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

From 7 March until the end of May I will exhibit some of my images at Centrepoint in Basel. Centre Point is an organisation building on the sense of community between the expat and local Swiss community in the Basel region. To give the exhibition a little boost, I was invited to come and give an interview at Radio X, the local Basel & Basellandt’s Live English Language Radio Show. Click here to see the announcement on Radio X. It was a short interview about me and my beloved hobby: photography. I had much more to say, but tonight’s schedule was packed. Come and visit the exhibition, there you can enjoy what I want to say with photography in your own time !

Click here to see the exhibition images online.

Location:

Centrepoint, opening times daily from 10:00-14:00 and from 10:00-17:00 on Wednesdays.
Im Lohnhof 8
4051 Basel, Switzerland

Thanks to all who joined: ‘T-Bone-Poulet’ Jean-Francois from Paris, ‘Derriere’ Patrick & Dominique from the Elsace, ‘Oh-what-bird-is-that’ Urs from Möhlin, Joseph from Basel, Andreea and Erwin from Photo Marlin and Lesley (our great catering helper) & YoursTruly. Finally, our Game Ranger William (in the middle) who professionally lead us through the bush with great passion and who gave us an unforgettable experience.

A happy group signed up and we had a great experience, exciting encounters with the large bush animals and tons of birds. Weather was unpredictable and the heavy rains we had, influenced some of our bush rides .

Deep pools make great splashes.

The group travelled from Zuerich to Frankfurt, to board the new A380 for their flight to Johannesburg. My wife and I went 3 days earlier, to organise the beverages and finalise the catering for this trip, as the lodge we were going to was self-catering. Elaine setup and defined the menu for week, did all the food shopping, managed the catering. Lesley assisted in the food preparation. The lodge in the Pilanesberg is a luxuriously setup place, with all the modern facilities: charging batteries for all the camera gear during a stay like this is essential !

Upon arrival we were surprised with a nasty caterpillar plague: millions of Tamboti Worms (Achaea catella) creaped into clothes, beds and suitcases. These worms stripped all of the Tamboti Trees in the lodge bare. Worse, the caterpillars secreted a fluid substance that will leave a permanent stain. All of my clothes were inspected carefully, but even after coming home, I found caterpillars in my suitcase. The damage to the lodge was substantial.

On our first night we went out for a short trip through the bush and had a sundowner enjoying our first African sunset.

The first day out was accompanied by a cloudy day and an occasional rain shower. We saw our first Impala and Wildebeest, but spent a large proportion of the afternoon on the lodge viewing deck, photographing the busy weaver birds: building nests and inviting the females to inspect them.

This male Southern Masked Weaver was photographed with a tripod mounted 1DMk4 and 800mm lens: 1/2000 @ f/5.6 and ISO1600. The bird is in approach of his nest, just above the top of the frame.

One of the highlights was presented to us by a group of elephants, who crossed our path on the way back to the lodge from the morning drive. The herd came out of the bush and on a distance we parked our car, anticipating the group to come closer to us. Among the herd was a tiny, perhaps a month old, baby. Upon getting closer to the vehicle, the group came to inspect us and see if we posed any thread to them. The matriarch was less then a meter from the vehicle when she gave a low rumble. The car vibrated and all of us with it. It was an unforgettable experience. When she retreated, we finally were able to start photographing again.

The matriarch still standing ahead of the group, the group enclosing the little one for maximum protection.

The most rewarding place in the Pilanesberg, however, was Mankwe Dam hide. With a great number of active birds and animals, we had most fun photographing there. My star was the Red Bishop. Still in full breeding season, the males performed their displays and defended their little territories.

This male turned nicely towards me, for a full-on territorial display.

The Pied Kingfishers also put up a nice performance when one of them caught a fish, from what it looked like, just a little too big for him. He pounded the fish for a long time, making sure that the fish was dead before he ate it. The swallowing took quit a long time, to the point where I thought he would give up. But, it went down. Unbelievable.

Note all the fish-scales on the perch.

But one of the most remarkable interactions was provided my the Terrapins. Due to the high water levels in the Mankwe Dam, most of their roosting islands submerged. We saw them crawling on wood and sticking out trees, but this one made the show. It managed to climb on top of the head of this Hippo and both were happy for a long time. Perhaps the Hippo didn’t mind this Sun-Umbrella, where the Terrapin could finally warmup.

The week went by too fast, because we had much fun and everyone enjoyed the bush to the full extend, despite all inconveniences provided by the caterpillars.

Thanks to William, our ranger, we had a great and unforgettable African Bush experience.

A special thanks was given by one of the participants of the tour, Urs. He wrote:

Beginning of January 2011, I spent a week with a small group of nature and photography friends in the Pilanesberg National Park. As ornithologist and hobby photographer I was more then thrilled by the enormous diversity of birds and animals. The management of the tour was above all expectations, from a nature and photography point of view. I benefited greatly from the photographic experiences of the organisers.
Also the inner man was well cared for: a comfortable and private lodge left nothing to wish for. The atmosphere in the bush as well as in the group was excellent. This trip was a full success !

Urs, thanks for your kind words. Having you on board of this trip was a privilege and I am glad your expectations were met. I hope to get to travel with you again.

Special thanks to Elaine, who hosted us in the lodge and provided us with wonderful meals and organised the catering perfectly.

View more images of this trip in the Pilanesberg 2011 Gallery here.