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dogzilla · 01-30-2005, 02:46 AM

Thanks for all the comments. This was an enjoyable day watching about a half dozen eagles flying around. I was a bit worried about seeing any because it has been so cold around here and most rivers have frozen over. Yesterday also started out very cold and then warmed up nicely.

My brother and I were able to get fairly close to a couple of eagles. We were close to the base of the tree where the eagle was perched when I got that shot and were maybe 50 feet freom a couple eagles standing on the ice.

I tweaked the colors a bit in photoshop since the images out of the camera were a bit flatter. I hesitate to change too much in photoshop since I end up with pictures that look very contrasty and fake. Other than the birds, there's almost no color around here in winter, so a lot of my winter pictures end up as almost black & white with little spots of color.

My setup is a Digital Rebel with a 70-200 F2.8L zoom lens and a 2x extender for the lens. Most of the time I was shooting at the far end of the zoom range, which, with the 1.6x crop factor in the camera gives me effectively a 640mm F5.6 lens.

I shot most of these handheld, trying to keep the aperture around F8.0 or so and shutter speed 1/1000 second or faster. So, with a bright sunny day I was shooting at ISO 200 or ISO 400.

I'm really happy with the camera and lens even though the camera is the low end of the SLR range. Two somewhat frustrating limits are the lack of servo mode autofocus and the small image buffer. The lack of servo mode means the camera will not automatically refocus as I track a flying bird. I've sort of gotten around this by repeatedly tapping the shutter to trigger autofocus as I track the bird. I have to be sure the focus point is on the bird or I end up focusing on trees and get a blurry picture. The buffer limit means I can only click three images then have to wait 5-10 seconds before I can shoot more. I ended up missing what I thought were a few good shots. Unfortunately, the only solution to that is a more expensive camera.

Hope I haven't bored anybody with the tech stuff.

01-30-2005, 02:46 AM	#10 (permalink)
dogzilla Junkie Location: New York	Thanks for all the comments. This was an enjoyable day watching about a half dozen eagles flying around. I was a bit worried about seeing any because it has been so cold around here and most rivers have frozen over. Yesterday also started out very cold and then warmed up nicely. My brother and I were able to get fairly close to a couple of eagles. We were close to the base of the tree where the eagle was perched when I got that shot and were maybe 50 feet freom a couple eagles standing on the ice. I tweaked the colors a bit in photoshop since the images out of the camera were a bit flatter. I hesitate to change too much in photoshop since I end up with pictures that look very contrasty and fake. Other than the birds, there's almost no color around here in winter, so a lot of my winter pictures end up as almost black & white with little spots of color. My setup is a Digital Rebel with a 70-200 F2.8L zoom lens and a 2x extender for the lens. Most of the time I was shooting at the far end of the zoom range, which, with the 1.6x crop factor in the camera gives me effectively a 640mm F5.6 lens. I shot most of these handheld, trying to keep the aperture around F8.0 or so and shutter speed 1/1000 second or faster. So, with a bright sunny day I was shooting at ISO 200 or ISO 400. I'm really happy with the camera and lens even though the camera is the low end of the SLR range. Two somewhat frustrating limits are the lack of servo mode autofocus and the small image buffer. The lack of servo mode means the camera will not automatically refocus as I track a flying bird. I've sort of gotten around this by repeatedly tapping the shutter to trigger autofocus as I track the bird. I have to be sure the focus point is on the bird or I end up focusing on trees and get a blurry picture. The buffer limit means I can only click three images then have to wait 5-10 seconds before I can shoot more. I ended up missing what I thought were a few good shots. Unfortunately, the only solution to that is a more expensive camera. Hope I haven't bored anybody with the tech stuff.