Late June In Pennsylvania Elk Country-Part 2

Early Moonrise: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II L@145mm-ISO 100-1/640 sec. f8

I intended to post more photos from last week's trip to Pennsylvania Elk Country long before this, but the laptop that I ordinarily use to post crashed.  While I have several computers this one was organized for posting and cruising the internet (I try to keep the computers I use in serious photo, audio, and video work off of the internet as much as possible).  That being said, I don''t think the problem was caused by the internet as in my experience malware cannot cause hardware failure and this computer failed in more than one area. On the last use it performed as expected, but when I went to use it again it had turned off (I had put it in sleep mode, but now it was completely dead).  When I hit the button to power up, the fan would run but nothing else. No Logo or option to go into the bios--just a black screen.  At this point I wasn't too alarmed because if the boot sector of the disk is damaged it is still possible to access by at least two methods and recover most if not all of the data, but this was not possible in this case.  The hard drive was completely dead.  Even with a dead drive or no drive installed for that matter one should still get the start screen.  It was not a virus or other malware as that can corrupt your boot sector or damage files, but it cannot physically damage hard drive so that it cannot be formatted. The computer was unplugged as their was a threat of  severe thunderstorms and it was asleep in battery mode. There was no chance that the battery ran down as it was fully charged and had not been in sleep mode long.  As best as I can figure there had to be a component failure that resulted in damage to to multiple parts of the laptop.  It is four years old and has had heavy use, so at this point I am awaiting a replacement and using an audio production computer to post.  Now so much for the computer problems.

As I noted in the last post, elk photography was not as productive as one would hope, but it still was an enjoyable trip. It was so pleasant just to be afield in the early mornings and late evenings.  One several occasions I went out early in the evening, got on a good vantage point and just soaked up the beauty of the countryside. While photos such as the one below may have little commercial value except to illustrate articles about elk and elk habitat, I can seldom resist taking them, In fact I usually take a photograph from this spot each time I am there. In this case I waited until shortly before sundown so that the sunlight had that special cast and the shadows of late evening  molded the terrain and made the ridges and valleys stand out.

Pennsylvania Elk Country: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 17-40mm f4@40mm-ISO 100-1/500 sec. f5

Ron "Buckwheat" Saffer was also in elk country and he was enthusiastic about the many opportunities to photograph birds that presented themselves.  I always like to see birds and since I concentrate on filming I usually end up getting a lot of video, but few if any good still shots.  At any rate it was common to see,  Bobolinks, Bluebirds, Meadow Larks, and various types of sparrows, along with many other species. I didn't take one good still photo of birds with the MK III.  I was with Buckwheat when he photographed a Killdeer.  I took mostly video, but at one point I mounted the 500mm F4 and took a  RAW photo with the GH3.

Killdeer: Panasonic GH3-Canon 500mm f4 IS L-ISO 200-1/200sec. f?

One must use a special adapter to use the L lenses on the GH3.  They are manual focus on this camera and only partial meta-data is recorder.  It does show the ISO and shutter speed selected, but as the lens does not communicate with the camera it does not record the lens info such as brand, f stop, focal length, etc. It is not hard to remember what lens is used, but unless one keeps notes, remembering the f stop, etc. is out--at least for me.

I had an excellent encounter with a meadow lark on Thursday morning, but it was too far for stills so I made still captures of video clips.  The first is with the 500mm and the extended telephoto mode, which gives the lens an effective focal length of 2,4000mm when once considers the 2x crop factor of the GH3 sensor and the added 2.4X crop of the extended telephoto mode.

Meadow Lark: Panasonic GH3-Canon 500mm f4 IS L-ISO 200-2.4x extended telephoto mode

There is also the option for 2X or 4X digital zoom.  This can be used with the camera either in standard mode or in extended telephoto mode(ETC).  When it is in ETC mode, the 4x  looks so bad as to be unusable, but the 2x looks quite good on the LCD, but it is lacking when viewing on an HD TV. I ordinarily do not use this setting, but I was experimenting and as one could expect I got one of the best poses of the bird singing when I was in the 2X+ETC mode.

Meadow Lark: Panasonic GH3-Canon 500mm f4 IS L-ISO 200-ETC+2X digital zoom

A good lesson to take away from the trip is that it is rewarding to pay attention to all of nature and not tune out everything but one species, rather one is well advised to take advantage of all excellent photo opportunities when they present themselves.  Looking back, I did enjoy the elk photography on this trip, but I find myself thinking more about the birds and the wildflowers and at least for me, at the end of the day the most important thing is the memories.

Originally Published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Late June in Pennsylvania Elk Country-Part 1

Foggy Morning Sunrise: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS II @ 182 mm-ISO 100 1/1000 sec. f 11

I spent most of last week in Pennsylvania elk country with the primary purpose of the trip being to photograph and film elk calves. As it turned out, I saw a lot of calves, but they were usually at a long distance and were moving.  On a few occasions I did see a cow walk up to where its' calf was hidden and the calf stood up and nursed, but in two instances the range was too long for dramatic still photography and the light was harsh with a lot of mirage in the atmosphere so that there was simply too much atmospheric distortion for the big telephotos to deliver acceptable results on the video camera.  Had I been concentrating on still photography and using the 500mm lens, I would have had a few photos of calves to post, but as it worked out I took not one still image of them. As a result I went through the video clips and captured some still frames of calves to post today.

As one would expect, most of the elk were seen either very early or very late.  I caught these elk as they crossed a meadow along Winslow Hill Road on their way to the woods to spend the hot part of the day.

Cows and Calves on Winslow Hill: Panasonic GH3-Lumix 100-300 f 4-5.6-Video Still Capture

I saw calves on several occasions in the tall grass where the old Gilbert farm house once stood, but they were always at a distance and following their mothers as they left the meadows at sunrise.

Calf Follows Mother at Gilbert -Winslow Hill: Panasonic GH3-Lumix 100-300 f 4-5.6-Video Still Capture

While there was some fog on most mornings, it was not so thick that it made photography impossible, but in cases such as the first photo shown today--contributed to creating dramatic film and video.

Cow and Calf at Gilbert-Winslow Hill: Panasonic GH3-Lumix 100-300 f 4-5.6-Video Still Capture

In one instance I saw a calf nursing near Winslow Hill Road and it was so early that I used the 5D MK III with the 500mm F4 to film them, so that I could take advantage of the superb low light capability of the MK III.  Again this is a still capture from a video clip.

Calf Nurses- Winslow Hill: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 500mm F4-Video Still Capture

 The calf is barely visible in the still capture, but shows up quite well in the video clip.  I will try to make a short film of the best clips of the trip and post it in the near future.

There were other interesting subjects to photograph as well and I hope to post more photos of the trip in the near future.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Fawns, Woodchucks, and an Equipment Upgrade

Fawn Sightings Are More Common: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS-ISO 1000 1/320 sec. f3.5

Photography has been very low key lately with a lot of days being overcast and dreary--not exactly the best light for capturing outstanding photos, but occasionally one is lucky as was the case on June 11th when the fawn above followed its' mother to the meadow for the first time and for once the lighting had that special quality.  I have not been traveling, but rather concentrating on the local wildlife, which mostly means whitetail deer, wild turkey, woodchucks, and miscellaneous birds. With that being said I really don't like to be away from this area for long at this time of year as I like to document the young fawns when they put in their first appearances and I don't tire of photographing them all summer, but my main focus will shift to bucks, once the racks are large enough to be impressive.

On one of the rare sunny mornings I did succeed in catching the young woodchucks playing around their den and this time I had the 5D MK III and the 300mm f2.8 and 1.4x extender.There are at least four of the young chucks, but two was the most I could capture  in one photograph.  They are very social animals and the young love to play.

Young Woodchucks Playing: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L+ 1.4x Extender- IS-ISO 400 1/400 sec. f 11

At this point I will explain a bit about why I chose the settings I did in these photos.  In the photo of the fawn, I used ISO 1000 because it was early and the fawns are very frisky and it is easy to get unwanted motion blur when photographing them.  I stopped the lens down a bit to give a bit of a boost to the depth of field in hopes of getting the fawns entire face sharp.  This still gave me a reasonably comfortable 1/320 sec. shutter speed to work with.  The MK III is so good at handling nose at ISO 1000 and the sharpness is so good that there is really no reason not to use it when occasion warrants.  I selected ISO 400 for the photo of the chucks so that I could use a fairly small f stop and still have a decent shutter speed to stop motion.  I selected f 11 because it gave enough depth of field to get the heads and shoulders of both animals in acceptable focus.

In the next two photo it looks like the chuck was snarling, but in actuality it was yawning.  I am always looking to capture those unusual moments and this was one of them.  In this case I used ISO 200 with the lens set at f 5.0.  The 300mm f2.8 has a maximum f4.0 aperture when the 1.4 extender is attached so I stopped down to f5.0 to give a bit more depth of field and help insure that the eyes and nose were both in focus.

Woodchuck Yawning: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L+ 1.4x Extender- IS-ISO 200 1/800 sec. f 5.0

Woodchuck Yawning: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L+ 1.4x Extender- IS-ISO 400 1/400 sec. f 11

On another front my Canon 70-200mm f2.8 IS lens developed problems during a winter trip to elk country in early 2012.  Instead of snapping into instant focus as it usually did, the green focus confirmation light flashed continuously and the image was visibly unsharp in the finder.  If one repeatedly jogged the shutter button it would eventually focus.  I intended to get it repaired soon, but what with using a lot of others lenses plus concentrating on video more than still where one must manual focus the Canons, it was very easy to keep putting off having the lens serviced.  Another major factor was that I have heard and read that the II version of this lens is much sharper and more contrasty so there was a strong temptation to upgrade, but there was always something more pressing to pay for. The bottom line was that I never did send it back to Canon for repairs and finally I decided to bite the bullet and get the II lens.

The new lens arrived last Thursday. I have not used it enough yet to get a clear picture of its' potential, but at this point it looks promising.  Yesterday was a rainy morning and the deer were out in force. When a doe brought her twin fawns to the meadow I used this lens and the 5D MK III to take several hand-held photographs of them.  The one below shows the doe and one of the fawns.

Whitetail Doe and Twins: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS-ISO 640 1/160 sec. f  4.5

The lens seemed to do quite well, but I had the 300mm f2.8  mounted when both fawns posed with the doe to give me a "family portrait".

Whitetail Doe and Twins: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 L IS-ISO 1000 1/250 sec. f  5.0

Hopefully this lens will become an indispensable favorite, but only time will tell.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Young Wildlife Makes Exceptional Subjects

Whitetail Fawn: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 IS L +1.4 Extender-ISO 400-1/200 sec. f 11

One by one, the new fawns show up, but so far sightings have been sporadic. The fawn featured today appeared for the first time on Memorial day evening and was back in the meadow the following evening, but since then it has only given me a few brief photographic opportunities.  This is normal in my experience with the young animals being easily seen within a day or so of birth, but then being more difficult to see for a time.  The does hide them so that predators cannot locate them while the does go to the meadows to graze, but it seems that on occasion the fawns do not stay put as they are supposed to and follow the does.  Within a few weeks they will begin following the mother more and more.  They will be her constant companions by mid-summer and will remain so until they disperse or are killed.  

Doe Grooms Fawn: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 300mm f2.8 IS L +1.4 Extender-ISO 640-1/500 sec. f 5

Other young animals provide excellent subjects as well and I discovered a family of woodchucks in a backcountry meadow.  While these animals are the bane of farmers and gardeners, this family is  fortunate in that they are utilizing a meadow that is maintained  as a food plot for wildlife and their presence is welcome.

I usually watch this spot in the evening, but the area where they feed and around their den is shaded, which doesn't give the best lighting.  I happened to walk to the meadow soon after sunrise on Wednesday morning and noticed them feeding in good light, so I decided to work them for awhile.  I was traveling light as I intended to walk quite a distance looking for fawns and had only the GH3 and the 14-140mm and 100-300mm lenses.  The young chucks alternated between playing around their den and eating in the food plot.  A fallen tree made an exceptionally good place for one to pose on.

Young Woodchuck: Panasonic GH3-Lumix 100-300mmf4-5.6 @ 300mm-ISO 400-1/160 sec. f8

At this point I am not sure how many woodchucks are in this family, but I saw at least three scattered through the food-plot.

Young Woodchuck: Panasonic GH3-Lumix 100-300mmf4-5.6 @ 205mm-ISO 400-1/200 sec. f5.6

The sighting of these young chucks changed an unproductive morning into one to remember. I hope to return on a sunny morning with the 5D MK III and one of the big telephotos and try for more portraits. 

Originally posted at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.