More pics from Birds of Prey Photo Day...

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Folks,
Here's a couple more pics from the Birds of Prey Photo Day I attended week before last at the Carlisle Nature Center. Sorry it took so long to get these processed and posted...the wife high-jacked the laptop where I had the pics stored! LOL!!!






This first one is of my dear friend Oliver. As you may recall from my last post of Ollie, he recently lost his "partner" and his handler's have commented that he's actually been very depressed or lonely ever since...they're in the process of trying to obtain another barred owl.






This little lady is another good friend of mine...her name is Aphrodite. Of all the various raptors I've photographed at various nature centers and zoo-like facilities, "Ditey" has to be my favorite. Ditey's at the nature center because she lost one of her wings due to an injury. Honestly, if you didn't know better, you'd swear she was raised by humans (imprinted) as she is just a very sweet critter to say the least. You tell her she's a "pretty bird" and that she's a "beautiful little lady" and she'll sit there and pose and preen for you all day! LOL!!!






Last up here we have Alexander The Great...Carlisles only resident Great Horned Owl. I wasn't really happy with most of the pics I got of Alexander this time out...the handler posed him in a tree with a number of heavy branches right in front of him and there were a lot of shadows that I just didn't care for. This was probably the only shot I got of Alexander that I'm going to bother printing.

Alrighty, thats it for now. As always, comments and critiques are quite welcome!

Bright Blessings & Gentle Breezes,
Jim


p.s. The new camera is scheduled to be delivered tommorow. If it arrives on time, I have a trip planned to the Cleveland MetroParks Zoo .

[sushigaijin]

Those are great, Jim. sharp, great colors and DoF - I see that you shot wide open, but did you use PS to further smear the bokeh?

What new camera did you get??

Erik.

[Walczak Photo]

Hey Erik,
"but did you use PS to further smear the bokeh? "

In fact, no...there's actually very little Photoshopping in this set. I did a bit of a crop (at least to setup for 8x10), very slight level's adjustments and punched up the saturation just a tad (also corrected for my Sony's tendancy to over-saturate yellows/greens in bright sunlight), but that was really about it. No fancy trickory on these LOL!!!

Over-all, that Sony H1 does a pretty good job with stuff like this...for an EVF, it really is a great little camera. I have had one or two where I've had to soften the background and the bokeh, but not very often. If anything, usually I'm taking cage bars out of pics or changing the backgrounds more then anything. I've been known to add a shallow DOF in PS (a nice gradiated lens blur), but that's not the case in these three pics...the DOF and everything came right off the camera that way.

I think one of the advantages is simply being able to get sooooo close to the birds. Especially Aphrodite and Oliver....I can pretty much get right up in their faces with the camera (maybe about a foot away from the bird) and they don't seem to give it a second thought. Also being a "super zoom", the Sony H1 by it's very design (long lens...12x optical zoom/432mm equiv), the Sony tends to lean towards shallow DOF's anyways.

Anyways, thanks for the kind words! I'm very proud and pleased with this set of pics .

Bright Blessings,
Jim

[sushigaijin]

Great stuff.

I asked because I find myself smearing bokeh quite frequently with the H5, and I did just as much with the H1. The technique I like best is masking the sharp subject and running NR on the rest - just enough smear to kill any noise or sharp details, without making it seem edited. Although I've been guilty of a little graduated blur now and then too

Erik.

[Walczak Photo]

Yea, I've used noise reduction from time to time myself to soften the backgrounds a bit...works pretty well. I've found that my H1 tends to get a little "noisy" sometimes anyways and that usually tends to stand out oin the backgrounds when their blurred. Since you said you've had the bokeh issues with both the H1 and your H5, I'm guessing the reason I probably don't run into too many problems with it is simply my proximity to the critters when I'm shooting. With many of my pics, I'm either right next to said critter or at least in the cage with them. In many many cases (such as with my foxes at the nature center) I'm usually within a few feet of the animal. In some cases where I might be shooting thru a window or something, again usually the animal is close enough to me that I can get clear shots and such....I dunno really.

I forgot to mention in that last post...you asked what new camera did I get....got a Canon Rebel XT on order . I found a decent deal on a refurb on Ebay which includes a Tamron 28-80mm lens -and- a 1 gig memory card for $499. There's some cheazy stuff too included...tabletop tripod, lens cleaning kits etc., but that stuff really don't matter to me (I have like 5 or 6 tripods not counting my telescope stuff). I also have a couple of other accessories on order...a wired remote, extra battery and most importantly, a Tamron 70-300mm lens (got it for $90). I'm also looking at a Canon FD to EOS adaptor so I could use my older Canon lenses with the new camera (which would be most sweet if it works!). I'm gonna want one of the vertical battery grips too, but that's lible to have to wait until my birthday in August...we'll see.

Alrighty, thats it for now!
Bright Blessings,
Jim