Tag Archives: Birding Know How

Less is Often More in Bird Photography!

Background, Year 4, ,

Quick! Grab your lens with the longest reach, zoom in and take a bird photograph! How many of you, myself included, have this viewpoint when it comes to birding photography? While I understand this philosophy, quite often “less is often more” in bird photography. Your goal should not be to always get the closest view for an image. A good landscape photographer understands that composing the shot is as important as the physical land being captured in an image.

Put another way, if possible every picture should tell a story. Over the past two days I have arrived on my “owling grounds” 20 minutes before sunrise. Here are two sequence of photos which tell different stories. In each case the second image is the “traditional” birding photograph. Which photo is better? Neither! Photography is art. Don’t get stuck in a rut of always taking the “zoomed in” photograph.

Sunrise Over the North Woods (not zoomed in 100% in order that more trees are captured in the background reflecting dawn’s early light)

Great Gray Owl at Dawn (zoomed in as much as possible to get my birding photograph)

Owling! (or Humaning!)

Great Gray Owl at Dawn (zoomed in as much as possible to get my birding photograph)

Finally, Pine Siskins greeted me when I returned home from birding this morning. A few winter finches are beginning their long trek back north.

Extending the Telephoto Reach of your Sony A6000 / A6300 / A6500

Background, Year 4,

Post Update on April 20, 2021: Towards the end of last year I purchased the Sony 70 – 350 mm lens. This lens did not exist when I first wrote this post. Here is a review of the lens.

As noted previously in this blog, for my birding photography I use a Canon Sx-60 super zoom / bridge camera (now an Sx-70), but for my landscape and night photography I shoot with a Sony mirrorless camera, now the A6000 (previously a NEX-5t). This choice suits me well as the bridge camera gives me lots of zoom for a modest price in a package that allows one to easily hike into the back country. I picked Sony aps-c mirrorless cameras for my night photography because Sony is known as the top sensor manufacturer leading to optimized cameras for low light picture taking (Sony makes sensors for a HUGE number of other manufacturers). The mirrorless system is also a good choice due to performance, size and it will not break the bank.

Now the point of this post. For some time I have thought it would be nice if I could extend the reach of my Sony A6000 telephoto lens. The longest “e mount” lens is a manual zoom 55 to 210 mm (82 mm to 315 mm equivalent). Having a longer lens would be nice for night time moon photography, some occasional bird photographs in low light (bridge cameras due to their very small sensors are limited in low light photography). However, my research into telephoto options yielded no results … only cheap lenses that would be 100% manual. While I am not opposed to manual lenses, birds tend to move quickly and therefore I wanted to be able to still utilize autofocus and all the other native capabilities built into my camera.

After hours of research via Google, I stumbled upon the Olympus Teleconverter TCON-17X. If this system worked, I would now be able to attach the teleconverter onto the end of my Sony 55-210 mm zoom lens and create a a 35 mm equivalent of a 535 mm lens given my aps-c sensor. I also needed to purchase a seven dollar step-up ring from 49 to 55 mm (an adapter that will allow you to mount the Olympus teleconvertor on the Sony lens). Here is the YouTube video of this combination which convinced me to make the purchase. (If the Olympus Teleconverter shows “not available” via Amazon, research on the product name on Amazon. Multiple vendors sometimes sell the product.)

As they say … the proof is in the pudding. Here are two photographs of a Pileated Woodpecker taken two days ago after a snow storm in some very low light (i.e. thick clouds). The images are straight out of the camera with no lighting / shading adjustments, etc.  I was approximately 30 yards away from the woodpecker, and the bird was about 40 feet up in the tree. The final two photographs of this woodpecker are two images on which I took some time, and processed with minor lighting adjustments.

Amity Creek Pileated Woodpecker without teleconveter

  • 210 mm zoom (315 mm equivalent for a 35 mm system)
  • A6.3, 1/400th of a second, ISO 640

Amity Creek Pileated Woodpecker with 1.7 OlympusTteleconveter

  • 315 mm zoom (535 mm equivalent for a 35 mm system)
  • A6.3, 1/400th of a second, ISO 800

Amity Creek Pileated Woodpecker with 1.7 OlympusTteleconveter

  • These two photos were NOT part of my test. They are from a slightly different location, and have been processed for minor lighting / shading adjustments. Finally, some cropping of the photos was performed.

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Getting a Free Magazine Fix for Birding Photography! Zinio!

Background

Folks who have been following my blog should know that I love both birding and photography. Whether it is chasing the Northern Lights on frozen Minnesota lakes, or watching a Snowy Owl hunt, I have fun combing birding, a love of the outdoors and my camera. I suspect one difference between me and many of my readers is I do lots of research via reading magazines, but without spending one single nickel for any subscription money. Enter Zinio and your local public library. While one may pay to subscribe and read hundreds of magazine titles via Zinio, the smarter move is to check online resources via your local public library. Here in Minnesota, most libraries have a subscription service to Zinio, and for the price of your free library card you may do the following:

  • Browse online the large list of magazines
  • Check out an unlimited number of magazine titles and / or issues
  • Download both the current and/or past issues for offline reading
  • Have the service email you when the latest issue hits the online newsstand
  • Have no return date … keep issues forever if desired on your tablet

Edit on July 27, 2019: Zinio was purchased by RBdigital. Everything else in this post is still 100% identical, except libraries will now promote their online magazines using the new name, RBdigital.

For the rest of this blog post I will provide descriptions and screenshots from my Android tablet of two magazines I recently read offline via Zinio and my local library, BirdWatching and Outdoor Photographer. The Zinio service is available for both IOS and Android.

If you look at my check-out list you will see additional titles such as Audubon, DigitalPhoto, Shutterbug, Business Week, the Atlantic and PC World (remember my free bird app?!). My annual subscription costs for these mags if I was not using my public library would be hundreds and hundreds of dollars, and I didn’t even have any sports magazines checked out at present. Think Super Bowl!

Before my examples, you may wish to take a quick look at this Google Search Query. The key words were: <Library> <Zinio> <Minnesota>. You will find that almost EVERY library in Minnesota has a subscription to Zinio. Given I suspect Minnesota is not all that different from other states, try a search in Google using the words “Zinio” and the name of your public library. I suspect you will find the service is available to you in your library. If you have difficulties, make an “in person” visit to your local library and ask the librarian!

Browse Titles and Check-Out Process: Bird Watching
(list of titles, desired magazine checkout process, back issues)

 

 

Zinio-04-Checkout-3-Birdwatching

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Browse Titles and Check-Out Process: Outdoor Photographer
(list of titles, desired magazine checkout process, back issues)
Zinio-05-Browse-Available-Magazines-Outdoor-Photography

Zinio-07-Checkout-2-Outdoor-Photography

 

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Google Nexus 10 Android Desktop Screenshots
(my apps and loaded on my tablet)
Zinio-09-Tablet-App-1

 

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Reading an Article: Example from BirdWatching
(an article excerpt … easily readable on my tablet, but one may also expand the view)
(the reading experience is essentially 100% identical to the print copy)
(cover, table of contents, first page of article)
Notice the “page” icons shown at the bottom of the cover screenshot. One may easily toggle the page icons on & off, and press any page to quickly advance forward!

 

Zinio-15-Reading-Sax-Zim-Bog-Article-5

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Reading an Article: Example from Outdoor Photographer
(an article excerpt … easily readable on my tablet, but one may also expand the view)
(the reading experience is essentially 100% identical to the print copy)
(cover, table of contents, first page of article)
Notice the “page” icons shown at the bottom of the cover screenshot. One may easily toggle the page icons on & off, and press any page to quickly advance forward!
Zinio-23-Reading-Article-Outdoor-Photographer

Zinio-25-Reading-Article-Outdoor-Photographer

 

End of Blog Post