Wildlife Photos

larkspur

Yes, there were two mornings that the sky cleared up for a few hours.

larkspur

I thoroughly enjoyed those. I liked the fox in the snow the best.

turbo

Thanks for the compliment. One great thing about digital SLRs is that if you have enough memory, you can just blaze away, and salvage enough shots so that you can pretend to know what you're doing. OK, I still have my film-mindset and try to spend time on composition, lighting, etc, because film was so darned expensive to buy, process, and print, but it's pretty liberating to set my Canon 30D on burst mode and shoot an active little bird, hoping for "that" shot where you get a lively-looking pose with nice eye-highlights, and fine detail in the feathers, etc.

turbo

That was my favorite, too. Foxes fluff up pretty good in the winter (they look twice as big as they do in the summer) and that picture looked very dynamic as the fox's fur flared and flattened as it dove into the snow. I wish that I'd had a camera with me (even my crappy little P&S) when I was hunting earlier this year and a snow-white ermine with black eyes and black nose kept coming closer and closer to me, emerging out of a brush-pile and leaves, until it was maybe 6-8' away, standing on its hind legs, and rocking from side to side while staring at me, trying to figure out just what I was. CUTE!!

Astronuc

Kind reminded me of Bugs Bunny and Wiley Coyote. Our Yorkie has done something similar when there is a little critter burrowing under the snow.

That would have made some great photos. Next time, take the camera.

~christina~

Oh..the info that I copied wasn't refering to the memory but rather how many pics you could take on one charge.

On the road it's nice to have a cam that can take pics without running out of juice.
My battery charges up in 90 min as well after the first charge that is. (it took about 2 hrs on the first charge)

I was amazed that I used the flash a whole bunch at the aquarium with my Nikon D40x and by the end of a 4-5 hr visit, I still had all 3 bars of energy left in the battery.

I'm not sure what a CF compact flash card is so I'll have to look that up. I can use a SD card on mine.

Good luck with your cam.

rewebster

how fast can your camera be ready for the next shot?

turbo

That depends on the shutter speed, file size and the size of the internal buffer. Shooting large, hi-res jpegs in burst mode I can get about 40 pictures before the buffer fills, at maybe 4-5 shots/second. After that, the red light on the back of the camera stays on while the buffer is being read into the memory card, but you can keep shooting more shots as the buffer clears and makes more room.

Mine is the Canon 30D. I don't know how other EOS models compare (buffer size, speed, etc).

rewebster

my, my-----how tech. has advanced since my mavica!

turbo

The 30D was a big jump from my Olympus 3040 Zoom, too. I never used most of the options on that camera, so I am at times overwhelmed by the raft of features that the 30D has. To their credit, Canon included a fully manual mode so dinosaurs like myself can hearken back to the "bad old days".

rewebster

That's a myth, there, Dino----OLD DOGS CAN LEARN NEW TRICKS------it has scientific PROOF


(that's partially from personal experience, too)-the mavica had a 'thumbnail' mode that I found out about 3 years after owning it


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how many other cameras did you look at/play with?

turbo

I am learning - haven't given up!

I am a member of another forum in which some world-class astrophotographers post their images, and the ones that shoot with DSLRs (as opposed to specialized imagers) overwhelmingly use Canons. One of them (Nighthound) is also a world-class nature photographer and his results with the Canon 20D and the 100-400mm L-series image-stabilized lens made me choose that gear, though by the time I'd accumulated the money, the 20D had been superseded by the 30D. Looking at the crisp low-noise astrophotos shot at high ISOs and the wonderful nature shots made up my mind. That's not to say that Nikon, Pentax, Olympus, etc, don't produce fine cameras - I just knew that the Canon would do everything I want to do.

ODS forum
http://forum.ourdarkskies.com/

rewebster

A quick look at that forum makes me think that Lowe would have crapped with what is done by these guys--and that was just 75 years ago

thanks for the link--I'll look more into it

(not many people there --9 user(s) active )


If you put yours on 'low quality/fineness/???', what size, kb, is about the average 'smallest' size do you get?

turbo

Large+fine quality gives you about 3.6 Mb/image
Small+lesser quality gives about 600 Kb/image

So if you get a 512K memory card, you can put up to 133 of the best-quality shots on it and up to 761 of the small, lesser-quality shots on it.

larkspur

Wish I had turbo's camera and lens for shots like this....

turbo

Your work is top-notch, larkspur. I love your pictures.

If you are not heavily invested in the Fuji system and you are willing (and can afford) to change allegiances, the high-end pro-sumer Canons and the L-series zooms are very attractive. I love my 100-400 USM L-series lens. When I was heavy into 35mm film photography, I used to carry 3-4 Olympus OM-1s and an OM-4, all loaded with nice Zuicko prime lenses. Zoom lenses sucked at that time, and I could not tolerate their lousy optical performance. Canon has produced lines of zoom lenses of such high quality (even in their cheaper lines) that I can carry two bodies (30D) and three lenses (18-55mm kit lens, 28-135mm, and 100-400mm L-series) and get some pretty nice results. This compact ensemble with some extra memory and batteries lets me shoot all day with a pretty light load in my backpack.

larkspur

I am seriously considering a Canon30 or 40D and a 400mm L zoom for wildlife. I am not happy with the speed or weight or auto focus of the Fuji for wildlife. Hmmmm should I invest my tax return in a mutual fund or spend it on a camera......tough decision.