at least f/8 to get some depth of field.  As with it’s digital cousin the manual lens has a narrow depth of field but for the crane pictures I wanted that would be fine – sharply focused subjects against a blurred background.  Shooting in Aperture mode gave me this workflow:  open aperture, focus, close aperture so camera can decide shutter speed, push the shutter release.  I used ISO adjustments to get the aperture/shutter speed combo I needed for the cranes.

As an initial test run I set my camera on tripod and made a series of images of the same subjects, each of varying distances and fine detail.  I wanted to get an idea of whether a $180 lens could truly compete with a $7000 one.

300mm OM lens, f/8 - about 2-3 miles distant	OM 300mm lens, f/8 - about 100 yards	OM 300mm lens, f/8 - about 25 feet
Zuiko 300mm lens, f/8 - about 2-3 miles distant	Zuiko 300mm lens, f/8 - about 100 yards	Zuiko 300mm lens, f/8 - about 25 feet

As it turns out they compare pretty well.  Zooms to 100% of each image shows probably less than 2-3% resolution difference (visual comparison of sharpness).  The color balance looks very close between the two.  There are some expected differences in depth of field with the OM being a little smaller than the Zuiko but that just takes getting used to in the field.  Manual focus was not as bad as I’d expected but still takes some getting used to.  Seems my particular lens backfocuses by about 1-2 inches so to get sharp eyes on the cranes I focused on their chest feathers and it usually was spot on.

So what are the differences?  For the application I had at the time, photographing sandhill cranes, there are a couple of big ones.  First, the OM lens is f/4.5 at its fastest aperture, compared to f/2.8 for the Zuiko.  That 1 1/3 stop difference is critical in low light conditions when you want a higher shutter speed to stop wildlife action.  For example, using the Zuiko fully open I can shoot at 1/640 sec compared to 1/250 sec with the OM fully open.  Not only could this be critical to getting sharp pictures but it starts to determine whether I can hand-hold versus using a tripod.  Second, without autofocus I’m not good enough to maintain sharp focus on flying cranes.  Immobile landscapes or sloth portraits it’s fine but for big birds swooping by at 20-30 MPH give me my autofocus lens!  Later I photographed out of a blind, making images of birds slowly strolling around a cornfield and for that manual focus was not an issue.

So I’m pleased with my purchase and will continue looking for other limitations on this lens.  For now I’m going to have fun with my longer “reach” and see what wildlife I can get personal with!

The birds of autumn

Our love affair with sandhill cranes began in Michigan, when a pair lived on our lake each summer and wandered around our neighborhood grazing on everyone’s bird feeders.  They were the harbingers of spring, letting us all know by their loud squawks that they were back, bringing warmer weather with them.  Their cycle of leaving and returning grounded us in the seasons and made us feel more a part of our small lakeside community.

So imagine our pleasure after moving to Nebraska to discover half a million of them come through the state in the spring, stopping off to fatten up in the fields and wetlands on their way north.  Our pair is not a part of this migration; greater sandhill cranes come to Michigan from Florida whereas Nebraska’s lesser cranes come from Texas and points south.  Nonetheless, each year we revel in the sight and sound of these big birds passing through, remembering our Great Lake neighbors from years ago.

I’ve written about cranes before so why revisit the subject?  Well, while we were exploring Dinosaur National Monument on the Utah/Colorado border we discovered our timing coincided with other greater sandhill cranes migrating south to New Mexico.  Here we were in what appeared to be a high desert, in the middle of nowhere when much to our surprise, a corn field appeared next to a river.  A recently harvested corn field, full of tall, grey forms walking on stilts.  Rolling down the window we heard the traditional call of the sandhill crane as they gossiped among themselves.

250mm, ISO100, f/14, 1/160 sec

It’s a sound never forgotten once heard and very appropriate for that area – a prehistoric call echoing around the distant mountains that had probably heard similar sounds millions of years ago when the fossils it is famous for were laid down in the silt.  The image I made is unlike any other crane picture I’d seen.  The multicolored mountains as a backdrop to a familiar sight – big grey birds strolling through a cornfield on their way to a distant destination.

Olympus 300mm review

For a week of crane watching I rented the Olympus 300mm f/2.8 lens.  It was an intense week of learning how to use this special purpose tool and I want to share a bit so anyone wanting to work with a long telephoto will have an idea of what to anticipate.

Let’s get the physical details out of the way.  Yes, this is a big, heavy, long lens if all you carry around is a kit zoom.
Weight:  7.25 lbs.
Length:  around 16 inches with hood attached.
Diameter:  5 inches – need a big tube to collect f/2.8 worth of light!
Angle of view:  4.2 degrees – not for panoramics!
Closest focus distance:  8 feet.
Depth of field at f/11 at minimum focus distance:  Very Little – about 3/4”.

Olympus’ 2x crop factor means this is like putting a 600mm, f/2.8 lens on my camera.   I rarely tried to hand-hold.  Most of my images were made by resting the lens on the partially raised window of my car or setting it firmly on a tripod.  Image stabilization (in-camera for Olympus) was on all the time.

My first two days resulting in very few acceptable pictures.  By wanting to see just how far away I could reach out and touch something I learned that even the slightest wiggle is magnified many times.  By reaching out I mean signs at a mile distant or wildlife at over 100 yards.  Even on a tripod I got poor sharpness unless the object was pretty close – within 50 feet.

The company renting me the lens has a good article posted on its use, something I got around to reading at the end of the second day….  Seems a good rule of thumb for minimizing motion blur is to set a shutter speed at least 1/focal length of the lens – the implied focal length (600mm here).  The article lobbied somewhat hard for 1/2x focal length just to make sure.  This along with all the other admonitions about tripod use, protect from the wind, use remote shutter release, etc.

The third day I put a lot of that advice into practice.  I put the camera on shutter priority and tried to keep it above 1/1000 sec, preferably on 1/1600 sec. – goodbye depth of field with an aperture of f/4 or lower.  I worked harder to get close to the cranes although I never managed to move far inside their comfort zone of around 150 feet.  My remote release was on camera whenever I was using the tripod.  Slowly I started getting better images.

Cedar Waxwing

Toward the end of my week rental I started photographing subjects that were really close – inside 20 feet – to fill the frame.  Now I really started to see the power of this lens as details were rendered very sharp, needing little digital processing afterward.

Filling the frame with wildlife over 150 yards away apparently requires a small telescope, or at least a lens longer than Olympus makes.  From my experience here I’m guessing trying to get sharp images would be even more frustrating, but with time I don’t doubt you could learn the tricks of the trade.

And time is the issue.  My rental was for a week, during which I probably progressed 10-15% on the learning curve for this equipment and only got about 100 useful pictures out of 3000 taken.  Owning it is a significant investment – around $7000 – and only makes sense to me if I’m pursuing distant wildlife or sports action full time and getting revenue from it.  Fortunately, renting it is relatively painless and I’ll definitely do that again in the future.