May is a month of transition as the leaves seem to come out more each
day and wildlife activity patterns change. It is still possible to see
Eastern Wild Turkey Gobblers strutting and performing the courtship
display for hens, but this is not as commonly seen as a few weeks ago.
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| Mature Gobblers Display For Hens |
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| Mature Gobblers Strut On Distant Hillside |
On May 2nd, while waiting for gobblers to appear I
had a special encounter with a Pileated Woodpecker. I have seen these
birds frequently throughout the years and have a modest amount of good
video of them, but I had never gotten good still photos of them until
this encounter. The bird was very close and I had the 7D MK II with
600mm sitting on the tripod in front of me so I took several vertical
photos with it, the best of which is posted here today.
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| Pileated Woodpecker-7D MK II-600mm F 4.0 |
After taking several photos with this rig I switched
to the 5D MK III and the new Canon 100-400mm. The combination of the
full frame sensor and 200mm less in focal length combined to make the
bird much less frame filling so I cropped the image to a 4:5 aspect
ratio at 300 dpi in Adobe Camera Raw. This gives a 4.6 megapixel image
which is sized to approximately 6x8 inches at 300 dpi or 240 dpi at the
more standard 8x10 size.
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| Pileated Woodpecker- 5D MK III1600-400mm L IS II |
I have seen many other species of birds as well, but
usually they do not linger long enough to photograph them or the
distance is too great, but I did have a good photo session with a Great
Crested Flycatcher on the evening of May 10th.
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| Great Crested Flycathcer-7D MK II-600mm F 4.0 |
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| Great Crested Flycathcer-7D MK II-600mm F 4.0 |
Perhaps the most memorable experience of the month so
far was a Tuesday morning encounter with an immature Bald Eagle. I was
crossing a stream with the old Ford Bronco when the eagle flew from a
tree along the edge of the stream and lit in another tree that had
branches extending to the center of the stream. It was too far for using
the 100-400mm on a still camera with any hopes of success so I decided
to try for some video. This involved slowly opening the door and then
setting the tripod up on the stream bed, using the partially opened door
as a shield. I then took quite a bit of video with the Panasonic GH4
with the old 100-400mm attached by means of the speedbooster. Without
going into too much detail the combination of the 2x crop factor of a
GH4 sensor combined with additional crop factor from shooting 4K video
some of the time or 1080P video with the ETC mode engaged gave very
usable video. After I had quite a bit of video I then switched to an
old Canon 500mm f4.5 FD lens which works very well when fitted to the
GH4 with a Novoflex FD adapter. This gives the camera quite a bit more
additional reach and I took quite a bit of video with this rig as well
as taking a few still photos with it.
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| Immature Bald Eagle-Panasonic-GH4-Cano 500mm f 4.5 FD Lens-150 Yards |
While
the video is very good, the stills are usable but they are not in the
same league quality wise as stills taken with either a full frame sensor
camera or a 1.6 crop sensor such as the 7D, etc., but one must bear in
mind the distance involved as the bird was around 150 yards away
according to my rangefinder. When one is shooting stills with this
camera they do have the advantage of the 2x crop factor of the sensor,
but you do not have the extra boost that 4K video gives you or using ETC
mode with 1080p so the above image was cropped substantially also and
is a 2.4 Megapisel 4.5 x5.7 image at 300 dpi, which works quite well
for internet posting when sized to 8x10 at 72 dpi.
Originally published at
Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.
