December 6th, 2011

BIRDS AS ART BULLETIN #391

  • BOSQUE IPT REPORT
  • BOSQUE THANKS
  • BOSQUE del APACHE 2012 IPT DATES ANNOUNCED
  • INSTANT SAVINGS ON THE Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Autofocus Lens
  • NIKON USER’S GUIDE COMMENTS
  • NIK COLOR EFEX PRO 4
  • GITZO TRIPOD REBATE
  • THE CIRCLE LENS!
  • IPT UPDATES

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Snow Geese and mega pre-dawn sunrise colors: 6:08 am on 11/29/2011, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM. This 7-frame stitched panorama was created with the tripod-mounted Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens and the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering at zero: 4 seconds at f/4.5 set manually.

Live View for mirror lock. A Double Bubble Level in the hot shoe ensured that the camera was square to the world. Rear Focus AI Servo AF and recompose. (Rear focus is great for birdscapes and for landscapes.) Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial.

You gotta click on this photo and check it out at 1600 pixels wide to enjoy it; then click on the enlarged version to close it.

BOSQUE IPT REPORT

Wow! What a great group and what a great IPT. I was blessed on all counts. We had the best ever flight photography for single geese and cranes. We had a decent sunrise or two (sorry boys and girls–the sunrise above occurred four days after the IPT was over….) We had lots of great blast-offs and lots of great point-blank duck photography. The group was made up of folks with an extremely wide range of skills, from folks routinely producing professional quality images to a very nice young lady who knew only how to turn on her digital Rebel. (BTW, she learned the most of anyone by far.)

Kathleen Berrigan, the aforementioned beginner was sharp as a tack. I could not figure out how to operate her Rebel so I loaned her a 7D. Within minutes she was operating the camera with confidence and had a good grasp of the exposure principle that I taught her. And she learned to work in Manual mode! Louise Burky, a retired musician (flute), was on her 2nd IPT; she rode with me. BPNers Pat and Alan Lillich were on their second (soon to be third with Morro Bay coming up this spring) IPT; both are experienced and talented photographers and are as nice as can be. Tommy Rodgers who was with Robert O’Toole and me in Homer for both eagle trips was along for Bosque and will be joining us in Japan. Newcomer Emmitt Booher car-pooled with Tommy and hung out a ton with Robert to pick his Nikon brain. Emmitt’s lovely wife Rosa joined us for the Thanksgiving buffet and the last day of the IPT.

Dennis Holt from Naples, FL, another nice Nikon guy, was on his third trip BAA trip this year and will be joining the groups on both the SW FLA IPT that is filling nicely and the 2013 Galapagos trip. (Robert O’Toole will be co-leading SW FLA with me again this year.) Pleasant, smiling Mike Henry re-upped for the Bosque IPT after attending his first one ten years ago! Sweet, lovely Lee Egert and her dear friend the lovingly gruff Liela Nicholas–we had a great time trading insults while smiling–had been on a morning workshop at the St. Augustine festival last year. Liela did not like it when I told Lee and her that they should throw their $500+ Acra-Tech tripod heads into the gator moat for all the good it was doing them. (The head is a total waste with any telephoto lens.) Well, it all ended in a big love fest when Liela realized that I was right and the very happy ladies each went home with a new Mongoose M3.6!

Newcomer Randy Bacon fit right in, as nice and skilled as could be. During our critiquing session he blew folks away with his images; everyone’s favorite was a top-shot of a Crested Caracara that revealed spectacular upper wing detail while the bird gave him the perfect look-back head turn. Last but not least was Clemens van der Werf, the skilled young Dutchman whose work is so good that it has been featured in several blogs posts: here, here, and here. Every day at lunch he brought his laptop and shared image folders with the group from the IPTs that he has been on during the past two years. He too blew everyone away and provided a ton of free advertising for me for the following trips: Bear Boat, SW FLA, San Diego–I will be doing that one again in January 2013, Bosque (twice, including 2011), Homer–I’ll be going back there in March 2013, and Jamaica Bay/Nickerson. Whew!

With all humility I gotta say that every call that I made on this IPT was spot on; every move that I suggested turned to pure gold. On several occasions Robert suggested one move while I suggested another so we split up. Without exception the folks who opted to go with Robert wound up wishing that they had come with me. ๐Ÿ™‚ I will, however, admit to being lucky on occasion…. That said you can learn where to be and when at Bosque (depending on the wind, the weather, and the light) by getting yourself a copy of the Bosque Site Guide.

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Sandhill Crane on approach, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM. This image was created with the tripod-mounted Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, the 1.4X III TC, and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +1/3: 1/1000 sec. at f/8 set manually. This image was a result of knowing where to be when on what wind. Heck, it was a result of knowing what the wind was likely to do before the wind did it…. The Bosque Site Guide actually mentions the fact that a gentle north wind often switches to the south or the east in the first hour after sunrise, and tells you where to be to take advantage of that fact.
Central Sensor (by necessity)/AI Servo Rear Focus active at the moment of exposure. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Lens/camera body Micro-adjustment: +4. For a greater appreciation of the image, click on the photo. Then click on the enlarged version to close it.

BOSQUE THANKS

By e-mail from Alan and Pat Lillich: Artie, I’m confident you know how much we learn from you and enjoy being around you. And around the other great people you attract to IPTs. We both came home with good memories and good photos. See you in April, Alan

Also by e-mail, this one from Mike Henry: Dear Artie, Thank you and Robert for a wonderful experience!! It was a great group and I felt very lonely when everyone left on Saturday…. Looks like you had a fabulous sunrise on the morning of the 29th!! I am back at work ๐Ÿ™ and still going through the vast portfolio of images made during the 10 days I spent in NM. I’ll send you some of my favorites later.

As always, you and Robert are by far the best photography and image optimization/management instructors it has been my pleasure to study with. I have taken several workshops from others and had quite mixed results from horrid to pretty good but you and your co-leaders fill every day with wonderful opportunities to get the images and then take it to another level by teaching us how to process them to get the most from the RAW files. Keep up the good “work” and I hope I can join you again soon. Mike

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Snow Goose bathing, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM. From the recently concluded Bosque IPT. This image was created with the tripod-mounted Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, the 1.4X III TC, and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. I went with my bright sunny WHITEs exposure: 1/1600 sec. at f/10 set manually.

Central Sensor (by necessity) Rear Focus/AI Servo AF released just prior to pressing the shutter button. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Lens/TC/camera body Micro-adjustment: +4. For a greater appreciation of the image, click on the photo. Then click on the enlarged version to close it.

BOSQUE del APACHE 2012 IPT DATES ANNOUNCED

BOSQUE del APACHE 2012 IPT: โ€œThe Complete Bosque Experience.โ€ NOV 21-27, 2012. 7-FULL DAYS: $3299. Introductory Slide program: 6:30 pm on 11/20. Limit: 12/Openings: 10.

Tens of thousand of Snow Geese, 10,000 Sandhill Cranes, ducks including point-blank American Wigeon and Wood Duck, amazing sunrises, sunsets, and blast-offs. Live, eat, and breathe photography with one of (if not the) world’s premier photographic educators at one of his very favorite locations on the planet. Top-notch Photoshop instruction. Next year will make 18 consecutive Novembers at Bosque for me. Nobody knows the place better than I do. Join us to learn to think like a pro, to recognize situations and to anticipate them based on the weather, especially the light and the wind direction. Every time we make a move we will let you know why. When you head home applying what you learned will prove to be invaluable.

Click here for complete IPT information and links. Please include your signed registration and release forms with your $500 deposit check made out to “Arthur Morris.” Thanks. Glad that you can make it :).

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INSTANT SAVINGS ON THE Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Autofocus Lens

B&H has added a $50 Instant Savings to the previous $170 rebate for this great landscape lens. Though I am not very good with wide angles I did borrow one for the Bosque trip and will be borrowing it again for my upcoming Antarctica trip…. If you have been lusting after this lens for a while, now is the time to act; click here to enjoy the savings. In addition, you will earn a free entry into the BAA 1st International Bird Photography Competition.

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Sandhill Crane displaying, Harry’s Crane Pool, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM. Image copyright 2010: Robert O’Toole Photography. This image was created with the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 500mm f/4G ED VR lens, the Nikon TC-14E 1.4x II and the Nikon D700. ISO 500. Manual metering at zero: 1/1250 sec. at f/5.6 in Manual mode.

In Robert O’Toole’s Nikon DSLR User’s Guide for the D300s/D700/D3S/d3x he shares with you the AF and metering settings that he uses to create sharp, perfectly exposed images like the one above! In addition he details his entire camera set-up from soup to nuts. Learn to use your Nikon camera like a top professional.

NIKON USER’S GUIDE COMMENTS

By e-mail from Andy Hays, Chicago, IL: Robert, Your Nikon treatise was a revelation to me. I am a life-long and fanatic birder, but a notoriously inept, point and shoot photographer; you have moved me to new plateau. Nikon should buy your work product. Not only that the company should make you a board member and a Japanese citizen! I could not have learned from their instruction manual what I learned from your Nikon dSLR Guide. Well done. Andy Hays

By e-mail from Edward Delaney, Ireland: Dear Robert, I can honestly say that I have learned more from your Nikon guide than from all of my other books on the Nikon system put together. Thanks for a wonderful guide. Edward

By e-mail from Yannick Bulicaut, Angers, France & New Smyrna Beach, FL: Robert, Your Nikon dSLR Guide is truly useful; even though I’ve been using using SLR’s for almost 40 years–and probably because of that–I never took the time to check all the cool controls that Robert highlights with precision, the view finder focus for instance. The guide is well worth the 30 dollars since I know I could never have sat through the entire Nikon D3S camera body manual! Thanks, Yannick

By e-mail from Dennis Kirland: Hi Robert, I just finished going through your Nikon dSLR User’s Guide and wanted to thank you. It is very well written, clear and concise. I learned more than I thought I would. Excellent job! I mostly photograph static scenes, but I will try your suggestions on 51 point 3D Dynamic AF and see how I like it. I also changed the settings to activate the AF-ON button for AF instead of the shutter button. That’s going to take some getting used to!
Anyway, the guide has lots of great tips! Thanks, Dennis

By e-mail from Raleigh & Beret Harmon: Robert, Thank you for writing the โ€œNikon DSLR Userโ€™s Guide,โ€ It is well written, clear and in a word… great! It has made me rethink my entire approach to my camera. I have long been an admirer of your colleagues Art Morris and recently Dennise Ippolito and have often thought, how great it would be to have someone like them who was a Nikon person and who would have a web site with great information focused on Nikon. Please send me the link to your site. Thank you again and keep up the great work. Raleigh & Beret Harmon

You can learn more about Robert here. Learn more about the Nikon dSLR User’s Guide here. Or purchase a copy here.

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Snow Geese sunrise blast-off blur, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NW. This image was created on the morning of 11/21/2011 with the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens, the 1.4X III TC (handheld at 98mm) with the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 100. Evaluative metering +1 2/3 stops: 1/8 sec. at f/6.3 in Manual Mode. I screwed a 77mm 3-stop Neutral Density Filter (0.9 ND) to the front of the lens so that I could achieve a slow shutter speed without having to use a tiny aperture and deal with the dust bunnies that come with the likes of f/22.

Central Sensor/AI Servo Rear Focus active at the moment of exposure. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Lens/TC/camera body Micro-adjustment: -8. Central Sensor/Rear Focus/AI Servo AF active at the moment of exposure. To enjoy viewing a larger sized image, click on the photo. Then click on the enlarged version to close it.

NIK COLOR EFEX PRO 4

As regular readers of the blog and Bulletin subscribers know I have been using NIK’s Color Efex Pro 4’s Tonal Contrast on a great many images. But the more I work with Color Efex the more great filters I discover; contrary to popular opinion it ain’t just Tonal Contrast! For this image I ran Foliage, Details Extractor on the sky only, and then White Neutralizer. That last one improved the image by leaps and bounds turning it from dark and dingy to light and airy. Give the animated GIF immediately below a minute to run and you too will be astounded.

Color Efex Pro 4 continues to transform both my digital workflow and the quality of my images. You can see other examples in recent blog posts. And you can save 15% on all NIK products by clicking here and entering BAA in the Promo Code box at check-out. Then hit Apply to see your savings. Best of all: you can download a trial copy that will work for 15 days and allow you to create full sized images.

GITZO TRIPOD REBATE

There is a $40.00 rebate in the form of a pre-paid Visa card for all tripod purchases until Jan. 15, 2012. You will receive a form from us with your tripod. Fill the form out, send it off to Gitzo, and you will receive your pre-paid card in the mail. Don’t spend it all in one place. ๐Ÿ™‚

You can see our selection of Gitzo tripods here. Unlike our competitors we will not sell you junk. We sell only what I or my close friends use with success. We do not believe the on-line specs. We measure and weigh everything ourselves. Once you share a bit of information with us we know what will be best for you. Do shoot me an e-mail if you have any tripod questions.

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Pre-dawn cloudy day blast-off, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NW. This image was created on the morning of 11/25/2011 with the tripod-mounted Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens, the 1.4X III TC (at 145mm) with the Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 1600. Evaluative metering +1 2/3 stops: 1/20 sec. at f/4 in Tv Mode.

Central Sensor/AI Servo Rear Focus active at the moment of exposure. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Lens/TC/camera body Micro-adjustment: -8. Central Sensor/Rear Focus/AI Servo AF active at the moment of exposure. To enjoy viewing a larger sized image, click on the photo. Then click on the enlarged version to close it.

On the morning in question I knew exactly where the group should be. When there was a slight wind shift, I hesitated but soon came to my senses. We got back to my car and found the correct deck devoid of photographers. When the birds blasted off they came right at us. I screwed up in about 20 different ways on the blast off but at least I had the group in the right place. Later that morning a guy introduced himself and told me that he loved our Bosque Site Guide (scroll down here). I said without hesitating, “You gotta read the guide! I had the group in the perfect spot and you were not there. The guide tells you exactly where to be on a totally cloudy morning with a south wind….” He was a bit chagrined.

THE CIRCLE LENS!

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This image was created on the same morning as the stitched pano above with the tripod-mounted Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM Fisheye Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens and the Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Camera. ISO 400. Evaluative metering -1 1/3 stops: .8 sec at f/7.1 in Av Mode.

For more on this fun and amazing lens check out “All My Life’s a Circle” here. B&H is offering a $50 instant rebate on the circle lens from now until the end of the year. To take advantage, click here.

The camera body was mounted on the Giottos MH 1302-655 (Tiny) BallHead via a Wimberley P-5 camera body plate. The ballhead sat atop the lightweight tripod that I have been looking for all of my life. Complete details will be announced in about a week. If you cannot wait, please e-mail. A Double Bubble Level in the hot shoe ensured that the camera was square to the world. Rear Focus AI Servo AF release and recompose. (Rear focus is great for birdscapes and for landscapes.) Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. For a greater appreciation of the image, click on the photo. Then click on the enlarged version to close it.

Earn Free Contest Entries and Support both the Bulletins and the Blog by making all your B & H purchases here.

More and more folks are earning multiple contest entries with their B & H purchases. See here for details on that. Eleven great categories, 34 winning and honored images, and prize pools valued in excess of $20,000. Click here to visit the competition home page.

Shopper’s Guide

Below is a list of the gear mentioned in this Bulletin. Thanks a stack to all who have used the Shopper’s Guide links to purchase their gear as a thank you for all the free information that we bring you on the Blog and in the Bulletins. Before you purchase anything be sure to check out the advice in our Shopper’s Guide.

Canon EF 8-15mm f/4L Fisheye USM Fisheye Ultra-Wide Zoom Lens An amazing piece of lens technology that is both a challenge and great fun to use. There is a $50 instant rebate on this lens through 12/31/2011.
Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM Autofocus Lens. This is Canon’s top of the line wide angle zoom lens.
Canon 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens. Man, I am loving this lens on my shoulder with the 2X III teleconverter. I also use it a lot with the 1.4X III TC.
Canon 800mm f/5.L IS lens. Right now this is my all time favorite super-telephoto lens.
Canon 1.4X III Teleconverter. Designed to work best with the new Series II super-telephoto lenses.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Camera. Canon’s lightweight full frame body is perfect for serious landscape photography.
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV professional digital camera body. My two Mark IVs are my workhorse digital camera bodies.
Nikon AF-S Nikkor 500mm f/4G ED VR lensThis is Robert’s workhorse telephoto lens. It is rare that they are in stock anywhere….
Nikon TC-14E 1.4x II A very sharp 1.4X teleconverter and again, an item that can be very hard to find in stock.
Nikon D700. This is Robert’s full frame format (FX) Nikon digital camera body.

And from the BAA On-line Store:

LensCoats. I have a LensCoat on each of my big lenses to protect them from nicks and thus increase their re-sales value. All my big lens LensCoat stuff is in Hardwood Snow pattern.
LegCoat Tripod Leg Covers. I have four tripods active and each has a Hardwood Snow LegCoat on it to help prevent further damage to my tender shoulders ๐Ÿ™‚
Gitzo GT3530LS Tripod. This one will last you a lifetime.
Mongoose M3.6 Tripod Head. Right now this is the best tripod head around for use with lenses that weigh less than 9 pounds. For heavier lenses, check out the Wimberley V2 head.
CR-80 Replacement Foot for Canon 800. When using the 800 on a Mongoose as I do, replacing the lens foot with this accessory lets the lens sit like a dog whether pointed up or down and prevents wind-blown spinning of your lens on breezy days by centering the lens directly over the tripod.
Double Bubble Level. You will find one in my camera’s hot shoe whenever I am not using flash.
Be sure to check out our camera body User’s Guides here.
The Lens Align Mark II. I use the Lens Align Mark II pretty much religiously to micro-adjust all of my gear an average of once a month and always before a major trip. Enjoy our free comprehensive tutorial here.
Canon EOS-1D Mark IV User’s Guide. Learn to use your Mark IV the way that I use mine. Also available for the 7D and the Mark III here.

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