My last visit to Florida was in 2009. Then I was joining the BIRDS AS ART IPT (Instructional Photo Tour) to see how the pros do it. My photography had not progressed much in years and although there are only 3 parameters to understand (shutter speed, aperture and ISO), it turns out to be more difficult to control than it at first hand appears to be. I am very glad that I joined then, I learned a ton. The trip then was in more ways than one a solid base for my photography. See my images from that trip here….

I was very pleased to be part of this year’s IPT and to visit Florida again: we had a relaxed group of very nice people which made the whole experience very pleasant. As with my first visit to Florida, this visit had an extra punch of learning as well. I rented a Nikon D700 and 600mm lens. For years, I have been a Canon user and for a number of reasons I decided, after many discussions, to investigate the ‘dark side’. The main reason for my consideration to switch was the announcement of Canon’s new 1D X: I had in mind to order this one, to complete my 1D4 with a pro-Full-Frame body. However, it is said that this camera will not be able to focus at f/8. So, a 800mm/5.6 lens with a 1.4TC attached or a 600/4 with a 2.0TC attached, mounted on a 1D X will not autofocus. There are rumors that Canon will do something about this, but I decided not to wait for this and rather to investigate Nikon. As it turned out, Nikon is coming with the D3 followup, the D4. This will be my next camera.

Back to my rental: certainly the first day was filled with getting familiar with the Nikon metering system and how it reacts to the different lighting conditions. Certainly in bright sunlight, the Nikon meter is less forgiving than Canon: for whites you will have to dial down. In overcast conditions I find the meter reacts quite similar to what I am used to from Canon. But these were my first impressions.
In the focus department, I have to say that there is a noticeable difference: in acquiring focus Canon might be a tad faster but Nikon is in my opinion steps better in tracking and following. I have not been exposed to all situations with Nikon yet as I had with Canon but my first impressions with Nikon were very satisfying. The ability to focus with f/8, Nikon also behaves differently: the D700 (as a prosumer body) is able to autofocus and in order to test this, I also brought a 2.0TC. Results are, (Nikon does not qualify this ability) to say the least, not impressive. Static subjects can be photographed, but in low light or if focus is not center sensored, the camera hunts a lot. One of my first flight images I took in Venice was the following one:

Great White Egret, approach to the island. Photographed with the D700 and 600mm, tripod mounted

Having a nice camera in your hand is one, Florida does the rest. There are lots of birds and good locations. Most venues are accessible and birds are tame and approachable. The Venice Rookery, Estero Lagoon and even populated beaches present rich photographic opportunities. The odd one out here is Ding Darling. Through careful office management, this refuge is useless for bird watching, let alone photographing. See all of my images of my visit to Florida 2012 here….

After the IPT finished I joined a small group on James Shadle’s pontoon boat (the Hooptie Deux), to visit the bird island in Tampa Bay. Roseatte Spoonbills and Black/Turkey Vultures are garanteed. The most special thing about going to the bay is that photography takes place in waders just meters off shore the island. The island is forbidden territory, so the only way to get a low perspective is to put your waders on and stand waste deep in the water, with your equipment on a tripod (see the image above).

Finally, Arthur Morris invited me to his home in Indian Lake Estates, where I spent a morning photographing the birds at the lake shore. There I got close to Black Vultures basking in the morning sun and they allowed me to get in very close range for a couple of nice portraits and flight shots. An example of this was the following image.

Photographed with the D700 and 600mm, Beanbag from within the car

During my stay in Indian Lake Estates, I was subjected to a healthy portion of sports and basketball was the main topic. In a matter of days a young college player Jerermy Lin grew from a nobody to an international star. It was so exciting that I decided to put a link to a summary of this amazing player here:

Also, the most recent release of Mac (Mac OS X Lion) decommissioned the support for Rosetta. This function in Mac OS allowed for installation of PowerPC based applications. This is no longer supported and will render many applications useless on a Mac. Vendors are either late or not willing/able to develop a Mac OS X Lion solution. After my upgrade of Mac OS X Snow Leopard to Mac OS X Lion, a number of my favorite applications did not run anymore. (For example, on my Mac the Fuji X10 camera software failed)

There is a simple and powerful solution for this: virtualization software for your Mac. What does this mean ? It means so much that you can install a program on your Mac, from within you can run (emulate) other operating systems, like Windows (e.g. Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or other operating systems). It is not like dual boot, but runs like any other application, as a virtual machine, while using your Mac in parallel. In the virtual machine you can now install programs that can only run on Windows or were previously able to run with Apple’s Rosetta support. Note that if you run Windows on your Mac, you need a valid license of Windows: more about this in the next section.

There are two ways to get to your Windows based virtual machine on your Mac.

1. You do not have a Windows license: either you don´t have a PC or don´t you have a Windows Installation CD. For this scenario a good product candidate is Parallels Desktop for Mac V7. Once purchased and installed with a valid license key, you launch Parallels Desktop and you can now use a (purchased) Windows installation CD to start installing Windows within Parallels Desktop. You can order a copy of Parallels Desktop using the following link:
   

2. You have a Windows license, in the form of a privately owned Windows PC. This scenario is well served by purchasing WMWare Fusion 4. Once purchased, you install this software on your Mac and install a migration assistant on your Windows PC. As soon as the installation is finished, you launch the Mac installed VMWare Fusion server component, the PC migration assistant and you are asked to pair the PC with the Mac. VMWare on your Mac will now import your entire PC into a new virtual machine: all applications installed on your PC will now run from within the virtual machine on your Mac. You can order a copy of VmWare Fusion 4 using the following link:
   

I used and installed both products and I am very content with both. VMWare Fusion allows you to import your entire Windows PC. Very useful when your PC is already loaded with Windows based software solutions.

Finally a note on migrating Windows PC software to a virtual machine: some vendors allow migrating your Windows PC based license to your Mac, for example Adobe Photoshop. I would recommend to migrate as much as you can to your Mac.

By some extreme luck and at last minute notice, I was invited to join the 2011 Galapagos photographic tour, organised by my good friend and mentor Arthur Morris. I got just enough leave from my work and the decision was taken within 24 hours to go: on Monday 27 June I booked to leave on July 1st… The flight was long, taking me to Amsterdam, Bonaire, Guayaquil and finally Quito, Ecuador. The first couple of days were spent in Quito, where we visited a mountain lodge photographing hummingbirds. On July 4th it was off to Galapagos. A trip I will never forget.

Over the next couple of weeks I will publish a number of posts, describing my fascinating experiences.

In the meantime, check out the Galapagos Image Gallery Page 1 and Galapagos Image Gallery Page 2, with the images I managed to process so far. Never in my life have I taken so many images and I am still, two weeks back from the trip, going through them.

Today I posted an image on BPN of a photo I created last year. The image, I thought, fitted the month’s theme well, ‘Pairs’. When I opened the file, I did not like the stick in the middle of the image and I opened it in Photoshop to remove it.
The quickest way to remove distracting objects from an image is to use the QuickMask (QM) tool in Photoshop. In this case I use the QM with a soft brush (hardness set at 0). I choose the brush to be twice as wide as the stick and I paint over the stick until the entire stick is covered by my brush color. See the image below.

Once the selection is made, get out of QuickMask Mode and the ‘running ants’ will mark the selected area.
Now I select the patch tool, usually this tool is has “J” as the shortcut. If, not you find the patch tool in the toolbar. Set the tool to “Source”.

Now drag the selection to a location of the image with a similar pattern. Done.
The advantage of using a Quickmask selection and using the patch tool is that the selection made in QM mode has soft edges (that is why I set the hardness to 0), whereas a direct selection with the patch tool has hard edges. This method will smoothly copy a source.

Finally I copied a front part of the tail and with a few transformation actions (warp) aligned the copied tail over the gap in the tail of the top Black-Headed Gull.

Below the final image:

Image created with a Canon 1D Mk4, the 800mm lens with the 1.4x Extender, 1/2000 @ f/8 and ISO800, tripod mounted.

NB: howto create animated GIFs, goto Creative Tip: Build Animated GIFs in Photoshop.

Special thanks to Michael Tapes from Lens Align, who facilitated with his valuable knowledge in camera adjustments and who designed the new Lens Align MkII device. Also thanks to Arthur Morris from BirdsAsArt, with whom I had many detailed discussions on how to best design the ideal workflow.

Introduction

First I will spend a few words on the newly developed Lens Align MkII device compared to the previous version, the discontinued Lens Align Pro (view the product details here).

The materials used for the new Lens Align MkII are light and made of a very durable and light polymer, which make the new device smaller and much lighter. (Old: 350gr, new 100gr). Secondly, the assembly is no longer mounted with screws, but with a slick tongue and groove system. This eliminates the need to have tools available to (dis)assemble the Lens Align device. Also, the ruler is now made of the same polymer, not made from iron and is in the new design mounted in a fixed position. Finally, the ruler has a better and finer contrast image, allowing for even finer adjustment evaluations.

The size and ease of assembly allow for easy packing: I will have this device in my camera bag all the time.

Preparation and Setup

Camera Settings

For your calibration efforts it is best to set your camera in the following modes:

• Shooting Mode (AF/Drive): One Shot AF and Single Shot
• AF Selection Point: Center
• ISO Settings: as low as possible, ISO100 is ideal
• Aperture as low as possible to achieve smallest depth of field
• Live View Mode: on, set LV for ‘Stills’ and AF Mode to ‘Quick Mode’
• Beep: on. This will generate an audible beep, when focus has been achieved.

The lensalign device is mounted on a tripod as well as your camera. The focus plane of the lensalign device must be paralleled with the camera focus plane.

Lens Align Distance to Camera

There are many theories about what the best distance of the Lens Align device to the camera is. Canon recommends 50x the focal length, which may be right for small lenses (for a 50mm lens you will calibrate at 2500mm = 2.5m), but quite unusable for supertele-lenses. For an 800mm lens this means 40meters ! At this distance the Lens Align device will be hard to read and atmospheric interferences will influence the accuracy of a focus sample. For me the following considerations work well:

• Super Tele Lenses (from 400-800mm): calibrate at 30x to 15x focal length. If you place the LA device at further distances (like 50 times focal length), atmospheric interferences could impact accurate evaluations.
• Midrange Lenses (from 100-300mm): calibrate at 40x to 30x focal length
• Small Lenses (from 24-85mm): calibrate at 50x to 30x focal length
• Place the LA device as far as possible from the camera, where the LA device is still well readable in Live View mode. The reason for placing the LA device further away from the camara is that calibration errors at close range, will multiply at further distances. Also, corrections made at further distance will be more accurate than close range corrections.
• Place the LA device at the distance you will mostly use your lens, or within the average range of usage.
• Place the LA device at 2 to 4 times the minimum focus distance
• When calibrating zoom lenses, calibrate at the largest focal length

To summarise the above considerations in a formula you could use the following function for calculating the LA device distance:

Function of distance (in meters) to focal length
where x is the focal length of your lens in mm and y is the distance, to place the LA device at.

Lens Align Device Alignment

Mount the Lens Align device on a tripod and roughly align the front plate parallel to the camera sensor. On the back of the new Lens Align device, there are two holes. If you position your eye closely to the hole on the right, you can see though, marked as ‘main target’ (see image below). Align the LA so that you can see the lens barrel that you mounted on your camera tripod.

PC

Make sure you have installed all components from your Canon Product CD, including the EOS Utility. I have setup my PC’s such that when I connect my camera to my PC, this is the utility that pops up first. If this is not the case, you can always start this utility manually.
See image below.

When the EOS Utility window comes up, select “Camera Settings/Remote Shooting” and in the next window select “Life View Shoot”. When selecting the “Life View Shoot” button, the PC connects to the camera and displays the “Life View Mode” from the camera to the PC.

Make sure your life view mode in the application is set to “Quick Mode”, allowing your camera to focus fast(er) when acquiring a shooting solution.

Place the ‘center’ focus button on the focus plane of the lensalign device and let the camera focus on the lensalign device: wait for the beep to be confirmed that focus was successful: don’t take a photo (pressing the shutter button halfway or just use the AF-ON button). Return to the EOS Utility on your PC and zoom into the image you just focused.

IMPORTANT: if your camera does not show the live view on the back display, you need to press the Live View button on the camera to activate the back screen. If you don’t, the EOS Utility will completely control your camera and you won’t be able to adjust or set focus using the camera.

Using the zoom button, you can now have a closeup view of your focus solution and evaluate how well the camera focuses

With the dials displayed here (found in the ‘Focus’ pane of the EOS Utility application), you can now fine-tune focus the acquired image. Each single click in the focus pane, corresponds with the amount of micro adjustments you will have to apply in the camera microadjustment menu, see later.

With the ruler, you can see exactly where your camera found focus. Important is to make sure that the numbers above ’0′ are as much in or out of focus as the numbers below the ’0′ line.

Now that you have created a focused ‘Live View’ image on the camera and PC, with the knowledge of how many clicks in plus or minus, we now go to the camera’s microadjustment settings function. You can find that in the custom settings of you camera (xxD or xD models only): C.FnIII (Autofocus/Drive)->AF Microadjustment->Adjust By Lens. Enter the amount of clicks you entered in “EOS Utility” in this menu.

In the image below you can see the menus you have to go through to get to the MicroAdjustment settings:

Repeat the focus actions from above, until the ruler displays consistent focus results. Note: with each test run, dial the lens with the manual focus grip deliberately out of focus, so that the camera has to find a new focus solution.

Canon cameras can be (micro)adjusted with each lens individually: the camera will store the microadjustments for each lens individually. Note that any given lens with a 1.4TC or 2.0TC is a different lens as well.

Have fun.

My Tripod Considerations

Working with tele-photo lenses or photographing landscapes, a stable camera platform is required. Using a tripod with a good tripod head is essential.

The choice of your tripod is largely dependent on the weight of your lens: heavy or long focal range tele-photo lenses require a more than average tripod. My personal rule of thumb in choosing a tripod would take the weight of the lens and then try to find a tripod that can carry 3 times that weight. From a dynamics point of view, a tripod must not just be able to carry a tripod, but must be sturdy enough to dampen vibrations caused by the operator or by wind.

The second most important consideration is the size and dimension of your tripod. My choice of tripod must fit in my favorite travel bag or suitcase. I travel a lot to foreign places by aircraft and never leave home without my tripod. Despite the small fold of the tripod for travel purposes, it must be extend-able to a height so that the tripod platform can reach my eye level: with a tripod head the complete rig will tower over my head, but in sloping terrains you will be happy to have a bit of margin to extend a tripod a bit further. A small note on tripod with a center column: I personally don’t see this as a huge advantage. A tripod without the center leg allows you to pull the third tripod leg down when walking through the fields: it provides additional stability and grip on the entire rig, since your hand holding the third leg is down at chest level.

Finally, a tripod must not weigh a ton. Travel restrictions these days are tough (usually 20-23KG) and a tripod and head can easily take 4 kilos of its own. Of course budget is the main driver of what you can or want to spend, but I see a light tripod as a true photographic investment. Carbon or Basalt based tripods are the lightest in current product portfolios and will be my first line of choice. My preferred tripod I currently use is the Gitzo 3541XLS: it satisfies all of the considerations above for me. Find a good store for this tripod at the BAA Store here: Gitzo 3541XLS.

Although there are a number of other choices and consideration to make, for me the 3 above cover 95% of the most important questions related to tripod choices.

My Tripod Head Considerations

Once the tripod question has been solved, a more tricky question need to be answered for the tripod head. There is a wide variety of heads on the market and preferences are also very divers. I will limit my considerations and tripod head choices to the ones I purchased in the last couple of years and will tell you what I like and don’t like about them.

Wimberley

The Wimberley Tripod head here is configured with a flash arm.

The Wimberley WH-200 II is a solidly build and very user friendly tripod head. It comes with a base platform to mount a lens on and this platform can be raised and lowered for any weight lens: lowering or elevating the lens platform is meant to stabilize your rig so that when you let go of the lens and camera, the rig will always swing back to a horizontal position in a slow motion and the rig doesn’t provide any resistance while keeping it in an angle. It usually means that the centerline of the mounted lens is as high as the pivot point of the bealhead’s arm. You can of course let the rig rest at the lowest point, but this means that when letting go of the rig the camera swings back with quite a momentum and the rig will resist your angled camera position.

The Wimberley can be configured with an extra flash arm (see example image above).

Minor disadvantage of the Wimberley is the large adjustment screw for the horizontal swing (bottom screw): this screw will ‘nicely’ push itself in your shoulder muscles when carrying the rig on your shoulder. This becomes so uncomfortable that I have to adjust and reposition the carrying weight quite often. Despite that, the Wimberley lens head is my favorite.

The WH-200 II is the most heavy and biggest ballhead of my collection: at 3.15lbs or 1.4kg it comes at quite a high weight. A Wimberley is available for prices around US$595. You can order the Wimberley WH-200-II here. The flasharm can also be found at the BAA Store: The Wimberley F-1 Telephoto Flash Bracket.

Mongoose

The Mongoose Tripod head here is configured with a flash arm.

The 4th Generation Design Mongoose 3.6 is a lightweight, small and very efficiently designed tripod head. It is therefor the best air travel head. Mounting of the lens is direct on the pivot point so your rig is always in the best weight distribution position. Mounting the lens is a little more tricky then with the Wimberley, as you will have to mount your rig sideways: having a good grip on your rig is very important as you might have to hold it for a number of seconds, while locking the mount mechanism with your other hand.

A minor disadvantage of the Mongoose are the locking screws and the locking mechanism. The locking screws are quite small, making it more difficult to properly fix a rig. The locking mechanism is apparently not designed to handle the momentum of a big lens. A heavy rig can easily break through the lock with a chilling squeak.

Update: the latest 4GD Mongoose 3.6 does come with bigger tightening screws.

A separate flash arm can be ordered, which slides behind the pivot mount point (see image above). The Mongoose weighs just 1.5lbs or 779grams and costs approximately US$598. You can order the Mongoose 3.6 (latest version) here. Also the Mongoose flasharm can be found in the BAA Store: Mongoose Integrated Flash Arm.

RRS BH-55

The Really Right Stuff BH-55 ballhead is an amazingly designed piece of equipment. Being a mechanical engineer myself, I am very impressed by the sturdy yet compact design of this ballhead. The dials are very sensitive in the sense that adjusting the resistance of your rig’s movements is very precise. You can set the resistance of the ballhead in such a way that the rig is balanced, but allows for pushing the rig through the break to adjust the position. Contrary to the Mongoose, when these dials are really locked, there is no way the BH-55 will let the rig break through the locked position. The load capacity is specified and this ballhead will support an amazing 23kgs or 50lbs.

The major disadvantage of this ballhead is that the center of gravity is below the camera rig. This means that when the rig is not properly tightened, the rig will tilt uncontrollably to one side. The dials however, as mentioned above, allow for a secure locking of any sized camera/lens combination.

Another minor point is the relatively high weight: at 2.4lbs or 1.08kg is falls between the Mongoose and the Wimberley. It is however, very small and when I travel, I usually pack it in my on board camera bag. This ballhead is the cheapest of all of my tripodheads and is available for US$455.

These two Dalmatian Pelicans were photographed with my new Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 105mm, mounted on my favorite Canon EOS 1D Mark IV: camera set at 1/200 @ f7.1 and ISO50, using a metering compensation of EV-2. On top, the Canon Speedlite 580EX II set at 0.

We used fish from the local fishermen to attract the pelicans and getting them close was not difficult. In fact, once close, they would put up quite a fight right in front of us. The image below was created by hand holding the camera just over the water’s edge.

This image was created using the Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 28mm with the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV and the Canon Speedlite 580EX II set at 0.

Like the image above, the camera settings were 1/200 @ f/7.1 and ISO50, metering compensation set at EV-2.

Finally, when using a deliberate low shutter speed, somewhere in the range from 1/4 to 1/10 of a second, one can always try and create images with movement blurs.

As soon as a fish was thrown in the middle of a waiting group of pelicans, all of them would try and catch the fish, by jumping up high. This image was created with the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM lens and the Canon 1.4x EF Extender II at 280mm. The exposure was set at 1/10s @ f/13 and ISO50.

Find more images from the Greece IPT here.

This pelican was photographed with my new Canon 70-200mm II lens at 75mm. The pelicans were following the boat as we returned to shore and tossed fish to them.

A small island in the middle of the lake was used by the birds to rest and preen. As long as we approached the island carefully, the birds would stay and let us get some very close images.

Goto the Greece photo gallery here to see more images of my stay in Greece