Returning home after a week on the road. Traveled to North Carolina for a family visit, time in the Laurel Mountains for some much needed decompression and home again. (With some retail therapy tossed in.)
While in North Carolina, I found my way to the Western North Carolina Nature Center. (www.wildwnc.org) Not exactly a zoo, not exactly a refuge, but something nice in between. (Not that I'm an expert on either.) I went there on two mornings, between 10:00 AM (Opening) and 1:00 PM (Pretty much nap time for the permanent residents.)
Things I learned:
Shooting behind any protective,clear pane will cause reflections and dull the sharpness. (Well, Duh!) Even if the reflections are small, they are distracting. Depending on size and severity, the reflections might be OK for vacation pictures but not OK for me. Most of those got tossed. Would much rather shoot behind a chain link fence. If the situation is correct, the light can bend around the lines and the lines are not so noticeable. And even when the links are noticeable, it seems to be OK. When shooting through a fence, shoot through it - not along it. Generally, a standard link fence did not play havoc with my auto focus. In the case of a small critter, the link fence has smaller links and that did (totally - I mean no hope of working totally) mess up the auto focus. I worked on manually focusing some shots and truth be told my eyes did not do well. I didn't think to try the Live View option. Stuff to try later.
Another thing I learned was when composing the scene, I'd try to get the focus point on the subject's eye. (And for goodness sake, make sure the chain links don't obscure the eye. ) The thing I need to learn is when you do that and if the composition is too tight, you often will miss the tail. Or bottom of the legs. I did find that a close head shot is pretty pleasing. At least two will get posted.
This information I learned from the Shiawassee Refuge, the earlier the better for critter activity. For each visit to the WNCNC, I made three rounds of the area. By the end of the third round, all the critters were in some form of slow motion, or no motion. Sleep. Nap. Unless it is the Bobcat. That one never moved. Story for another post. But, get there as early as possible.
I was without a laptop that I usually use to review/edit my shots of the day. The reason for this is immaterial. (You can assume I screwed up. Wrong power cord!) But on the good side, I did get Snapbridge working with my tablet and could at least review images. Small steps. Next figure out the Adobe PS stuff on the tablet that I already pay for. Winter is coming - time is available.
On to PA. I worked on using my flash unit. Mostly, working on fill flash. A learning hour.
On the return to Michigan, I stopped at my camera store. Demo Days. I looked at Nikon's mirror-less units. Interesting, but not enough to make the change. But I was really looking for a longer lens to either supplement the 70-300 or to replace it. I was looking at the 80-400 or 200-500. So, Nikon is doing their EOY sale. That will go through the end of the year. But the store was doing the no sales tax incentive with comes to about $80. Enough to (mostly) pay for the UV filter. Time to pull the trigger. I've been thinking on this for a few months. Bird shooting at the Refuge was getting to me. I had a post about some Juvenile Eagles playing off at a real distance and I could have done so much better. (Always blame the equipment.) For time with the birds, take the biggest lens you can.
This will be mostly for shooting the birds. And maybe an aircraft or two.
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