Trip Report - South Carolina

Dave is currently shooting in South Carolina and can not gain access to the internet until tomorrow.
The blog will be update by Dave tomorrow.

Apologies to all our followers.

regards
Marian

News (sad) - Sea Eagles on Mull update

I posted this story a few days ago which was good news at the time.

Well I received an email from the Isle of Mull Bird Club today with the sad news that chick no.1 at the RSPB Loch Frisa site has died. He was retrieved from under the nest site a couple of days ago by the Dave Sexton, RSPB Officer on Mull.

This bird had appeared to fledge early, approximately one and half weeks early. A post mortem will be carried out but it is thought possible that it had fallen out, and sustained an injury.

The good news is that the second chick now fledged normally and is being fed by it's parents in the usual place. So if you are on Mull over the next few weeks, good views can still be had from the hide. Details can be found here.

Mustn't forget to mention my good friends Pam and Arthur Brown who run wildlife tours with Discover Mull, and have never yet not seen Sea Eagles when I have been out with them.

And on a final note it is Happy 70th Birthday to my Mum today - have a good one Mum

Martin

Tips and Techniques- Use of wireless multi flash

Once again i will back up Martins last post about the use of remote wireless flash use,A couple of years ago i spent a very nice summer shooting European Badgers at night,Badgers suffer from 'white eye' if the lights are on camera so need to be set away from the camera/lens set up. I started off using the 2 EX550 flashguns that i had,both in front of the subject and one to either side of the camera, This was OK but gave a 'studio' feel to the shot so i bought 2 more flashguns so that i had 2 in front of the subject and 2 behind lighting up the background, This gave more depth to the image rather than just having a black background,I was shooting with Canon gear at the time using the ST-E2 to trigger the flashguns that had been set as 'slaves', the set up i had for badgers was 1 flashgun set about 4 feet each side of the camera-1 being about 5 feet high shooting down and 1 set low to the ground, The idea being to light the badger from above with the high light and the low light would lighten underneath the chin, I would look through the viewfinder and see what needed to be lit behind and set the lights up accordingly,A simple but effective set up, I had the ST-E2 set up on a L bracket so i could swap from landscape to portrait without affecting the trigger,The focusing was set to manual and i would prefocus whilst it was still light on a small amount of food that i had carefully placed,


I also used Canons 20D instead of the 1D MK2 that i had at the time as the shutter was much quieter and was less likely to spook the animal-today i would use the 1D3 if i still use Canon as it has a brilliant silent shutter mode,
You can trigger 'slave' flashguns by having a 'master' gun set up on the camera but i preferred this set up for what i was doing at the time, I still have yet to get a Nikon equivalent but its on the list



Dave

Tips & Techniques - Use of Wireless Multi Flash

I mentioned sometime ago about the use of wirelessly triggered flash to light subjects. My most recent use of this was on Mull to light a Sword Leaved Helleborine, in dark conditions in the wind, so I needed to keep fast shutter speeds but wanted to maintain a naturally lit feel to it. I will do a more detailed blog on it in the near future.

In the meantime, here is a setup that I used about twenty months. I had organsised a trip to a bird of prey centre in Wales for a few friends. Our subject were all British Birds of Prey and I wanted to place the subjects in the most natural settings possible.

For this shot, we took the Barn Owl into an old derelict barn to represent his natural roosting place. To get a balanced light, we needed to use a wireless multi flash set up.

This consisted of the Canon STE2 wireless trigger - we only had one between the nine of us so we had to share it around. We set up three 580EX flashheads - two either side, strapped to the barn beams and pointed up to the barn ceiling, which was fortunately quite light in colour. This ensured the light was reflected from what was essentially a large reflector rather than point sources. This was critical for the welfare of the bird - we did not want to flash directly into his eyes. A third 580 EX was set up on my monopod behind the bird just to put a little light on to the rear wall to provide a more even balance.

How did that stay upright on a monopod I hear you say? I have the little pull out microphone style feet built into the bottom on my Manfrotto so that it can self support.


Minor success with this last week - it got me a third place in the Advanced Digital Merit at Smethwick Photo Society.

I would never use this is a Natural History section as it is a captive bird, but for general photographic competition entries it is fine.

Martin

Nikon 600F4 VR Lenshood

As i mentioned a few weeks ago when shooting in Colorado at 14000 feet i lost the end section (its in 2 pcs) of my 600,s lens hood, After numerous phone calls to Nikon's not too friendly parts department in California i was told that if i want just the end piece i will need to buy it in kit form otherwise pay $800 for both pieces fully made up and ready to go.Well i only need one piece but cant understand why i have to put it together myself,surely there is a person in japan who's job that is, Anyway for $349 i have the pleasure in doing it myself, I was told that not all the parts are in so that they would send what they had, So last week a small package arrived and inside was-see below


11 pieces out of the 17 needed to make the whole lens hood,One of the packets in the above image has 2 of the worlds smallest screws


This looks like its going to be fun to put together-NOT
I think i have found the chink in Nikon's Armour here in the spare parts, I understand that replacing 1 part of a 2 part lens hood is a rarity but come on at least for that kind of money have it in one piece
I now wait for the rest of the parts and hope it wont be long but i wont hold my breathe-To be continued

Dave

Welcome to 'The Iris' readers

Many thanks to John Bulpitt FRPS for the mention of this blog in The Iris, the excellent magazine of The Royal Photographic Society Nature Group.

So if you have found us from John's article, welcome to the blog.

Please have a look back in the archives to check out our tips and techniques, gear reports, news - just use the tags at the bottom of the posts to find related articles.

Any feedback will be most welcomed.

Martin

News - Sea Eagles on Mulls

One of my favourite wildlife news sites is carrying a great little story with some images of this years Sea Eagle chicks on Mull here. As a regular visitor to Mull, it is great top see such close images. The photographer, who I met once is fortunate enough to be involved in the ringing programme and is therefore Schedule 1 licensed.

For the rest of us, they are difficult subjects to get close up images of, and you have to be patient and lucky, to be in the right place, should they happen to fly by you.

I happen to chance on these in years gone by - sadly not close enough or detailed enough, but some happy memories of great wildlife moments.

Martin

Camera Features

Most days i scan through the forums and one thing that stands out is the amount of whinging by photographers, The latest whinging being over camera features, People are still complaining that their cameras have live view and the latest is obviously a movie feature, Now my car has a cigarette lighter but i don't smoke and don't use it but i don't go on forums complaining about it, My camera has the feature to use all the AF points at the same time but i don't use that either, I see one guy (pro) moaning about having live view on his Canon 1D3 and that it makes his camera a point and shoot and that you have to hold the camera at arms length-wrong-if you are going to whinge then at least know what you are on about,The live view on the 1D3 is manual focus so you cant hold it at arms length,Live view has many uses,The main one i have mentioned before being the use of a live histogram where you can set the exposure without having to take a test shot, I don't see any type of photography where this feature isn't a plus, Now having a movie feature on a camera isn't something that i can see myself use but all camera bodies are getting the feature so i guess my next body will have it-i wont whinge about it i just probably wont use it,but i will see how it works as its good to know ALL the features that you have available just incase you need it-remember the image of Concorde in flames-now what if you had movie mode on your body-you can shoot stills at the same time as taking the movie-that could have earned you an awful lot of money

Dave