It's All Happening At The Zoo (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

Have you Cameron? I've never used Lightroom either.


I use the Canon EOS utility to offload the images I shoot.


But it sure would be cool to have a quick and easy way to delete the chaff from the wheat before I go into PhotoShop or send the images off to someone else..

 

[Citizen87645]

I've seen it in use by a friend who is a photojournalism professor, but frankly I don't shoot large quantities of images frequently enough to justify owning it (Lightroom is good enough for my purposes). I think about Photo Mechanic every time when I'm sifting through hundreds of images though.

 

[Mark Booth]

I use Aperture on my Mac. It's a newer iMac with 1TB of flash storage (SSD) so it's pretty quick. I can pull 500 images into a new project and they are ready to be viewed/sorted (instantly) as they are importing. I've set up a custom key combination that allows me to, not only delete the preview version of a "bad" image, but also the original file too. Yesterday, I went through those 200+ zoo images in about 5 minutes to identify my "keepers". Along the way, I flagged the ones that I wanted to edit right away. Then, all of my needed editing tools are at my fingertips (including a host of third-party plug-ins).


I've played with Lightroom (several years ago) and didn't care for it. I'll only stop using Aperture when it is pried from my cold dead hands.


Mark

 

[Mark Booth]

BTW, a bit off topic but.. One of the plug-ins I use in Aperture is Snapheal Pro:


http://macphun.com/snapheal


I used Snapheal extensively to take this heavily scratched and damaged B&W print from 1961:

And turn it into this:

That's me on the far right (in the bomber jacket), age 5!


Mark

 

[Mike Frezon]

Always lurking in the shadows...

 

[Scott Merryfield]

A few shots from today.


Red panda, taken with a 1.4x TC on my Canon 100-400L II and further cropped in Lightroom

The snarling wolverine, getting ready for football season!

 

[Mike Frezon]

Looks like you were contending with a really bright sun, Scott.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Looks like you were contending with a really bright sun, Scott.

Yes, Mike. It was a beautiful day to walk around the zoo, but tough for photography. We arrived when the zoo opened at 9am to beat the traffic and crowds, but the sun was still quite bright.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I took my new Canon 7D Mark II on its inaugural zoo visit this morning. This camera with the new 100-400L IS II is a killer combination.

 

[Cees Alons]

Fantastic, Scott!


And I especially love the fourth one, the "Siamese twins"



Cees

 

[cinemiracle]

Last weekend, we went to the Detroit Zoo. I tried showing a few shots in the thread (my first time trying to post images directly in the new fourm). The rest can be found at http://smerryfield.smugmug.com/gallery/8816291_XNWcV#583876523_PQoG2

A wolverine. Go Blue!

What has this zoo topic got to do with home theatre forum??????????????????????

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Fantastic, Scott!


And I especially love the fourth one, the "Siamese twins"



Cees

Thanks, Cees. I really liked that pose by the pelicans, too. Upon reviewing the image, though, I wish I'd stopped down the lens more for additional depth of field to get the 2nd pelican in sharper focus.

What has this zoo topic got to do with home theatre forum??????????????????????

Welcome to Home Theater Forum, Peter. This area is called "Other Diversions", which has several non home theater areas. Quite a few long time members (including me) are avid photographers, so the forum owners have kindly included a photography area for us to share. If you look through this subforum, you will see that one of the owners has also used this area to tap the photography knowledge of the membership for advice at times. If you are not interested in photography, nobody is forcing you to read the threads.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Yes. Welcome, Peter!





What Scott says is 100% accurate. You may also want to read the HTF Mission Statement (link in my signature) to get an idea of the type of forum the HTF is all about.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

The Detroit Zoo opened a beautiful new grey wolf exhibit a couple of weeks ago. Today was our first visit since the grand opening, although we have been watching the progress of it being built since last fall. The exhibit has two wolves -- a black male and a white female. We were able to get a good look at the female, but the male was lying down in the brush both times we went by.

The wild night herons have not left their nesting area yet.

One of the heron chicks was out and about

A few other nice moments...

 

[Scott Merryfield]

We visited again this morning, as I wanted to try out my new Canon 1.4x III teleconvertor. It was quite hot and humid, though, so most of the animals were way back in the shade trying to stay cool. We didn't stay too long, but here are a few shots that I liked.


The female from the new gray wolf exhibit. The male was nowhere to be seen.

One of the three grizzly brothers

The young zebra that was born at the zoo several months ago. This one was taken with the teleconvertor.

prairie dog

 

[Mike Frezon]

What I don't get is how you got the prairie dog to face so nicely into the sun like that, Scott?!?

I really like that shot. Looks like the teleconverter is doing nice things for you. Would you explain to this layman what a teleconverter does? I saw your shot of the heron in the GAS list thread. It looks like maybe it just extends your telephoto just a bit more? Does it attach between the lens and the camera body? [No making fun of the ignorant! ]

 

[Scott Merryfield]

What I don't get is how you got the prairie dog to face so nicely into the sun like that, Scott?!?

I really like that shot. Looks like the teleconverter is doing nice things for you. Would you explain to this layman what a teleconverter does? I saw your shot of the heron in the GAS list thread. It looks like maybe it just extends your telephoto just a bit more? Does it attach between the lens and the camera body? [No making fun of the ignorant! ]

Mike,


We go to the zoo so much now that the animals have become willing models. Seriously, sometimes you get lucky with the lighting, and sometimes I just put the camera down because the lighting is so poor. This just happened to be the former. Fortunately, many of the exhibits at our zoo have multiple viewing angles so you can get better directional lighting by walking around. We always go in the morning, so I know the best angles to shoot from at most of the exhibits.I just need the animals to cooperate and be in the proper place in the exhibit.


As for the teleconvertor, you are correct -- it is an adapter with its own lens elements that will magnify the image from your lens to the sensor. The TC mounts between the lens and the camera body. A 1.4x convertor will magnify the image by 1.4, so in this case it turns my 100-400mm lens into a 140-560mm lens when attached. The downside is that you lose one stop of light, so in this case my 100-400mm lens's maximum aperture changes from f/5.6 to f/8. Many camera bodies will only auto focus with a lens of f/5.6 or faster, but fortunately both of my Canon bodies will still auto focus with an f/8 lens, but only using the center focus point.


A 2.0x teleconvertor will double the magnification of a lens, but at a cost of two stops of light. So those only generally get used with a faster telephoto lens, such as a 70-200mm f/2.8 or 500mm f/4 prime. If I tried to attach a 2x TC to my 100-400mm f/5.6 lens, it would become a 200-800mm f/11 lens, which would not let in very much light and also wouldn't auto focus. 2x convertors will also negatively affect image quality more, too.


In the past, I only used a 1.4x TC on two of my faster telephoto lenses -- a 70-200mm f/4 and 135mm f/2 -- because of limitations with my camera body, plus the older version of my 100-400mm just wouldn't give good results with a TC attached. The new version of the lens performs much, much better with a 1.4x TC, so I decided to upgrade from my several years old (and discontinued) third party TC to Canon's latest model.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Wow. I actually understood all that! That's quite an accomplishment!


Thanks, teacher!


So you actually took off the lens (and teleconverter) from the camera--reattached the lens--and were able to get a comparison shot with that heron without it flying off?!?


Pretty fancy shooting, mister!

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Mike,


This colony of night herons has been returning to nest at our Detroit Zoo for about 10 years, and they are very acclimated to people. They nest in the same tree every year -- there were over 40 nests this year. The birds pretty much move around at their own leisure, and this particular heron wasn't in any hurry to go anywhere. The biggest danger is avoiding getting "bombed" by the herons, as the area underneath their nesting tree is covered with bird droppings. We give that area a wide berth as we walk by.


The zoo has built a couple of large marsh areas -- one with a nice floating boardwalk -- to attract migratory waterfowl. At different times, we'll seen great blue herons, cormorants, swans, ducks, and geese in the marshes. Here is a great blue heron from yesterday:

 

[Mike Frezon]

I don't know why you couldn't get the great blue heron to face a bit more into the sunlight, Scott!


I'm glad the night heron was willing to help you provide that comparison shot. Do you recall if you had your 100-400L II fully extended for that shot? And you left your f-stop the same (which is why the non-TC shot is a little brighter?