Southern Osprey - 2012

In the summer of 2012, I found myself in South Carolina.  Long time ago to be sure, and who really knows for sure.  Long enough that the statue of limitations for anything I may or may not have done have clearly expired.  What I do know for sure is I had gray hair then as I do now, and I had a D90 with 18-200 lens.  And just enough photo knowledge to be dangerous.

As part of that trip, we, C's family and I, hired a 'captain' to take us to through the deltas, or swamps or whatever that area is.  We found the guy in a triple A guide.  We called him.  He said he was out of business, for years.  We had a good laugh, but he said he could use some cash and needed to catch dinner for the next few days so we were on.  He said he didn't have the carter boat anymore, but had a smaller craft that would comfortably fit the four of us, plus him and the first mate.  When I heard that, thought of Gilligan and the three hour tour.  And three hours was just about the length of the cruise.  It was all coming together.

We met the captain at the appointed time and boat ramp.  The boat was large enough for 5.5 people.  The .5, first mate, was a full grown German Shepard.  This was going to be fun.  If we didn't wind up as alligator bait.

The captain was a great guy.  We hit the jackpot.  Great talker and story teller.  Our little adventure had more twists and turns.  As a child of the electronic GPS age, I was impressed on how we got back to the starting point before sundown.  But between the starting point and the ending point, we had a lot of fun.  We saw birds, gators and more birds.  I wasn't as savvy in the avian recognition talents as I am now.  Please hold the laughs.  And you could say, I wasn't as savvy in the photographic arts either.  Or as I will say now, building the blocks of experience.

I had the D90 and the 18-200 lens.  The lens is slightly better than a kit lens.  But good enough I still have it.  It's not going to EBAY.

I was re-visiting the photos this evening and I saw this one.  It is fair to say it was forgotten.  And it is fair to say at the time, I had no idea what I had photographed.  And I'm happy to see it was in RAW.  I can do this.

Even at 200 mm, the subject of the image was pretty small.  Perfect enlarging project for the evening.

Osprey with a Meal on a Dead Tree

NIKON D90/NIKKOR 18-200mm f3.5-5.6G ED VR II

200 mm, 1/1250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400

EV -0.67, APERTURE Priority, Size DX

Three years ago, I saw my first Osprey in Michigan.  I've been hooked on them since.  Along with the Eagles, my favorite targets when I go out.  In level flight, big and slow targets.  Once they go down vertical, the challenge begins.

This is as close as I can crop and keep everything pretty much in focus.  The fact the tree is interesting helps.  Looks good on the monitors.  No prizes, but good memories.

AI Gigapixel - Is it worth it?

I get a laugh from watching the internet photo gurus telling me in order to get the best possible shot, fill up the frame. Off hand, you go Duh! The guru will then pull out, I'm guessing from a back pocket, a 500 mm prime lens. The guru will then produce a fantastic shot of some colorful small subject. On one hand, if I had a 500 mm prime lens, it would be my walk around, cuz that would be my only lens.

With all due respect to the above mentioned internet guru, I support his site and have purchased some of his ebooks.

The rest of this post is for pixel peepers only. My philosophy is if it looks good at 400%, it'll look good everywhere. Software exists for a reason, to be used. And use it I will.

The rest of us have to use the poor man's 500 mm prime lens, the post processing crop tool.  For most small crops of a shot from a 20 to 25 megapixel format, there isn't a noticeable distortion.  But when the crops get more 'aggressive' the quality of the shot will suffer.  My final test is a 1920x1080 showing up crisp on a 27 inch monitor.  If I had to get a larger print, may need to do even more.  Enter Topaz's AI Gigapixel.

Piggy backing on an aggressive crop process, I will sometimes use some of the camera's image size options, of reducing the size of the active pixels by approximately 1.3%.  It is a way to turn the max reach of the 70-300 lens to 600 mm.  Fill that frame.  Problem is, you can't crop as much, if you still need to.  I tried Photoshop's enlarging processes and to be fair, they were OK.  Useable OK.  But I was up late one night and one thing led to another and the next thing you know, I have a license for AI Gigapixel.

I don't do a lot of printing anymore.  And as I pointed out, if it looks good on the monitor, it's OK by me.  Then I saw a photo I'd taken in August of 2019 (More 2019!) of a juvenile Eagle in flight.  Original post here.  Kinda far away.  And.  And I was using the D500's 1.3 frame size.  Those pixels growing out of control.  Takes a 20.9 pixel sensor to a 12.3 pixel sensor.  The D500 to a D90.  Great photo to test on.  Here we go.

The original shot.

This is the original shot, at 600 mm.  ISO was at 125 - so it's pretty clean.  And under the lucky category, it's pretty much in focus.  And the shot would be great, except I want less greenery and more bird.  Max reach of the camera, only software left to bail me out.

In the original post, I used aggressive cropping and Topaz's AI Clear.  I get lost in the math here, trying to figure out how close I am, but here is a close up of the posted shot.

Looks OK, eh?  Put that on a 27 inch monitor and you will see a lot of imperfections.  Mostly the edges between the upper edge of the bird and the greenery.  It ain't bad, but it's there.  Pixel Peeping.  I reprocessed the shot using AI Gigapixel and enlarging the shot 1.94%, then matching the same frame.  An came up with this.

If you know what to look for, you can see a much cleaner edge.  Also, looking at the leading edge of the eagle's wing, you can see definitions between the lines (?) in the wing - alternating brown and white.  And the tail had a bit more definition as well.  This is basically a 2x image growth.  I've done tests with small images on the net, blow them up to 400% - and they look OK.  Emergency use only, non subject.

I'm a big fan of Topaz's AI software.  I think the AI DeNoise does a real good job and is part of my workflow process.  I try to stay out of needing AI Gigapixel, but sometime you have to go where the situation leads.  Nice to have this in the toolbox.

#1225 - Mechanical Stuff

 One of the 2020 photographic casualties for me was not being able to chase the #1225.  Or ride the #1225.  In 2019 we rode the excursion from Mt Pleasant to Cadillac.  And the Polar Express Run.  I know, how exciting can a 35 mph train ride be?  Fun is in the eye of the beholder.  And for the times not riding, I didn't get to chase.  Train nerd.  But it is sort of fun.

One of my favorite #1225 shots can be found here.  What I like about the shot is if fills the screen.  Really fills the screen.  I can feel the vibrations, hear the familiar noise and smell the steam.  On the list of permanent screen savers, top three for sure.  Big, heavy metal.

Since the flow of new photographs has dried up, except for squirrels and small birds, I've retreated to 2019 for the most part to grab past memories.

And now for something a little different.  On my last #1225 chase, the day was crisp and clear.  Great light.  Too many people, but I need to learn patience.  The sun was directly behind me, if I remember correctly, so with great lighting comes shadows.  To remove the shadows, I had to take the photos at an angle.  No real big deal, but I think a straight shooting plane would have been better and a bit more sharper.  But looking ford to this as a screen saver.

#1225 Mechanical

NIKON D7200 Ver.1.04/Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f3.5-5.6G ED VR II

35 mm, 1/320 sec, f/6.3, ISO 500 (AUTO)

EV -1, MANUAL Mode, Size DX

With the great sunny lighting came the very uneven light off the metal.  Played all sorts of havoc with the metering.  Knocked it down to EV -1 and that seems to calm everything down a bit.  I bumped up the reds a bit in post, call it artistic license.

I like the diversity of the angles and the unevenness of the wires.  I sacrificed some of the black of the metal to get some light in the center of image.  In the original shot, that is a black hole.  I bet the EV -1 had something to do with it.  It's acceptable now, but I think with some (a lot of) either color manipulation or dual images and masking it could be much better.  And since the February forecast is still COLD and the weather gopher said six more weeks of winter I may be able to find some time to 'learn' something new.  I mean if it was a sky replacement, done tonight, right?

Laughing Gull - 2019

It's odd to calculate what missing 75% of 2020 did to me.  I'm having some fun speed living 2018 and 2019 air shows through my photos.  Some of those folders have literally hundreds of shots.  Many of them are burst sequences.  I don't save everything, but I do save more than I should.  It's OK - I can still remember the stories around them.  If I could only figure out how to get that burnt AV gas to spritz out of each shot - or get the noise.  I can neither confirm or deny that sometimes late at night there are Youtube video sounds of airshows or C5 T and Gs that can be heard coming from the office.

As I think of my upcoming annual trek to SC and getting warm again I go back to 2019.  Yep, my annual trek that I've been going on for 1 years now.  And a one year reset in 2020.  A couple of weeks now if the CDC doesn't put on a travel ban.  Or a new strain doesn't show up on the SC shoreline.

Speaking of Youtube, I started following a photographer out of Florida.  Phenomenal bird shots.  He does a lot of videos as well - he's out there.  He seems to focus on the big predatory water birds.  I'm trying to figure out how he makes a living doing this.  I looked up his web site and he takes people out to photograph birds.  I saw what he charges for four hours.  I need to move to the shore.  Retirement job.  But I'd pay his charges to get the lay of the land, and the bird shots.

So all this preamble leads up to this.  A water based bird in 2019, in a photograph.  So in 2019 I spent a day in Charleston, dockside.  To a rookie northerner, birds everywhere.  Now that I think about, they were the common scavengers, or beggars.  The birds I saw were working the tourists, not working nature.  Not that I'm complaining, you have to work you're way up.  So this year, I'll do better.

But back to 2019.  Charleston.  Walking the docks.  I had no idea what this bird was.  But he/she/it was on a piling.  Watching tourists passing by.  Scanning everyone for food.  Until I showed up.  This bird didn't flinch.  I was less than six feet away.  And stuck a camera lens even closer.

Photography-wise, this appears a bit soft to me.  Trying to figure out why.  The combo in use here is a D7200 and DX 18-200 lens.  It was a backup for the day.  This takes me back to where my first shots with the 70-300 full frame just blew me away and the difference from the DX lens.  I'm going with that.  The eye is sharp.  Maybe it is just a fuzzy bird.

Laughing Gull

NIKON D7200 Ver.1.04/Nikon AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II

200 mm, 1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 180 (AUTO)

EV 0, MANUAL Mode, Size DX

Yea, how exciting is just standing around?  Not much.  But it is part of the journey - and in 2019 I thought this was pretty good.  Also in 2021 half the fun is trying to figure out what this was.  I am building a decent list of websites to help me with bird identifications.  And that is part of the learning journey as well.