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| Herd Grazing In Saddle In Early April |
Most of the new information I have written about in the last two posts was
acquired during an early April trip to Pennsylvania Elk Country that
ran from Friday afternoon April 3rd until the following Tuesday. This
was one of the least enjoyable trips to Benezette that I can recall.
Thoughts of the coming changes kept running through my mind and I truly
felt like an old man as I thought of the changes that have occurred
since I first filmed the elk in 1995 and found that I could no longer
look to the future of wildlife filming and photography with optimism in
either Pennsylvania Elk Country or the National Parks. It didn't help
that elk, especially the bulls, were less visible than usual, but yet by
the time the trip was over I found I had captured a few decent images
so perhaps things were better than I thought.
The
highlight of the trip was an early Easter Sunday morning drive to Hicks
Run Viewing Area where I found two bulls feeding along Dent's Run that
were growing new antlers.
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| Bull Pauses From Feeding: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm L IS II@176mm- ISO 400-1/80 sec. f 5.6 |
I filmed them for a time with the Panasonic GH4, but
had shifted to taking stills with the 7D MK II and the new Canon
100-400mmL IS II when the bulls suddenly crossed the run. The bull
shown above and in the photo immediately below was the first to cross
and his antlers were already forking into points, while the second bull
had not yet started to develop points.
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| Bull Crossing Dents Run: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm L IS II@135mm- ISO 400-1/125 sec. f 5.6 |
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| No Points Yet: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm L IS II@400mm- ISO 640-1/250 sec. f 5.6 |
With this encounter, the morning was already one to
remember, but there was even more to come as I had only started to drive
back to Winslow Hill when I spied a bald eagle sitting in a tree by the
side of Bennetts Branch, so I pulled to the side of the road and
photographed it from the vehicle as I am sure getting out would have
caused it to fly.
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| Bald Eagle: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm L IS II@400mm- ISO 400-1/250 sec. f 5.6 |
A cow elk feeding by the roadside made another excellent photo opportunity to try the 7D MK II and 100-400mm combo.
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| Cow Elk: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm L IS II@104mm- ISO 400-1/250 sec. f 5.6 |
While the primary mission of the trip was to learn
more about the coming changes it also turned into a test of the new
Canon 100-400mm IS II lens and I used this lens almost exclusively
except for scenic shots requiring a wider angle and usually I used it on
the 7D MK II. While I like the 7D MK II, I am even more impressed with
the new 100-400mm as it seems to be very sharp even a the 400mm
setting, which many complained about with the old model. In addition
the image stabilization works extremely well and I got a high
percentage of sharp shots even shooting hand-held and this is checking
the sharpness at 100% in Photoshop. It is not as sharp as primes such
as the 300mm f2.8, 500mmF4, or 600mm F4.0, but it is excellent and the
primes of course limit you to the extent that you have to back off if
you need to get more in the picture.
I am a firm
believer in tripod, tripod, tripod as Ron "Buckwheat" Saffer always says
in reference to what is needed to get sharp photos, but this lens does
make it more possible than ever for Canon users to get acceptable images
with a big telephoto in situations where it is difficult or impossible
to use a tripod or when one wants to walk long distances without the
hassle of carrying a tripod.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
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