Friday, May 29, 2020

Red-Shouldered Hawks



A friend alerted me to a Red-Shouldered Hawk nest in Springfield, so I decided to check it out.
She said she was able to see possibly 3 chicks in the nest, so I was optimistic that it would be viewable and that I would be able to get some images. 
The angle was perfect, and I was able to watch mom and dad deliver meals to the chicks.  









Sunday, May 17, 2020

Olympus Live ND and an Great Blue Heron

Watching this Great Blue Heron standing in the waterfall at the CJ Brown Dam runoff, I decided to try a feature of he Olympus EM1M3 camera that I have not used....Live ND.
An ND filter can be applied to your lens as an attachment. The purpose is to control the amount of light reaching the camera sensor so that slow shutter speeds can be used....adding smoothness to moving objects, such as a stream or waterfall. 
The Olympus Live ND mode replicates that effect in the camera by taking multiple images at different exposures and combining them in the camera into a single image. The degree of ND can be selected in the menus, from ND2 to ND32. 
The Heron was a perfect subject, because he was completely still....I snapped a few standard images, and then, noting how nicely he was standing still, I decided to try the Live ND feature. 
I'm pleased with the result...and was able to hand hold this shot, even though using my Zuiko 300mm lens. Olympus has amazing in-body image stabilization which works with the lens stabilization to give up to 7.5 stops of image stabilization!
Here's the base image (without the Live ND activated) and the Live ND version (PS levels, saturation, and sharpening) with EXIF data for both. 







Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Morning Conjuncture

This morning there was a conjuncture of Saturn, Jupiter and the Moon. 
I really wanted to capture an image with a nice foreground.....was thinking over downtown Springfield. 
In order to plan my shot, I used an app called Photo Pills. Using it, I was able to see that I would not be able to get the angle I wanted over the downtown area. I did see, though, that the conjuncture would be nicely composed with the Northridge water tower if I shot my images from the Northridge Bowling Alley parking lot....coincidentally just a couple of miles from us. 
Here's my result....