wfooshee gallery - Trying black-&-white conversions

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wfooshee

Rather ride my FJR
Premium
5,008
United States
Panama City, FL
I haven't posted a gallery, yet, thought I would start one since I got a new (used) toy, a D50 Nikon. Finally, digital SLR!!!!

Let's start with some old work. Started shooting with a camera my dad gave me when I left for college in the mid-70s, a Voigtlander Vitessa. A 1952-era folding rangefinder with no built-in metering, much less auto-exposure. You wanna learn how cameras work, get something like this and carry a hand-held light meter!

I've posted these two elsewhere on this forum, but I really like them. The lily pads are from my very first roll of 35mm film, Kodachrome 64 I think it was. (Might have been 25)

St. Andrew State Park, Florida
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Chewacla State Park near Auburn, Alabama
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My next camera was a Canon AE-1 with a 50mm 1.4 lens. Loved that camera, but time was not good to it. Mirror cushion is gone, and the shutter got to where it would release as soon as it cocked. Lost half a roll before I could get the power winder turned off! Got that camera from a friend of my sister's who got it for his birthday, and had no interest. Offered him a hundred bucks as a joke, and he accepted. Who am I to enlighten him? eBayed it recently for nearly that much! Worked out to less than a dollar a year to use it!!!

Suwanee river in Florida:
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I bought myself a Nikon n8008 outfit to replace my aging AE-1, when the 8008 was a brand new system. The 8008s had not come out yet. No shots from that camera here, haven't bothered scanning too many of them. That's been my camera until just a few weeks ago. I had a Sony digital point-and-shoot which got me interested in the digital advantages, but could not think fast enough to be useful for the work I liked to do. Still, I've had a few nice shots with it.

From my wife's first all-day trip with me on the FJR, along the coast from home to Apalachicola.
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I borrowed a D70 last year for an air show, had a chance to buy it but didn't have the $$$.

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Had a mental problem converting the focal length to the smaller sensor when setting shutter speed, most of my pics had some motion blur. Also, I think I just forgot to set the speed higher after shooting some prop planes, didn't want frozen propellors.

This one impressed me, though, from when they taxied in after the show. I blew it up and was almost able to read the labels on the ejection seat! I left the post here as the clickable thumbnail for the sake of the post format.



This spring I got my D50. Bought it used from the same guy I borrowed the D70 from last year. Had to clean it up a bit, had some dust on the sensor, and he'd set a lot of "adjustments" which caused it to go weird with white balance and metering, generally overexposed nearly 2 stops when I first started using it.

I've only had a chance to play with it a couple of times. I went to the AMA weekend at Barber Motorsports in Alabama last April, and I went to the GrandAm weekend there last month, both times as a corner worker. While working, you get enough down time to just watch, or take pictures, as the case may be, and the corner stations are usually phonomenal viewing points!

AMA weekend:
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The GrandAm weekend brought some bikes to the show, ran Moto-ST Saturday and Sunday mornings. These bikes are all twins, with 3 classes based on displacement and dyno-tested horsepower. They run a long race, 2 and a half hours, so there are pit stops for tires and fuel, and 2 or 3 riders per bike.

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Rider's eyes!
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I've got cars, too, of course, but haven't been through them yet. It's only been 3 weeks, what do you want from me??!??!?!
 
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Yeah, the AMA pics had the incorrect camera setting for white balance, metering, and exposure compensation, just because I didn't think to check before using it. Had to try to fix in Photoshop afterwards. I can't see close well enough without reading glasses to use the screen properly; I can tell I got a pic, and the framing of it, but that's about all. With the glasses, I can't see anything more than 10 feet away. In April I didn't know how to use the zoom control on the camera screen to check detail. Anyway, I was able to see that I had some exposure problems, washed-out areas, and found the compensation set up 1.5 stops over, and was able to fix that after about 2 hours of shooting! It also helped when I went center-weighted instead of matrix metering, but I didn't know this camera even had matrix until I went exploring the menus (used camera, no time to read manuals, and previous user's non-default settings.) Some of the pics came out really flat-looking after Photoshopping for color and exposure.
For the GrandAm event I left the camera on auto white balance, and experimented with shutter speeds from 1/250th to 1/500th. The bikes needed a faster speed (around 1/400th was as slow as I could get consistently) than the cars did to keep bodywork sharp but still get motion blur in the wheels and background just because of the extra zoom you can use with the bikes. That second blue bike, with the rider's eys, is actually just beyond the acceptable level of motion blur in the bodywork, but I like the guy's eyes being visible. That's the ONLY one I got all day with eyes in it. I had a couple of what I hoped were good power wheelies, too, but they happened while I was at the slow end of my shutter practice and were not very good at all.


Lens was the Nikon 55-200 f4/5.6 that came with it when the original purchaser bought it new.
 
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Finally, got my car pictures up from the GrandAm weekend in July. Classes that ran included Barber Mazda, a rookie-level open-wheel spec series in which the competitors lease cars to run, and have nothing to do with the mechanical preparation, all they can do to prepare the car is suspension and wing setup; Mustang Challenge, which is a near-production class for Mustangs (you can by the car prepared for the class direct from Ford); Koni Challenge, which is production-based racing, including BMW M3, Porsches, Corvettes, and Mustangs; GT, which is also production based but more highly prepared; and DP, the Daytona Prototypes, perhaps the ugliest cars ever produced anywhere on the planet. The GTs and DPs run together, the other classes each have their own race. The Barber cars and the Mustang Challenge are short races with no pits stops, the others run a couple of hours at least.

Anyway, pictures. As with the bike pics above, camera is a Nikon D50, lens is Nikon's 55-200 f4-5.6.

Friday:

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Most of the Mustang Challenge cars were really tail-happy coming out of the infield hairpin. DOT tires, I think.
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Sunlight not good on this, looking almost into the sun, behind my work station, but I tried for hours to get the exhaust blip! If you see it in the finder then you've missed it.
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In the parking area on the opposite side of the track from the paddock, a Jensen Interceptor. Only one I've ever seen in person!
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Saturday. A better job with the sharpness of the panning:

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A little first-lap trouble Sunday morning.
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The driver watched the race from our station.
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This angle, looking out the back of my work station, was much better later in the day, with the sun coming the other way.
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Limping a flat around to the pits.
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Made a few trips to the park near my house, St. Andrew State Park in Florida. I've been looking for Monarch butterflies as they come through on their migration to the southern hemisphere. I found many other things to shoot while I was out there. These are hosted at Picasa, which reduces the size to a max of 800 wide. My Photobucket is full, and I just don't want to pay to get more storage there. (Stopped using Imageshack years ago - they keep randomly throwing away pictures.)

Anyway, My first trip, October 3rd. Saw a couple of dragonflies.
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A park resident:
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Unbelievably, they actually have to tell people not to bother the alligators!
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Tried to get a dragonfly in flight, which turned out to be very difficult. No way to auto-focus, and my lens has only a quarter turn of manual focus adjustment, so it's too fast to be subtle. These two are the best I got that day.
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Another trip, on October 10th. Still no monarchs, but a couple of other types. These weren't so attractive, and one was downright ugly, just fuzzy brown, like a moth, but with spots on the wings. Anyway:
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A couple more dragonfly in-flight attempts:
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October 24th. Finally, a Monarch!!
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But not many, and it was easier to get closer to birds than butterflies - the butterflies kept flying off.
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One of the ugly brown ones showing off his wing spots:
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Surf was up, couldn't get butterflies, so I went into Sports Illustrated mode - yeah, right.
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Almost a pipeline!
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And he rode it out:
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Made a fourth trip today, Novemeber 1st, and the monarchs are finally here in numbers! Still can't get close enough to most of them, but I got a few.
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Saw some other critters, too.
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Butterfly pr0n *giggle*
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More posing dragonflies:
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Found one that would hover for a while, at least for long enough to actually aim and focus the camera. Those earlier in-flight shots are crap. Ignore them! All of these are the same individual as he hovered, flew a circle and returned, hovered again, several times around.
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I really like those hovering shots, they've come out pretty well 👍

I'm just curious as to what settings you used on the AMA and car racing shots? You've captured a good sense of speed in a number of them but many at the expense of clarity, I feel. The colour seems pretty washed-out too which seems unusual to me as I have a D40 and it's generally pretty good with colour unless it's overcast (which is a lot in the UK, but even then it's not too bad). In sunlight, as many of the shots above are, the colour with my camera is very good. I use the same for my motorsport stuff as you're using and clarity is usually very good with that too, so it must be a settings issue.

A little PP might help I reckon - just something to boost the contrast and the saturation a little.
 
The AMA shots at the start of the thread were very poorly exposed, I'd just bought the camera and did nothing but set shutter speed and shutter-priority mode. Didn't even check anything else, didn't even know how, really. Bought camera, left on trip the same day, no time to RTFM. Previous owner had matrix metering, exposure compensation +3, and something else I don't even recall now. Only Photoshop kept me from having to delete everything I shot.

As far as at the expense of clarity, I intentionally shot the bikes and cars with 1/250th, even 1/125th, despite being zoomed all the way out to 200mm, specifically for motion blur. Also, I don't have any really big glass, so these are heavily cropped to get the center of the frame.
 
Well, crap. Now I added a post instead of editing this one.

I wish I knew how to use these forums! :dopey:
 
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From the St. Andrew Bay Yacht Club. They're a customer, I have a server and several computers in there, was onsite for some updates. Didn't have my camera, so I took some with my phone, this is the one I like best.

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From the end of the street my driveway is on. (I'm on a corner lot, my official address is one street, my driveway is on the side street.) There is a park where the street ends at the bay. Nikon D50, 55-200 zoom.

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More from another day. The gazebo and trees were silhouetted, used "fill light" in the Photoshop raw import to bring up the foreground.
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Same day. I didn't notice the crane until I got the pics up on the computer!
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These were last night, from the same park. No rain yet, lightning coming in from the distance. The building lights on the horizon are condos on the beach.
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I had the lens wide open (f/4) and 5-seconds. I just kept hitting the shutter button to capture whatever happened. I was being eaten alive by gnats or whatever little biting bugs were out there. Spent about 45 minutes there, and missed more than I got. My camera (D50) won't release the shutter for about 3 or 4 seconds after a long exposure, and I can't tell you how many really good flashes happened right after the shutter closed! I must've shot 2 or 3 hundred frames and these are the only ones that actually showed lightning. The rest were dark (no lightning at all) or at best backlit clouds.

The second picture was so overexposed it was white on the LCD, and about a quarter of the LCD was flashing black. Here's a thumbnail of the original frame. After that I went to f/8, and the third picture neede MUCH less work to make it usable, just a little color correction. Long exposures get skewed to magenta in my camera, apparently.
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Awesome lightning shots!

The reason the camera is unusable for 5 seconds after a 5 second exposure is that it's doing "long exposure noise reduction". It records your exposure with the shutter open. Then it closes the shutter, and records the sensor activity (which is all noise), then it subtracts the second recording from the first. Marvellous.
 
Well, that makes sense, but doesn't make it any less annoying. Iknew about that on some cameras, but in my mind it was only on exposures over 10 seconds. I actually didn't know this camera did that. It can be disabled, I'll need to experiment, now!

So I need two cameras to alternate open shutters, huh? :)
 
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Well, thanks, since I had so much to do with where the lightning showed! :sly:

Like any lightning shot, just lucky to be pointed more or less the right way.

Dropping to f/8 certainly helped, though. For the record, ISO200, f/8, several seconds of open shutter to see if you catch anything.
 
Well, that makes sense, but doesn't make it any less annoying. Iknew about that on some cameras, but in my mind it was only on exposures over 10 seconds. I actually didn't know this camera did that. It can be disabled, I'll need to experiment, now!

So I need two cameras to alternate open shutters, huh? :)

I think Canons do it at > 1 second. I'm not sure about the configurability on Canons, but it can be disabled if you wish.
 
It's only 5 months ago, but I've never posted what I shot at Sebring this year. The 12 Hours is a race I have always wanted to go to, ever since I was a kid, and living in Florida, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to do, right?

Well, it seems something always came up, some scheduling conflict, not enough money, whatever. I've been to Road Atlanta several times back in the IMSA Group C days, I've been to the Daytona 24 Hours several times as well, although not since Grand-Am and their Daytona Prototypes took it over. The relevance of the race just sort of evaporated then, to me.

Anyway, this year, after years and years of "This is the year I finally get to go!" was finally, actually the year I got to go. I made a bike trip out of it, loaded the camping gear, camera gear, laptop, and some clothes, and headed south. One of the things that kept me from Sebring is that it's just so damn far away! Atlanta and Daytona are MUCH closer to where I live, in the Florida panahandle. That peninsula is LONG, and Sebring is a long ways down there. It was a 425 mile trip to get there.

Once there, this was home sweet home. Camped outside the track, because if you don't get there on Wednesday, you don't camp inside.

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I had no access to AC power, so I used the laptop only long enough to dump the camera's memory cards, and then shut it off. I had plenty of camera battery, and the neighbor was kind enough to allow me to plug a cigarette lighter charger for my phone into his car overnight.


I got to the track Thursday evening, but since I'd ordered a 2-day ticket (Friday and Saturday) I could not get in for Thurday's night practice. I was allowed in after the session, so I looked around, got some food, found the showers, and so on. The four-day ticket would only have been 10 bucks more . . . .

So on Friday I started near where I camped, which was outside of Sunset bend, the last turn of the track. Took some pictures, but I was looking into the sun, so they were all throw-aways from that area at that time. Wandered through the paddock back to the other end of the back straight, and found some stands to climb up and sit in, and got some nice shots. During the day I wandered the whole facility, mostly as an orientation, since I'd never been before and was there by myself, no "experienced" friends present.

On Saturday I participated in the fan access to the grid, which at Sebring is open to ALL ticket holders, as is the paddock (no separate extra-cost paddock pass.) Then a similar set of wanderings to get shots from several venues, especially night shots of the braking into the hairpin.

Camera is a Nikon D50, 6-MP, and almost all of these were shot at either 1/250 or 1/125 shutter priority, to get motion blur in the wheels and background. At night, though . . . . honestly the D50 was not that good in the dark. However, the SB-600 flash is a really nice piece of kit, and puts a lot of light out there quite a ways. (Since this time I've replaced the D50 with a D5000, getting the D5000 barely used on eBay, less than 2500 shutter trips, and sold my D50 on eBay, so it worked out to a camera + 200-dollar trade-up. Couldn't be happier! Haven't been anywhere with the new camera, yet, though, so no images to compare to these.)

Anyway, on to the shots:

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The sound this car made, with its big V12, was incredible! It didn't finish Sebring, but is doing very well in the rest of the ALMS series, currently second in the points behind the Mazda LMP1 team, shown next.
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From the Historics that raced Friday late afternoon:
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Saturday morning, the grid:

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I have a thing for the Ford GT. I don't understand why they're being raced, since they're not being sold any more. I know it's a privateer team, but . . . Anyway, they're beautiful to look at, and they sound awesome!
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But nobody beats these for American V-8 sound!!!!
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At least two teams running the new 458:
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I was able to actually get between the Matmut Peugeot and the car next to it, so I took 4 overlapping shots from the side and stitched them for an ultra-wide shot. Only car I did this with, which is obviously the reason they won the race! Don't you think so?
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Glad I got a shot of the Lambo when I did, because they only lasted a few minutes!
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One of my sharpest pans on the day:
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As previously mentioned . . .
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These are along the turns 14-15-16 area, the winding section before they turn onto the back straight. Pretty close to the track, but not high enough to get the barrier out of the shot. Also found a hole in the fence to shoot through!

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Here's what you get without the hole in the fence:

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I've crossed over the paddock and now I'm outside turns 1 and 2, with the sun behind me (finally!)
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Beat-up Ferrari after a tangle in the final turn:
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At the infield hairpin. Sun's a little bit in my face again:

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Whaoa! Whoa! Whoa!
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Ouch!
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Do not ask me how many tries to get our man's Nissan spitting flame!
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Just a ways after the hairpin now:
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The eventual race winner, running last year's Peugeot:
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Last endurance race for the open Audi:
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Wow, serious sun glare!!!!! Not all of that is camera travel, though, so I'm not sure where it comes from.
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Hairpin braking again, but later in the day, with a better sun angle:
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Ouch again!
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Back to the stands at the beginning of the back straight, very late afternoon. This is the fastest section of the track, the longest straight, and it looks directly into the late and setting sun!
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Look at the driver's face, how bright it is, and the corner worker shading her face:
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This is in the paddock area alongside the back straight, looking exactly the same way the drivers are as they run the straight!
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Now to the hairpin, first some by available light before it gets too dark.
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OK, it's getting too dark:
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For some reason the BMWs lit up the rears much more than the fronts.
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Time to mount the flash:
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Reflective decals!!!
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Again, don't ask how many tries!!! You miss it, wait several minutes for him to come back around, try to recognize the car by its headlights, and hope you time it right next time. I got it one time!
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The front straight near the end of the race:
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Got a new lens a while back, Nikon's AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED. Long-ass damn name, basically means it's a mechanically-stabilized 70-300 lens, and it's a good bit sharper than the previous biggest glass I had, the basic 55-200 zoom that usually comes in a kit with the camera. I've had the lens a few weeks, have shot with it out at the local state park getting pics similar to some I've shot before. A few examples:

I seem to have developed a fetish for in-flight dragonflies. You can't auto-focus, nor can you follow them, but if you catch one in a momentary hover, and are quick enough with the focus and steady enough with the camera, some pretty cool shots fall out of the camera!

10 meters distance, at 300mm:
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Other critters run around out there, too. It's kinda like nature or somethin'
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The monarchs come through this area in the fall on their annual migration.
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The new lens is much easier to manually focus than the kit lens. It has a larger focusing ring, rather as if Nikon knew people might actually want to use it, where the kit lens had a very narrow ring that only moved a quarter turn from end to end of its range. Fine adjustment was not possible.

But mostly what I've been waiting for since I got the new lens is the annual Homecoming show the Blue Angels have at their home base near here, Pensacola Naval air Station. I've been very anxious to give it a try, and for the most part I'm thinking I really like this lens.

I screwed up a lot of my shots with prop-driven planes, trying to get a prop disc instead of frozen blades, and went down to 1/125th second. That's just too much to ask for at 300mm, even with a stablized lens. Got pretty good results playing around with 1/200 and 1/250, though; still get prop blur but the planes are usefully sharp.

There was a theme at the show of a Century of Naval Aviation, since it was January 2011 when the Ely-Curtiss pusher landed and then took off from a ship. (It had actually launched from a ship in November 2010, but nearly crashed into the water - it did hit the water and suffered damage, so although that's recorded as the first launch, it had issues and I don't think they really count it in the navy.) So the show started with lots of early trainers and then warbirds circling the field.

Stearman 'tween-the-wars trainer, Army colors:
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And one in navy colors:
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Helldiver, WWII navy dive bomber:
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Its replacement, the Dauntless:
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Corsair:
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Bearcat painted as used by the 1946 Blue Angels:
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Warbirds included a Japanese Zero and a Kate. Yes, they are replicas. Genuine Japanese WWII artifacts are beyond rare, as the surrender called for the destruction of all offensive weapons. Any genuine aircraft were found as wrecks or in the water, and restored from there.
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F-18F Super Hornet pulling up into the square loop. It was an exceedingly dry weekend, with almost no humidity, thanks to a cold front that came through just the day before the show, dragging desert air from the upper plains. On a real Florida day, there would be so much vapor off the wings of this maneuver that the tail fins would be hidden.
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The Navy's "Tailhook Legacy" flight, with the Helldiver, Corsair, and Super Hornet.
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And a flying replica of the Ely-Curtiss pusher mentioned above:
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The Curtiss flew at all of 50 miles per hour, and of course the Legacy flight was at least 200, just to keep the hornet up in the air. The Legacy flight circled well south, and the Curtiss flew a smaller circle, and they got all the planes in the same frame for photographers.
Indeed, a century of naval aviation!!!
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The Red Bull aerobatic helicopter. Specially modified with very stiff titamium rotor blades, it is capable of 360-degree rolls during forward flight, 360-degree loops, and even flipping backwards from a hover.
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The picture is not upside-down!
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And a few of the stars of the show:
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I've never gotten a satisfactory shot of this crossover before, simply because it happens too far away. They come from behind the crowd, and while flying away directly in front, they roll 270 degrees away from each other and turn towards each other to cross. having 300mm instead of 200 helps, as does being stabilized.
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This is the sneak pass, 720 miles per hour at 50 feet! You can see how many people are about to have their bladder control tested! And again, with a proper amount of water in the air, the airplane would be dragging a little vapor cloud along with itself.
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On Friday night they had a twilight/night show. Here's a Stearman in the sunset light:
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The Stearman is not equipped for sustained inverted flight, and when it does stay inverted, the engine stalls. While restarting it dumps a bit of fuel out the exhaust.
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SuperHornet in nearly pitch black. Camera's starting to get a bit noisy here. I think I'd gone all the way to ISO 3200 by this time.
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You can see the lights on the wings as he banks for the minimum radius turn.
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Jet truck popping 'burners:
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A T-6 Texan flying with pyro from the wings, and shooting shells periodically. Lit here only by his own pyro, shot at ISO3200, and shoved a little more in Photoshop!
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Some nice shots there... The ones with the Blue Angels are great! Brings back so many memories from when I grew up in FL. Saw the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds perform many time at MacDill Airforce base. Always stunning to watch! 👍
 
From Sebring. I rode my motorcyce down on Thursday the 15th, and camped just outside the gate.

I shot over 1400 frames, kept a little over 500. Here's a sample. If you want to see the whole album, click here.

Friday consisted of some support races, and qualifying sessions for the "big" cars. These first two are standing at the foot of the pedestrian bridge at the beginning of the main straight.

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This is in the line for tech inspection
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From one of the support series, a spec-racer set, identical cars, identical tires, identical engines. The fast guys pulled away, the slow guys faded, and there was absolutely no excitement.
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The last activity on Friday was the SVRA historics. They ran two groups, the more recent cars first, then the older cars.
Lola T-70, Chevy V-8 power
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Group 44 Jaguar, 6-liter (or was it 6.5?) V12, incredible sound!!!!
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The smaller-engine older group, these are just past the hairpin, Turn 7.
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'63 Corvette Gran Sport
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On Saturday, now, early in the race. These are from the stands they put along the straight after Turn 13, facing the airport. A bit of sun-in-your-face this early in the day.
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I came down from the stands and turned around, walked about 100 feet to be along the straight after Turn 1.
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And back to the beginning of the main straight at the pedestrian bridge.
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On the big screen in the infield, a replay of the Nissan/Ferrari crash.
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Along the Big Bend curve. This is the car that placed 3rd overall at the end of the day
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Just past the hairpin (Turn 7.) The track is high enough here to make great shooting, as you can see over the barrier and the cars are at eye level. Very cool!
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Back to the stands after Turn 13, for late afternoon light
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As it got dark, I went to the paddock for some supper, then to Turn 7 for brake pics. My D5000 is much better here than the D50 I had last year, much lower noise level.
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As the cars decelerate and downshift, the exhaust burbles and spits little bits of flame. Of all the shots I took, this is the only time I caught one of those flames
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Nicely done!

I really like what you 'see' and how you so patiently capture it. Your dragonflies belong in National Geographic, and your auto shots are spectacular - thanks for bringing us those images.
 
Nice shots.

As for the first post
You wanna learn how cameras work, get something like this and carry an external light meter!

I carry my digital with me and do test shots to get the settings right on the analogue ;)

I must've shot 2 or 3 hundred frames and these are the only ones that actually showed lightning.
Yup, can be frustrating ;)

Nice shots, massive gallery 👍
 
I can see a massive improvement in your shots from Sebring in comparison to 2011's shots. So much clearer and some good pans in there as well. One slight criticism would be to put less shots up, it takes a fair amount of time to scroll through them all - also numbering them would be good for if you want constructive criticism. But keep at it! :)
 
Some really nice shots here. One suggestion I would make is that when panning, leave some room in front of the object. It creates "mental space" for the object to move into.
 
@ Speedster502:

2011: 55-200 kit lens on a D50
2012: 70-300 VR lens on a D5000


@ GilesGuthrie

The shots are cropped. I shoot a larger field than I really want because there's just no way to actually keep the subject in the frame while panning if you're tight as you want to be. Nothing like a great pic of most of the car! I just usually chose to crop pretty close to the car, although in some, the edge of the crop was the edge of the frame. :crazy:
 
The shots are cropped. I shoot a larger field than I really want because there's just no way to actually keep the subject in the frame while panning if you're tight as you want to be.
In that case it should be even easier to try what Giles is suggesting - leave a bit of room towards the front of the car when you crop it down instead of cutting it tight. It'll give the viewers a glimpse of where the car is headed. :)
 
Yeah, I don't get it. I don't see how this:
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can be a more interesting picture than this:
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This picture is actually the loosest frame I took all weekend. The car is smallest in the frame of anything I shot. The top picture here is still cropped, the original had about the same amount of space behind the car. I cropped it like this to get the leading space you guys are talking about, and I don't see the point. It's empty. There's nothing there I want to show. There's nothing there that adds to any sense of the setting. The motion blur of wheels, and the background blur from panning, is enough to show that I'm not shooting parked cars. As for a sense of where it's going, the only thing the top picture adds is that we know it's not going to crash in the next 5/100ths of a second. :)

To me, the only thing the top picture is an improvement on is the original frame, which was empty behind the car as well.
 
Yeah, I don't get it. I don't see how this:
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can be a more interesting picture than this:
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Because people like to see how a given subject fits in its environment. If you just have a car, like your bottom pic, what is that picture saying? Not much - it's documentary photography, showing us a car and thats about it. Much like with the rule of thirds. It all depends on what you as a photographer wasnts to get out of a photograph. :)
 
Went down the road a couple hours to Pensacola the first weekend of November for the end-of-season Homecoming show for the Blue Angels. It's a trip I try to make every year, and sometimes twice a year (each day of the show.) It's a unique air show for this area in that they have a twi-night show on one of the days as well, afterburners at dusk, and airborne pyrotechnics. On Friday the Blue Angels #2 and #3 jets were replaced by 2-seaters, with the pilots carrying next year's pilots on a ride through the show. Saturday had the regular single-seat jets.

What was new for me this year is that I've traded up to a D7000. That took a little more money than it was supposed to. I got a good deal on one on eBay, but lost my ass selling my D5000 on eBay, didn't set a reserve and it went for about 100 bucks less than I should have gotten, and about 150 less than I was hoping for.

These images are a mix from Friday's show and Saturday's show, except the dusk and dark are all from Friday, as there was no night show on Saturday.

Let me take a moment here to compare the camera to what I've shot with before.

My first dSLR was a D50, and its autofocus was too slow for air shows, so everything I did was manually focused, a very difficult task on kit lenses! The tiny ring only moves 90 degrees from min to max distance! Also, the D50 was only 6 megapixels, so cropping was limited by resolution.

Last summer I got a D5000 on eBay, and sold my D50 for less than 200 dollars under what I paid for the D5000. I got 12 megapixels so I could crop what the lens wouldn't reach and still have decent resolution for web posting. Its autofocus was more usable, with 11 sensors and 3D focus tracking. I never figured out the focus tracking, but the autofocus was good enough for the air shows. Also, I had the 70-300 VR lens later in the summer, so at last year's air show I had MUCH better glass! It was better in low light than the D50 ever hoped to be, but still quite noisy.

The D7000 is a different world altogether! When I saw the specs I was wondering why the %#&@ would anybody need 39 auto-focus sensor points. Well, now I know. The 3D focus tracking was nothing short of black magic at the air show. I shot about 1000 frames during the 2 days, and not a single one was out of focus! Even on an aircraft coming at me at over 700 miles per hour. Whatever it starts with stays in focus, as long as it stays in the viewfinder. Second thing about the D7000 is its mechanical speed. I don't mean just frames per second, I mean how fast it completes the shot when you hit the button. The mirror is so fast the the viewfinder doesn't go dark, even when shooting at 6 frames per second; you never lose your sight picture!

OK, enough jibber-jabber. Pictures!

F/A-18F Super Hornet pulling water out of thin air
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These guys call themselves Team RV. There are 12 guys flying home-built kit aircraft, although we were missing one this weekend. They call themselves the world's largest airshow team. Most of their show is flights of 4 or 6 doing passes against each other, but part of the show is everyone together. 1/160th for prop blur. (I hate frozen propellors!)
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P-51 taking off. I'm rather please with the panning in this shot, 300mm (450-equivalent) and 1/160th again.
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F-16 high speed pass. I might have lied about the perfect focus record. Maybe the cloud fooled the focus sensor, or maybe it's motion blur. I can't tell. I include it, though, because it's the best vapor shot I got all weekend.
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This is 2 seonds later in the same pass.
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The Air National Guard sponsors this pair of very aerobatic planes....
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.... and this jet truck.
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Of course, there was a race, the jet truck standing start vs the airplane passing at speed. This is a cell phone pic, because I knew what was coming and didn't want to go through a lens change; the 70-300 wouldn't pull back far enough. The truck is already gone out the left side of the frame.
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I finally have seen a demonstrations of the Marine Osprey tilt-rotor.
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Fat Albert low transition takeoff. Caught the prop-tip contrails!
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He ends his show with a short-field landing, diving to the runway as if avoiding enemy AA or coming into a deep valley.
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This, my friends, is pulling up sharply from the takeoff run! Tail cones closer to the ground than the landing gear.... He does a 360 roll before retracting the gear and flaps (dirty roll on takeoff.)
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Followed by #6 doing a low transition, accelerating down the runway at about 10 feet.....
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.... and pulling up sharply to do a half-Cuban-eight and return to the show line ....
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.... after which he turns hard to leave the area.
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I've gotten this shot hundred million times, a few of which are actually quite good, but I've never seen them showing vapor in this pass. I really like this shot!
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Fortus:
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Double Farvel:
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Echelon right:
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Echelon roll. #1 flies a simple roll while the others fly a spiral to stay in line, with #4 having the toughest job.
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The announcer asks the crowd to follow the formation after the echelon roll and watch how they reform to return, but those of us who've been around the block know better.
SNEAK PASS!!!
#5 at 50 feet (I think he cheats that a little....) and 700 miles per hour.
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Followed by #6 from behind the crowd, also very fast and very loud!
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#5 pulls up into an opposing half-Cuban-eight maneuver...
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... and they cross in the return pass.
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The diamond makes a pass by the crowd and separates hard, showing that the solos aren't the only guys capable of pulling gs.
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This is #3 continuing his turn from that separation:
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After the separation each aircraft makes a flat 180-degree turn and returns to the center in a crossing pass.
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The solos join the diamond for a couple of passes to end the show, and this is the start of a looping maneuver:
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They separate on the down leg....
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.... each of the six pilots flies outward a couple miles, does a half-Cuban-eight, and returns for a 6-ship cross, each plane flying at 450 miles per hour:
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The F/A-18F flew just after sunset, as the sky began to truly darken.
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Team RV repeated their show in the night, as well.
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Jet truck at night is always impressive!
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This is a T-6 Texan with lights on its belly, and pyro launchers all over the fuselage, plus of course, sparklers on the wingtips. It's lit here only by its own fireworks.
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Recently picked up the Rokinon "budget" fisheye, 8mm for crop-format digital SLRs. It fills the frame, and corner to corner diagonally is a 180-degree field of view.

The lenses are "cheap" because the big chunk of glass in the front is molded, not ground, and I'm not sure how well coated the elements are. Also, it's manual-focus only, and in most mounts not even chipped.... the camera has no idea what the lens is doing.

They have a chipped version available for the Nikons, though, which is what I got. The chip feeds EXIF data to the camera to store in the image file. Street price is under 300 bucks for the chip lens, less for the non-chip.

First day out with it I took it to a park downtown, oak trees, spanish moss, palms, sunny skies. A good day for shooting.

Aimed upward into the trees. 1/250, f:11, ISO 800


Vertical orientation, just a couple of feet from the palm tree. 1/250, f:18, ISO 800


I'm standing in this tree's shade, only 4 or 5 feet from the trunk. 1/250, f:11, ISO 800


The sun in this image is actually behind me. Straight up is about halfway between the sun and the tree top. 1/250, f:22, ISO 800


Four inches from the drink fountain, and focused on it. 1/250, f:16, ISO 800


I eventually discovered that I could minimize the fisheye distortion if desired by keeping the horizon centered. 1/250, f:22, ISO 800


Another day. Four inches from the fishing reel. 1/200, f:11, ISO 200


Not exactly a landscape scenic lens, but...... 1/160, f:9, ISO 400


Along a trail in my local state park. 1/250, f:13, ISO 200


Same spot after a prescribed burn to thin out the underbrush. 1/500, f:8 ISO 200


ROAD TRIP!!!! Riding in the back of my son's Raptor. 1/100, f:3.5, ISO 200


One of the road trip destinations. This is the north wall of Yosemite Valley. 1/60, f:9, ISO 200.
 
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Birds of my State Parks

I've never considered myself a birder; in fact I've thought of birders as a rather odd lot of people, getting all exciting about glimpes in binoculars of the green-tailed bushwarder or parrot-beaked chickenhawk, or whatever.

Of late, however, since being abandoned and robbed by the once-love-of-my-life, who went off homemaking with some other dude, I find myself with more time to devote to hobbies, such as photography. Even nature photography. And God help me, BIRDS!!!

It started as I wandered the trails in the state parks near my home town. I'd been to many of these places before, but for the beaches, or picnics, or other gatherings of family or coworkers. Wandering the places by myself is a new phenomenon, and I find that the parks have quite a bit more to their facilities than the picnic tables and the beach stores.

The first birds I encountered were the large wading birds, herons and egrets. When my family first moved down here in 1968 I thought them quite exotic, but they're actually just.... birds. Some places you can't take a breath without inhaling one. So let's look at a few.

Great Blue Heron

This was the first one I photographed. They're nowhere near as skittish as most birds, and you can get within 10 or 15 feet of one if you move slowly.






Great Egret
Similar in size and shape to the Great Blue Heron, this bird is white, with black legs and a yellow beak. Similar flight, same habitat, they even nest within sight of each other.




Here are a couple gathering nest material:




A backlit shot of a Great Egret, almost an X-ray of the wings.


An island which in the Spring is covered with nests of both Great Blue Herons and Great Egrets, with a sprinkling of other wading birds as well.


Little Blue Heron
This bird is about half to two-thirds the size of the previous two birds, and is actually blue, pretty much all over, even the beak.




The juvenile Little Blue is actually white and resembles a Snowy Egret (later) but has the blue(ish) bill, and has black-tipped wing feathers.




Tricolored Heron
Almost the same as the Little Blue, but red eyes and white lower body. I've not seen many of these, and this is the only presentable picture I have of it.


Snowy Egret
Another white bird, this one about the same size as the Little Blue Heron, maybe a tad smaller. Black legs and yellow feet, with a black beak.


This is what all the wading birds do most of the time; walk though the water, or just stand there watching, waiting for something delicious to happen by.






Green Heron
Much smaller than the other wading birds shown here, and having a shorter neck and stockier build.






This one is perched on a barely submerged branch, watching for dinner:


The next two are just to show what I go through to find these birds sometimes. The next picture is a Green Heron in a marsh full of buttonbush, at 300mm and cropped. The following picture is the same scene at 70mm and uncropped, to illustrate that I'm not always that close to these critters when I shoot them. In the center is the same bird from the first image. Keep in mind, too, that 70mm is still a moderate telephoto on my crop-sensor camera.





That's enough for now. Next time I'll post some smaller birds, harder to find because they inhabit (and are hidden in) the trees.
 
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