DXO Mark-D7000

DXO mark has published its findings on the Nikon D7000, Its come out very respectable and we all knew that the D7000 has excellent Dynamic range and this really shows in the test scores,
All camera tests can be found here-DXO

Dave

Dorset Trip - Part 6 - Teamwork

After we had finished seeing the sun up at Portland Bill as I reported in Part 2 of this series, we drove down off the Bill, along past Chesil Beach and pulled in at Ferrybridge.  This can be quite a good spot for various wader and shore birds across towards the Fleet behind Chesil Beach, such as Ringed, Little Ringed and the occasional Kentish Plover.

As we pulled into the car park, we saw a Little Egret a bit further up on a patch of water that I had not seen before.

Pulling the car to a halt with the drivers side away from the target, I was able to get out quietly and unseen and belly crawl up to a suitable location without being seen.

The Little Egret was the obvious character being big and white but looking further around there were also Black Headed Gull and to my joy, a male Red Breasted Merganser.  The RBM's have always eluded me photographically when I had seen them on many occasions in Scotland so it was great to see this one fishing away like crazy.

My first concern though was that the Little Egret wouldn't stay away and it was difficult getting clean shots, but after a few minutes of watching rather than thinking about the images, it all became clear to me.

As the RBM was dashing around chasing prey, it was also disturbing other prey and it was this that the Egret was focusing on.  On occasions, the roles were reversed, so it was great fun to see the teamwork in action.

 An unlikely team  pairing

 Moment of impact

'

 Preening - 'Its under there somewhere'

 BH Gull in full mature plumage

 Male Red Breasted Merganser

 Immediate foreground colour is the reflection of the Chesil Beach shingle bank

 Juggling a Shore Crab for breakfast

Still struggling - it took it quite a while to get it sorted

All in all, a very pleasant time with some great light and strong sun on my back as I lay down watching.

Martin

Image Sharpness

I am finally sitting down and getting on with some proper processing to try and shift the huge backlog of images i have and get them out to agencies after all they will not bring any money in sitting on a hard drive, One thing that you need to do is after you have done your adjustments is to increase the image to 100% on your screen and look all over for dust spot and remove them, Now when your image is at 100% its very big on the screen and it gives you a good chance to make sure that the image is critically sharp-not just nearly sharp or pretty good as that will not do but perfectly sharp, anything else and its for the bin, Out of the
40 000+ images taken in Japan i have around 1000 images to process, The rest were deleted for being either not being critically sharp, badly composed i.e bird in flight or i have just picked the best of a series of shots,
So i processed this image

and at 100% on my screen i got this

Not just sharp but beautiful as well, If a client wants to crop the original image heavily they can and still have a beautifully sharp image which is very impotant

When i shot the Snow Monkeys in Japan i mainly used my D3s with a 24-70 or 70-200 and the images are absolutely beautiful and incredibly sharp, The 24-70 is probably my favourite lens, I also had a tripod set up with the D7000 and 200-400 on it and again beautiful files that i have no problem sending out or printing up large
Here is another

and 100% crop

As you can see i have used fill flash on the above image, The use of flash also helps freeze the subject and give a perfectly sharp image, By looking at your images at 100% you can see if they are critically sharp and if not then you need to look at the techs i.e focal length used/shutter speed etc and try to find the reason why you are not getting perfectly sharp images, You do not need to own and use pro gear to get sharp images although it does help in difficult situations
In my next blog i will show you some of the difficulties in getting these snow monkey images

Dave

Dorset Trip Report - Part 5 - Sika Deer at Arne

Following on from previous parts of this mini trip report, this part is slightly out of sequence chronologically but here it is anyway.

I went to the coast for the sunrise but sadly there was no sun.  The light just went from cold dark blue grey, to cold dark grey to cold lighter grey, so I wont bore you with the horrible flat light images that I took.

After going back to the hotel and a wonderful breakfast, we went across to the Arne, stopping off on the way to see Dartford warbler (briefly) and Stonechat.

The light stayed flat and with a cool easterly breeze, in marked contrast to the hot bright day before, many of the birds were not playing ball.  Walking across to the saltmarsh, the Deer were going to be the best chance, and there were plenty there, along with a few hundred Brent Geese.

The Deer at Arne are one of the few herds of Sika Deer in the UK.  Originally introduced to the UK from its native range in Asia in the latter half of the 19th century, they can be seen in a few locations in the UK.  The Arne is as good as anywhere, and with the heathland or saltmarsh as habitat it makes for some interesting background for them to be photographed in.

Generally a much 'dirtier' brown that the native Roe Deer, they are also display the characteristic white heart shape round the rear end.

So here are a few for you 

 On the beach with Brent Geese in background

 Lonely in the grey 'murk'

Martin

Lets Talk

Well the weather over the weekend was not as predicted and when the weather was nice i was busy eating and drinking-yes the social season has kicked off and most weekends will now be a blur, I am trying to get one of the new USB 3 downloaders by Delkin before i go to California in 2 weeks, The extra speed will make life much easier but as they have only just been announced its hit and miss as to whether one comes my way i will add a USB 3 hub and tranfering images to my main external hard drives and cloning the back ups should be a sinch,
The rumour mills are going at full speed which i find strange considering the recent problems in Japan, All the camera manufacturers are affected and although they say that they are running it will not be at 100% for some time, But as Nikon announced a new camera last week in the form of the D5100 i guess thats got everybodies hopes up that the suspected bug arrivals like the D4/D400 and D800 from Nikon and the 5D3 and 1DS4 will make an arrival this year or sooner, Sony announced a 24mp cropped sensor recently and people are saying that it may go into the D400 i for one doubt that and really hope not but as they are all just rumours we will keep it that way until something is announced by the camera makers them selves-good fun though watching people getting themselves in a tizzy and arguing with others about something no body has a clue about,

I am still going through the naming and selecting of the Japan trip images and will start the main processing of them this week and getting them ready for agency selection, I recently did a blog about image manipulation and one image stood out that was ripe for it, here is the finished image

I thought that it came out ok and i guess if i put it up on a forum nobody would have been the wiser that the original image looked like this

Now it would be bad enough to put it up without saying that its a heavy crop but the main problem for me is that there is a bird removed and that puts in into naughty territory, Its gone beyond what i find acceptable and you will not be seeing this image again on any forums unless its to illustrate what i have done, By the way it was done just using the clone tool and took a minute or so, I used to look at images on the web and be in awe of how the photographer always managed to get the birds perfectly in the frame but now i am always suspicious which is a shame really,
So back to the grind, The weather here today is supposed to be around 90 but as i sit here and look out of the window its over cast and barely 65

Dave

Sunday Quickie

Phew what a weekend!!  Sadly not in a photographic sense but in a 'hard work in the garden' sense.  I will be glad to go back to work tomorrow to get a physical rest.

Two structures completed -a  rustic bench and the arbour is now clad with the brush screening.  Just a couple of minor add-ons to the side and it will be ready to use for photo purposes. 

Plus once I had got those out of the way, I then got calls to build other things for the on wildlife garden.  So to sum up either visits to garden centres that cost a fortune or working hard in beautiful warm sunshine - cant be bad.

Great views of three thermalling Buzzard overhead this afternoon, and more serenades by the warblers I mentioned in my last post.  Plenty of butterflies still and the tadpoles are getting bigger and stronger, although no legs appearing yet.

Clearly Blackbirds like fresh tadpole as well as we watched one having quite a feast this morning.

Hope you all had a equally productive or relaxing weekend

Oh yes forgot to mention - successful sortie to the Barn Owl location on Friday night.  She popped out of the brick barn and flew straight over the car  - beautiful.  It was even better as there was a great little pub 100 yards away so it was great to get a pleasant beer down while waiting for the light to drop.

Martin

Another Quick session

I havent been down to the private land for some time even though i try to keep food there its not there enough, I think Raccoons have found the food source and after a day/night the food is zero, When i arrived every bit of food was gone and the hide/blind had been raided, My food containers were on the floor,open and empty, Only a raccoon could do that, I had an image in my mind of some wild party going on in the hide with 3 or 4 raccoons having a great time, Anyway i havent been very happy with my perches, They seem kinda bland so i cut a small branch from a small tree just coming into bloom in my garden and used that for small birds and then cut some vine and wrapped it around my woodpecker branch to add some colour, The vine stayed good for around anhour before wilting even though the end was in water but by then i had some hairy woodpecker images, The red bellied woodpeckers arrived late and the vines were all but dead but i think maybe still be there than not, It was a slow session with bouts of action which was fine and i now need to keep the food going in as the birds are paired up and probably on eggs, A small amount of effort now could pay dividends soon.
Closer to home the raccoons have been coming into my garden going into my new pond for food that i have placed on a rock in the middle and the other night one climbed up onto the garden fence and fed from my bird feeder for about an hour, I now have a few images that i have in mind and i am sure will happen over the coming weeks

I only took the D7000 and 600 and the woodpecker perch is too close for the red bellied woodpecker with this set up-you can see that its very tight in the frame so i will move it back and add a 1.4x for the hairy woodpeckers, I have to admit that although i had some misgivings with the D7000 its still my camera of choice for this type of photography, The AF is very good and  grabs the subject quickly, I shoot in manual mode and the files look very nice, For the money its a bargain and offers great IQ when used with a quality lens, One thing that i felt lacking was the SD cards, although it has 2 SD cards are slow compared to CF cards until now as Delkin have just bought some very fast SD cards out, I hope that Sandisk are close behind as i have 100% trust in Sandisk, I hope that they are reading this as i would like to test any new cards out, along with my USB3 laptop it should make life and downloads much faster

Dave

Garden Catch up

I had a day off work today so have spent the day out there doing some more project work.  I know that we are only just about half way in to spring, but it was most summer like, and with the first 'shirt off' day of garden work, my shoulders are feeling it tonight.

I have just about finished a permanent hide except it looks nothing like a hide and is just a nice piece of rustic garden furniture (bench seat) and structure (pergola), which with a bit of additional scrim netting cloth pegged on will convert into a hide in about five minutes.  Will share some pics when I have fully completed so all you blokes  (or ladies) out there that want a hide in the garden but get moaned out by the other half that it doesn't fit in the garden, then fear not, I have the answer.

This year's garden bird list is now up to 37 so far with the latest additions being Little Owl, Tawny Owl in the last month along with Chiff Chaff, Willow Warbler and House Martin this week.

The butterflies are coming thick and fast now and although I wasn't at home on Wednesday, Jacqui saw the first Speckled Wood along with seven other species.

Checking the Warwickshire Butterfly Conservation website I noticed that there had not been any Speckled Wood sightings in Warwickshire recorded this year, so I put the record in, and we got the first sighting report for the County.

The wildlife hedgerow and wildflowers are starting to do well in the garden now, and the tadpoles are very active, having left the safety of the centre of the spawn.  I reckon there is at least twice the total of last year in there so it will be a bumper froglet year by the look of it.

Still got some more Dorest wildlife to process and bring to you.  Right - off out now to watch some Barn Owls that we have become aware of not too far from home.

Have a good weekend

Martin