Nature Photos

[Paha Sapa]

Woke up at 7:00 this morning to sun and blue skies. Figured I should take advantage before the rain is back again. I headed out to the Dirt Devil roads in Bon Aqua, Tn for some Sunday driving.
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Did you?

 

[Cully74]

Did you?

Yep. There should be a bunch of pics of it... Lol.

 

[Etoimos]

Here are some of my bald eagle photos...

Canon 20D
Canon 500m f4L
f7.1 @ 1/1250 ISO 400

Canon 20D
Canon 70-200mm f2.8L (might have been the Canon 100-400mm L IS as well, can't remember) @ 103mm
F/8 @ 1/640 ISO 400

Canon 20D
Canon Canon 70-200mm f2.8L @ 200mm
f/8 @ 1/640 ISO 400

 

[HappyOurOverlanding]

Here are some of my bald eagle photos...

Wow! Simple gorgeous. Great focal point on the eye. It looks like we can learn a few tricks from you. Hope you share more along with the settings and equipment you used to capture your shots.

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

Here are some of my bald eagle photos...

Very nice. I'm curious, what lens and body were you using for these? Beautiful shots.

 

[Etoimos]

Thanks @HappyOurOverlanding and @Gregory Youngblood. I shoot with Canon equipment, and all three of those were shot on my old 20D back in 2006. I've went back and edited that post to show the settings. For the inflight shots the key is to pan with your subject perfectly. It takes some practice, but once you have it down you will get sharp photos of the subject even though they are moving quite fast. You could bump the shutter speed up to help with this, but then you lose some motion in the background, and in case that middle photo, I would have lost the movement blur of it flapping its wings.

 

[Etoimos]

I kind of got out of photography for a while and perused other hobbies, but a couple of years ago I got back into it and purchased a Canon 6D specifically to photograph the Milky Way and a little later a Rokinon lens just for MW shots...

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 19mm
13sec @ f3.2 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 16mm
13sec @ f3.5 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Rokinon 24mm f1.4 manual prime
15sec @ f??? ISO 12800

 

[HappyOurOverlanding]

I kind of got out of photography for a while and perused other hobbies, but a couple of years ago I got back into it and purchased a Canon 6D specifically to photograph the Milky Way and a little later a Rokinon lens just for MW shots...

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 19mm
13sec @ f3.2 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 16mm
13sec @ f3.5 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Rokinon 24mm f1.4 manual prime
15sec @ f??? ISO 12800

great shots. I really like the old car Milky Way shot.

 

[Sierraman]

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

Thanks @HappyOurOverlanding and @Gregory Youngblood. I shoot with Canon equipment, and all three of those were shot on my old 20D back in 2006. I've went back and edited that post to show the settings. For the inflight shots the key is to pan with your subject perfectly. It takes some practice, but once you have it down you will get sharp photos of the subject even though they are moving quite fast. You could bump the shutter speed up to help with this, but then you lose some motion in the background, and in case that middle photo, I would have lost the movement blur of it flapping its wings.

Thanks for the details. I shoot Canon as well. I have a 7D Mk II now, and the 70-200 2.8. That's my go to lens, though I also like the 16-35.

That 500 f4 must be a sweet lens (and a beast). I used a 100-400, along with a 2x extender to do some lunar photography a couple of years ago. One of my favorite shots has Jupiter and the Moon in the same frame, and if you zoom in enough you can see the color bands of Jupiter. It's heavily pixelated of course, but you can still see the colors.

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

I kind of got out of photography for a while and perused other hobbies, but a couple of years ago I got back into it and purchased a Canon 6D specifically to photograph the Milky Way and a little later a Rokinon lens just for MW shots...

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 19mm
13sec @ f3.2 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Canon EF 16-35mm f2.8L @ 16mm
13sec @ f3.5 ISO 12800

Canon 6D
Rokinon 24mm f1.4 manual prime
15sec @ f??? ISO 12800

More nice shots. How do you like the 6d? What made you go with the 6d over the 7d or 5d? The full frame sensor?

 

[Etoimos]

Thanks for the details. I shoot Canon as well. I have a 7D Mk II now, and the 70-200 2.8. That's my go to lens, though I also like the 16-35.

That 500 f4 must be a sweet lens (and a beast). I used a 100-400, along with a 2x extender to do some lunar photography a couple of years ago. One of my favorite shots has Jupiter and the Moon in the same frame, and if you zoom in enough you can see the color bands of Jupiter. It's heavily pixelated of course, but you can still see the colors.

The 70-200 is my go to lens as well, love that thing! The 500 f4 was a beast (I ended up dropping a couple of grand on just a tripod setup for it just to hold the weight and make it useable is some scenarios. lol) and was super sweet. I used it all the time with a 1.4x TC on my 20D. That gave me something stupid like 1120mm @ f5.6 or so. I got some pretty sweet shots of the moon with that setup. I kind of regret in now, but I sold that lens about 10 years ago :( I used to shoot for some automotive magazines and also covered quite a bit of motorsports, so that lens was pretty much a necessity. But once I got out of the biz, it was just a very expensive lens laying around collecting dust. It was great for wildlife in my personal photography, but nothing the 70-200 with the TC could not do really.

I really like the 6D in the image quality department and it is very nice for astrophotography. In fact, it was the best camera Canon made for that type of photography when I bought it (I think it still might be). There is just something about the sensor and ISO settings that really work well in very low light. It has very little noise in the upper ISO ranges. I also wanted a full frame. The only thing I don't really like about it is the form factor. Between the 20D and getting the 6D, I had a 1DMkII as my main body (all the action stuff I did) and while big and heavy, that think just fit my hands perfectly. It simply "felt right" when I picked it up. Even though the image quality is not quite as good as the 6D, I still tend to use it unless I need the full frame or ISO of the 6D. I would have loved to get the current 5D at the time, I could not really justify the cost since it was going to be used for such a niche subject like astrophotography.

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

The 70-200 is my go to lens as well, love that thing! The 500 f4 was a beast (I ended up dropping a couple of grand on just a tripod setup for it just to hold the weight and make it useable is some scenarios. lol) and was super sweet. I used it all the time with a 1.4x TC on my 20D. That gave me something stupid like 1120mm @ f5.6 or so. I got some pretty sweet shots of the moon with that setup. I kind of regret in now, but I sold that lens about 10 years ago :( I used to shoot for some automotive magazines and also covered quite a bit of motorsports, so that lens was pretty much a necessity. But once I got out of the biz, it was just a very expensive lens laying around collecting dust. It was great for wildlife in my personal photography, but nothing the 70-200 with the TC could not do really.

I really like the 6D in the image quality department and it is very nice for astrophotography. In fact, it was the best camera Canon made for that type of photography when I bought it (I think it still might be). There is just something about the sensor and ISO settings that really work well in very low light. It has very little noise in the upper ISO ranges. I also wanted a full frame. The only thing I don't really like about it is the form factor. Between the 20D and getting the 6D, I had a 1DMkII as my main body (all the action stuff I did) and while big and heavy, that think just fit my hands perfectly. It simply "felt right" when I picked it up. Even though the image quality is not quite as good as the 6D, I still tend to use it unless I need the full frame or ISO of the 6D. I would have loved to get the current 5D at the time, I could not really justify the cost since it was going to be used for such a niche subject like astrophotography.

Understand completely. The 5DS R was a beast of a camera. That was the only full frame I had. I only had it for a little while, and ended up selling it (wish I hadn't, but that's another story altogether) because for most of my needs it was way overkill and I wanted more glass. :)

 

[Etoimos]

I'd always take more/better glass over a body.

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

I'd always take more/better glass over a body.

Totally agree.

Especially with Canon. You can shoot the expensive lenses on many of the consumer bodies and get some great results.

I love that other direction too, using older EOS lenses on current bodies. I have a couple of cheap consumer lenses I bought in I think 91 that I still pull out and dust off. They don't produce the clearest images, but they have a softness, an ambiance of sorts. Especially my old 28-135 I got back in 2000 or so, it can get some nice portraits with a touch of softness in parts and crispness in others. It's a different feel than the more recent lenses I have.

 

[Chris M.]

 

[Chris M.]

 

[Chris M.]

 

[Chris M.]

 

[Gregory Youngblood]

View attachment 50172

Beautiful, great shot. Where is this?