Stayed for a week in a farm cottage half way along Loch Rannoch. The farm animals were doing a very good impersonisation of pets. The ducks swam in circles on their wee pond pretending to be afraid of me while arguing with each other.
The cockerel was very proud.
The Jacob's sheep were a bit Celtic looking, with some woad-like horn painting.
In the fields by the loch, wild geese were finishing their evening meal. Rather than fly and waste energy as I tried to sneak up quietly, they just sidled away. Invariably keeping one eye on me and one eye on where they were going. A mixture of Canada geese and Greylag.
This guy was crossing the road when I almost flattened it with the bike. Colourful, but painfully shy.
This pheasant was yet another camera shy potential dinner. Every time I tried to focus he skittered away another couple of feet further into the dim trees with me clambering, slipping and sliding up the bank. I need a much longer, faster lens.
I see you enjoyed your farm stay chasing all the animals, Nick! Even with long and fast lens it's difficult to catch a pheasant, I guess. But there the fence giving you a helping hand!
ReplyDeletePheasants in restaurants are much easier to photograph :-)))
If the fence hadn't been there Jan, all I would have got was a shot of the back of his head and his bum. :-)
DeleteHa, see great minds think alike, posting sheep! Only yours are far more interesting, especially with the daubings of woad looking like extras out of Braveheart. The geese shots are great too. No geese round here! Looks like you had a great time. :-)
ReplyDeleteP.S. What is a fast lens exactly? I understand long.
That's what I thought too when I saw yours :)
DeleteFaster lens - more light getting in. My ordinary lens opens to f2.8, whereas my zoom lens starts at f4.5. At f2.8 your DoF is smaller though.
I read years ago that to avoid shakiness the speed should roughly equal focal length. With anti-shake software in the camera this may be a bit different these days but say, approx 200mm at 1/200 sec.
The huge (usually white) lens you see in the hands of wildlife photographers cost mega bucks though, which is why I currently have a cheapo (relatively) zoom.
The settings on the pheasant shot were : 230mm, 1/200, f8 and ISO 160.
I should have upped the ISO to 400 to help a bit, but I was too preoccupied scrambling about trying to stay near enough to the pheasant without spooking him any more than I had already.
Ended up with the focus a tiny bit behind him and the speed at 1/200 wasn't quite fast enough to keep him sharp.
Oh well - I maybe should have tried speed priority at about 1/300 sec and tried to set the ISO at 400 (if it would let me do that) but I'm too slow to do it in 'real time'.
We had a good time despite the cool damp weather. :-)
I remember now reading about what fast lenses mean, now that you have reminded me. I think it's a bit of a daft thing to call them. It's the camera which is important re. speed that you set and how high you can go with ISO. Who wants to have an aperture of f2.8 when shooting birds (even worse with bugs)?!! Birds I whack it up to about 1/1000 if I can and even that is not fast enough in many situations. :-) I would use TV or whatever it is called on your camera. You can always have that set on a high speed and higher ISO in readiness, so that if you don't have time to change settings in manual then just flip to TV and away you go. :-)
DeleteWell it's all a balancing act. A really high ISO in lower light gives you more 'noise' in the picture. So a 'faster' lens allows a lower ISO for the same speed - all depends on the type of shot you're trying to take.
DeleteI was cycling along a track just after taking the electrical conductors shot when I saw the pheasant, so didn't have time to change any settings as it started walking away immediately.
A small depth of field for birds in some situations makes them 'pop' and I 'think' a faster lens at f4.5 will give a faster shutter speed - as it does at f2.8. Been trying to find confirmation on the net, but haven't found anybody actually saying that. :-(
I know what you are saying though I've no idea what birds at small dof look like (don't look up the exif data for every photo I look at!). I guess unless you are really close to them there would be enough dof from being far way.
DeleteI've been cheating this afternoon and switched my camera onto Sports Mode! Well there is no way I am trying to shoot bees buzzing about on my kale flowers (which are flapping about in the breeze) on manual exposure, or even manual focus come to that! Also found a huge green lizard which one of the cats brought inside and this poor one had freshly lost its tail. Now I'm off to try to ID it.
Hello M-H if you have remembered to click on the Notify Me button. :-)
Hello, Mandy :)))
Delete.... it seems my comment hasn't been approved by the owner, after all :(((
I can see your comments Marie-Helene! That's why I said hello.
DeleteGood morning! ;-)
You guys . . . don't know how you juggle all the balls at once. You must get up at unearthly hours of the morning when decent lazy people are snoozing or reading books in bed.
Delete:)))
I've just be swanning about on the bike, gardening and climbing - with a few minutes pressing the big button on the camera.
Got a CPL through the post yesterday and spent a few minutes taking random shots of clouds and blue, blue sky. [Circular Polarising Lens - I had to check what it was when Tarun mentioned it to me. :) ] It takes away most of the reflection from the pond too, so that you can see how the frogspawn is developing. Good in that way but I like reflections most of the time.
Hope you two enjoyed your postprandial naps (to make up for the early moning starts.)
:))) xx
I have one of them and just recently remembered to put it on my lens, then kept forgetting it was there! Got to really try it out yesterday as K discovered tadpoles so I took some photos - still on the camera and look blurry but I could really see the difference on the water surface turning the filter. Also it makes blue sky really blue! And yes M-H and I both get up early, and don't forget we are an hour ahead of you. :-)
DeleteI suspect if we were all on the same time you'd both be up earlier than me :)
DeleteYou need longer, faster legs, Nick :-)))
ReplyDeleteWhat an enjoyable post, I love it my friend :-)
PS: Great, we no longer have to wait to see whether our comments get the coveted seal of approval :-)))
ReplyDeleteThanks Marie-Hélène :) it's quite a nice way to remember trips - still haven't mentally got used to the idea that other people will read the bits in between the pictures though.
DeleteThe faff of OK-ing comments soon put paid to that nonsense. Off to the garden again now - weeds are growing faster than I can pull them up in the community garden :(
http://www.lamanchahub.org.uk/index.php
There's a picture in there of about a fifth of the garden. The barbecue hut is also pictured. What you can't quite see is the area behind it, with rampant weeds. We're trying to plant ground cover stuff now to smother them as trying to kill / dig them up is never ending and next too impossible. :)))
PS Faster legs would be a BIG bonus - they seem to be slowing down even more.