A nice session

The weather has changed somewhat from last week, Gone are the clear blue skies although we still have the 80 degree weather, Huge thunder storms throughout the night and heavy rain replaced by hot clear weather in the afternoon making it somewhat steamy, The weather man described it as May type weather and we will have it for the rest of the week, Today the storm started hours ago in the night and is still raging with thunder rocking the house, March here in NC is the most deadly month of the year for tornado's so we have to keep vigilant,
Last night i set up in the garden and waited to see what would come along, The weather was great and i sat for over 4 hours in just trousers and light weight fleece, The deer came first and stayed whilst the fox appeared a little later, The fox for some reason has gone very shy and jumps at the slightest noise so with the deer around it kept jumping and running off, It defiantly does not like the flashguns around but after an hour of tooing and froing it came to feed but i sat hoping it would relax, I watched through the viewfinder as it would eat and quickly look around, In the end a deer snapped a twig and the fox left, Later on a raccoon started to come down the garden but was sppoked by a rabbit on the woodland egde and turned around a was gone, I cursed as raccoons here are not that common due to the nature of the woodland i.e small trees but i was lucky and 20 minutes later it came back and i managed a few images before it too went off, i stayed until just after 11pm and at 10.45pm the big opossum came out and made my night, Its huge and must be nearly as big as the fox in length and probably weighs as much as my dog, I packed the gear up and went in a very happy chappy, It really was a nice session, relaxed and comfortable,

All images shot with a Nikon D3s and Nikon 200-400 +1.4x
Manual mode 1/125@F10
3X Flashguns 2 in front slightly to the right 1 high (3 feet) and 1 low(1 foot) and both with softboxes, The rear flashgun at the back and to the left facing back at the set up to give a rim light effect using a Rogue Flashbender set as a snoot
Tripod mounted




100% Crop of above



200% Crop of above



100% Crop-here you can see the back flashgun lighting up the hairs around the head and body

You can see by the crops that this is one sharp set up and that the 200-400 works well with a 1.4x when stepped down, Using the 200-400 allows you to compose the image in camera therefore cropping afterwards is kept to a minimum or not at all,


Dave

Quick Garden Update

Bird life has been picking up and as mentioned on Saturday, the first of the Chiff Chaffs have been through the garden with another three of them yesterday. Great to see and great to hear.

In the garden, the Marsh Marigolds are now out in the pond, and the first of my Snakes Head Frittillaries are popping their heads up where I planted them last Autumn. I planted 20 bulbs and have about 15 showing so far.

Some are quite advanced and I grabbed these couple of shots with the little Panasonic P & S lst Thursday as a record shots.

I am looking forward to getting some decent shots with the 5D and 180 macro when they are in full show.

Martin

An Exciting week ahead

This week will see some lucky people get their new Nikon D800 and Canon 5D MK3 and in the last few days the first shipment of the Nikon D4 has been delivered and a few images have hit the forums, Hopefully it wont be too long before proper reviews hit the internet, Here is a quicky about the D4, As the guy says its more evolution than revolution and not much of an upgrade over the D3s unless you are into video, It might be prudent to grab a D3s now either new or a good secondhand one and grab a bargain, i am interested to see if the 5D3 is much of an upgrade over the 5D2 or is it again a video upgrade rather than stills, At least it will have a decent AF system, Canon made a big deal about it being 2 stops better than the 5D2 but thats in Jpeg only and the images that have been released show heavy noise reduction and lack of detail so i am interested to see how the RAW files perform, I know one of the main complaints with the 5D2 was banding so hopefully the new sensor will have that sorted, I think the specs of the 5D3 are very impressive and will make a great all round camera whereas the D800 is a big more specialized due to the high pixel rate and slower frame rate, The manuals for the D800/D800E and 5D3 are now available for download so you can have a good read before your new camera arrives, Strangley the first camera to be announced being the Canon 1DX is the last out of the box and it was only last week that BH started to take pre orders, I dont know what the hold up was or why they could not take pre orders before but lets hope that Canon have the problems sorted

On a local front the spring has bought out the bugs, The tree's have started to drop their pollen which in NC is a big deal as we have a month of everything covered in a green dust and the snakes have started to appear, I know this as we have had 2 run over on out street this week, A large black snake and a young snake which i think was a king snake, Either way its time to watch where you tread in the woods, Oh and i have had my first tic of the year as has my dog so be careful out there

Dave

Frog Blog '12 - Part 3. New life

Having survived the 'Terror from the Skies', our little garden friends have managed to hide well in the depths of the pond in the daytime and 'done good'.

With numerous blobs of spawn that have all been merged together, it looks like we are in for another bumper year of tadpoles and frogs. I just hope we don't get to much cold weather now.

Last year there were over 30 blobs of spawn. This year, it really seems impossible to tell as they have merged them together, but I would estimate that there is at least as much, if not more.

It is possible to differentiate that it has been laid by many different individuals from the differing consistency and size of individuals eggs.

In the second picture, this large mass is about 1 metre long x 0.5metres wide, so a sizeable mass.

When I dug the garden pond three and a half years ago I made in two distinct parts. The area where the spawn has been laid, is a shallow shelving area, going from nothing at the edge to approximately 300mm deep. This area is good for the spawn, and great for bathing and drinking birds to use. From the middle of the pond, it then drops to a deep sump approximately 1 metre deep. In here, I have put some large bricks with a slab over the top, on which I have set the pond recirc pump to feed the top pond to run the stream. It is this deep sump that is vital for the frogs, newts and damsel dragonfly larva to seek stable temperatures during the winter avoiding the ice, and also provides refuge from the avian predators such as Heron.

We had our first Spring migrant bird through the garden today, with our first calling Chiff Chaff. Great to hear and a taste of things to come. Twitter reports are full of sightings of Sand Martins and Wheatear coming through now, so I am looking forward to the next couple of months as things change with the new season.

Martin

Fun in the Garden

The last couple of days has seen me at my garden set up trying to get a decent shot of a bird perched on my Plum tree which is in blossom and will be past its best in the next day or 2, So far it hasnt gone to plan, I have just a short time before the sun rises above the trees in the morning and then late afternoon, All other times the light is just too harsh, Whilst i have been waiting for the birds which can be some time i have been entertained by the squirrels although a few times they have chased the birds away

Chikadee


Not sure of ID here-Either a warbler or Vireo












Hairy Woodpecker


I set up in the garden last night and wanted to use a remote release so that i could use a wide angle lens for the fox but we ended up having one of those late heavy showers and then found out that the battery was dead in the remote and unlike me i had not bought a spare so that was that, I did watch the fox come and feed and then later on a huge opossum arrived and had a sniff around before leaving, It looked like it could hardly walk and guessed that it was pregnant-i hope so, About an hour later another opossum normal sized and very dark arrived and fed so that along with 6 deer made a busy night for the garden

Dave

Frog Blog '12 - Part 2 - Terror from the Skies

Well it is always great to get new species in the garden, rather than over it. But what on the face of it is always impressive bird to see for its size, impressive call and prehistoric look, is the last thing that our frogs wanted to see.

The frog chorus at nightime has been very impressive for the last few nights, and a number of clumps of spawn have been laid. Up to 6 now as I write this on Wednesday evening. Although I did put one clump back in the water this morning that had been fished out on the grass - Crows I suspect.

On Monday evening on my drive home, I had an excited call from my wife, Jac, to tell me that we had a Heron in the pond and waddling around in the reflection pool.

Well It was still light when I arrived home last night and I was greeted by teh arrival of the Heron again.

It came and went a few times, and I witnessed the loss of at least a couple of frogs sadly. our neighbour says it has been in an out all day.

So this year is looking bad for the adult frogs. I hope they hurry up and get the spawn laid.

Having said I wanted to sell my 300f2.8L, it was the perfect lens last night, shooting with the 7D and from my bedroom window.

Overall a bitter sweet moment - cruel nature. It was sad seeing the loss of frogs that are our garden friends and companions through much of the year, and that have grown up in this place over the last few years.

The end of a Frog

Martin

Spring-its hot

Spring has certainly sprung here in the Carolina's, A typical spring day here is like a good summers day in the UK, This week its going be between 75 and 80 degrees and a nice clear cloudless blue sky, I haven't had the cameras out for the past week due to spring cleaning, Helping a friend settle in to her new home and lots of gardening, The soil in the Carolina's is a heavy red clay, Just like you get in Africa, Its a real pain to try and dig into and in the heat it really takes it out of you but there are some nice looking areas in the garden so the hard work is paying off and i need to loose a few pounds anyways, I want to get it all out of the way so that when the D800 arrives i can play to my hearts content, It will take a day to sort out the custom functions and micro adjust all the lenses, When i was at the garden center the other day i bought a dwarf plum tree that is heavy in bud and will put a feeder under it and hope to get some birds landing on it, Its only around 3 feet high and will grow to a max of 5 feet so it can be planted in a pot and moved around the garden as needed and use year after year, I am always on the look out for something photographically pleasing and this should be just the ticket.
Talking of the D800 i read that Nikon has said that the preorders were 'unprecedented' and its already hit the No1 spot on Amazon for Dslr sales, I sure hope that Nikon will be able to keep up with demand, Rumors are that Canon has a large stock of the 5D3 so customers who preordered wont have a long wait which is how it should be
I have been looking at SD cards for the D800, I nearly bought some a couple of months ago but held back in the hope of 2 CF card slots, I have a 32GB CF card (Sandisk Extreme Pro) and will likely get a 32 GB Extreme Pro to go along side it, I have always used Sandisk and can highly recommend them, I see no reason to change and if you are listening Sandisk-yes please. I have never been one for having huge cards but the files on the D800 will be pretty big so a 32 GB card is not really that big, The D800 should be shipping around this time next week

Dave

Facebook and the Blog

If you use Facebook you will see a link on Expoimaging's page showing the blog that i did last week on their excellent flashbender product-cant be bad

Dave