Mid-February Wildlife-Canon 100-400mm L IS II Problems

Whitetail Herd In Snowstorm

 Just a short time ago we were plunged into the depth of winter with deep snow and bitter cold.  This changed quickly; however, as we saw in the Ice-Out post. While snow still remained on the ground in most places, life was much easier for the deer and turkeys as they could now travel about easily looking for food.

Alert Gobbler

Travel Was Easy

Three days later, there was even less snow in the spot the turkeys were photographed  and deer liked to stand there, basking in the rays of the afternoon sun.

Doe Basking In Late Winter Sun

Doe Grooming Fawn

There was even less snow by yesterday morning and I photographed a buck, that was a small spike last fall, and some does feeding in a neighbor's rye field.

Last Year's Spike

Deer Pause From Grazing In Rye

After a chilly start, yesterday turned into a balmy day  that reached the mid 60s.  This made my thoughts turn to the coming spring waterfowl migration and hopefully a trip or two to Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area.  If the current weather pattern does not change, the peak of the snow geese and tundra swan migration should be much earlier than in the past two years.

All photos were taken with the Canon 7D MK II.  The 24-105mm IS L lens was used for the first photo and the 70-200mm 2.8 L IS II was used for the remainder. I love the sharpness of the new Canon 100-400mm IS II, and have been using it a lot this winter, but I have had problems with it (or the camera it is mounted on) locking up (auto-focus stops and the IS doesn't work).  Seldom a day goes by without this happening at least once.  Strangely it seems to do it more often with the 7D MK II, but it does it occasionally with the 5D MK III, the 70D, and the original 7D.  Sometimes simply moving the focusing ring a bit will restore function, while other times re-seating the lens will do the trick, but sometimes the battery must be removed and re-inserted.  I returned the lens and the 7D MK II to Canon at the end of December, and they changed the focus assembly and other parts and calibrated the camera with the lens, but the problem was still there.  I sent the lens back at the beginning of the week and Canon is currently servicing it so I could not use it for the photos in today's post and the 70-200mm is filling in as the telephoto lens to use when photographing from the vehicle until it gets back. Hopefully they will find the problem this time

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Images From The Whitetail Rut

Mature Whitetail Buck

The area where I do most of my wildlife photography is home to a substantial herd of whitetail deer, but it is not usually good summer range for the bachelor groups of mature bucks. Most of the deer are the does and fawns and the yearling and occasional two year old bucks that are still traveling with the family groups.

In many years buck sighting pick up in early October and the full-blown  rut gets underway during the last week.  But this year things were very slow and I became impatient as it seemed the rut would never start. That changed in the middle of last week and I have been able to photograph several bucks since then and will share some images  of this activity today.

Photos of bucks lip-curling as they search for does in heat often make dramatic photographs. The buck in the photo below tried to breed a doe shortly after the photo was taken, but she ran from him.

Lip-curl

Scenting For Does

Whitetail bucks do have serious fights from time to time, but what I usually capture are only desultory sparring matches, which are not violent, but still make for good photo opportunities.

Sparring Match

Other favorite photo opportunities are to capture them making scrapes, checking their scrape lines, and chasing does.

Checking A Scrape

6 Point Erupts From Woods After Doe

Chasing Does

Although the rut will soon peak if it has not all ready, good activity should continue for the next two weeks before it comes to a crashing end because of rifle deer season.

Cameras used were the 5D MK III and the Canon 7D Mark II.  while the lenses were the Canon 300mm f2.8 and the Canon 600mm F4.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

More May Wildlife Encounters

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.

Mature Gobblers Display For Hens

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.

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.

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.

Great Crested Flycathcer-7D MK II-600mm F 4.0

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.

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.

Middle Creek-Dramatic Sunrise and Snow Geese

Middle Creek Sunrise: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 24-105mm@105- ISO 200-1/250 -f 8.0

After the snow on Friday, it was partly cloudy on Saturday morning with patchy fog which made for dramatic sunrise photos. Only  a few geese were visible from the main viewing area where Hopeland road passes by the side of the lake.

Foggy Morning Sunrise: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 24-105mm@58mm- ISO 200-1/800 -f 8.0

It turned out there were still enough snow geese present  for excellent photography, but most of them were roosting in the Willow Point area and were not visible from Hopeland Road.  Large numbers of them flew over the tour road at the north end of the lake as they left the lake later in the morning, but it was foggy and there was not much chance for good photos.

That changed in the afternoon when a large number of geese congregated in the fields around the intersection of Chapel Road and the Tour Road.

Snow Geese Along Tour Road: Canon 5D MK III-Canon 24-105mm@105- ISO 200-1/250 -f 8.0

This was an excellent opportunity to work on  capturing the birds in flight and during landing.

Blue-phase Snow Goose: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 600mm f 4 IS L -ISO 640-1/2000 sec.-f  10

 Snow Goose: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 600mm f 4 IS L -ISO 640-1/2000 sec.-f  10

Snow Goose Landing: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 600mm f 4 IS L -ISO 200-1/1600 sec.-f 8

Snow Goose Landing: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 600mm f 4 IS L -ISO 200-1/1600 sec.-f 8

It seems that the Canon 7D MK II works quite well in situations such as this and overall I was very pleased with how the camera performed.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Middle Creek Snow Day

Thursday of last week was a beautiful late winter day, but snow was in the forecast for Friday March 20th, the first day of spring. I decided that if it was snowing heavily in the morning I would not got to Middle Creek, but only an occasional flake was in the air at 5:30 Friday morning so I hit the road for the 45 minute drive from southern York County.  There was a light coating of snow when I arrived and light snowfall continued most of the day.

Tour Road: Canon 70D-Canon 18-135mm f3.5-5.6 EF STM@18mm-ISO 200-1/500sec. f 10.0

 It seemed that most of the snow geese and tundra swans on the lake were at Willow Point, which is some distance from the road and I did not walk there so on the whole today was not a good day for filming or photographing these species, but enough wildlife was visible to still make for an interesting day.

In mid-morning I sighted a flock of turkeys between Hopeland Road and the PGC maintenance  buildings. It was a mixed flock of hens and gobblers and several of the mature birds were strutting.  I failed to notice that the 7D MK II was set on ISO 1000 and this and the flat quality of the light resulted in poor detail in the photos from that sighting.

Wild Turkeys: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L f4.5-5.6 @300mm-ISO 1000-1/2000sec. f 5.0

A short time later I found two pheasants feeding in corn stubble along the tour road.  They were a bit shy and began moving away as soon as I stopped , but I captured a few frames before they moved too deep in the corn to photography them.

Ring-necked Pheasants: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L  f4.5-5.6 @400mm-ISO -400-1/500sec.f5.0

Two Canada Geese were standing in the meadow by the roadside, a bit further along the tour road.

Canada Geese: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L  f4.5-5.6 @400mm-ISO -400-1/500sec.f5.0

 Later in the morning I found a small flock of snow geese along Chapel Road.  In fact they were in the field directly in front of the Chapel.  I stopped in the parking lot and sat there with the window lowered and the camera and lens resting on the window-sill.  At one point another vehicle drove past and the flock lifted into the air and then dropped back down to feed.

Snow Geese In Flight: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L  f4.5-5.6  @176mm-ISO -400-1/1250 sec. f 6.3

Snow Geese : Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L  f4.5-5.6 @400mm-ISO -400-1/500 sec.f 8.0

Snow Geese Feeding: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 100-400mm IS II L  f4.5-5.6 @400mm-ISO -400-1/1000 sec.f  5.6

Almost any day afield is a good day and while this one was far from exceptional it was still a day well spent. The weather forecast for the remainder of the trip was promising, but the main concern was if substantial numbers of snow geese would still be there. On March 16th the Pennsylvania Game Commission had reported 110,000 snow geese and by the day before the snow numbers were down to 65,000. That was still enough geese for exceptional filming and photography, but the situation can change quickly and it was possible that the best activity was over.  The events of the next few day s would provide the answer.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Winter Wildlife With The 7D Mark II

Today's post features some photos taken with the new Canon 7D MK II, which I have been informally testing for the last few weeks.  Even with the big glass it is often hard to get close enough for frame filling photos of wildlife without using a blind, so all of today's images are cropped substantially. The 7D MK III has a 20 MP un-cropped image.  The photo below is cropped to 6.3 mega pixel, which is the same size as my first digital camera, a Canon 10D, would produce utilizing the full image.

Tufted Titmouse: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 600mm f 4.0 IS L-ISO 200-1/1600 sec- f 5.0

The photo of the spike buck is a 6.7 MP vertical crop pulled from a horizontal frame.

Spike Buck: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 300mm f 2.8 L  IS -ISO 200-1/320 sec- f 5.0

For last I will post two photos of mature Eastern Wild Turkey gobblers huddled on a distant hillside during a snow-squall.  This would have been a good situation for the 600mm lens, but I didn't have it along that day so I used the biggest available, which was the 500mm. Both are 6.3 megapixel crops.

Gobblers: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 500mm f 4.0 IS L-ISO 400-1/800 sec- f 5.0

Gobblers: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 500mm f 4.0 IS L -ISO 400-1/800 sec- f 5.0

Below is an un-cropped version of the the last shot.

Gobblers: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 500mm f 4.0 IS L -ISO 400-1/800 sec- f 5.0

So what do I think of the 7D MK II so far?  It is too early too tell, but after getting most of my lenses micro-adjusted with it I find I am using it quite a bit.  I am not at all sure at this point that there is any significant gain in image quality over the 70D, but I do prefer it for shooting still photographs as the auto-focus seems to be very accurate and I prefer the layout of the focusing points in the finder as well.  I have not tried the camera for shooting video as of yet, but the lack of a touch-screen or rotating LCD is a big minus for shooting video. 

 I do not pretend to be a DSLR expert and do not intend to do intense testing with the camera in a short period of time, but rather my approach is to do some shooting as needed to micro-adjust the camera and to give it a fair trial in actual field use.  Over time it will be interesting to see which camera I gravitate to for most of my use.

Getting Acquainted With The 7D MK II

Well, I tried to withstand the temptation, but face it my main interest is wildlife photography and filming and I am almost as interested in the tools of the trade as in the actual filming and photographing, so at the end of the day I just had to try the new Canon 7D MK II that so many are raving about. It arrived late Tuesday evening--too late for any shooting.

Wednesday morning was the first opportunity to use the camera. There was no chance to micro-adjust it  with any of the lenses before pressing it into action.but this is no worse than using a camera that does not have the micro-adjustment feature so I went ahead and used it to photograph whitetail deer with the 70-200mm f2.8 L IS II.

Whitetail Doe: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 70-200mm f2.8L IS II @200mm - ISO 1600-1/400 sec.-f 4.0

On my way out to photograph that afternoon I used the camera with the 24-105mm lens to take some scenic shots and it worked well for this purpose.

 Canon 7D MK II-Canon 24-105mm f4 L IS  @24mm - ISO 100-1/25 sec.-f 8.0

It was brutally cold that afternoon, but nonetheless I set up the equipment and micro-adjusted the camera with the 500mm F 4.0 lens. As it turned out it needed to be adjusted -5, which is the same amount the 5D MK III requires with this lens

Canon: 7D MK II-Canon 500mm F 4.0

.

Now it was time to try it on some wildlife and I turned my attention to the nearby bird feeder, where the usual assortment of winter birds was busily feeding.  As it was getting late and I was primarily interested in the low-light performance of the camera, I used ISO speeds ranging from 640--6400 and the ones posted today are taken at 1600 and 6400.  Also I shot with the lens completely wide open to verify if the micro-adjustment was successful.

Female Cardinal: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 500mm f 4.0L IS - ISO 1600-1/320 sec.-f 4.0

Female Cardinal: Canon 7D MK II-Canon 500mm f 4.0L IS - ISO 6400-1/1000 sec.-f 4.0

Experienced photographers will note that I could have  successfully used slower shutter speeds and therefore have used a lower ISO which should have given somewhat better images, but the reason I shot at the speeds I did was to get an idea of the cameras' potential at high speeds.  This is still not the best test of high ISO performance though as even very high ISO settings will likely look much better in better quality light than they do in murky, dim light. I also want to point out that all of the images with the exception of the scenic shot are cropped a moderate amount, which also influences image quality. 

The last photograph for today is one taken with the old 7D on the day before the MK II came.  This is in ideal light conditions and the photo is  cropped a moderate amount.

White-throated Sparrow: Canon Original 7D -Canon 500mm f 4.0L IS - ISO 1600-1/400 sec.-f 4.0

This post is not presented as proof of any particular point of view, but simply to show what I have gotten from the 7D MK II to date with a limited amount of shooting.  I  like the solid professional feel of the camera, the performance of the auto-focus system and the  image quality looks to be very promising.  I think the last photo does demonstrate; however, that good lighting and focus, etc. are more important than the features of the camera being used to take a photograph and that the old 7D as well as older cameras such as the 30D and 40D are capable of taking excellent professional quality photographs that are still competitive today.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.

Images From The 2014 Whitetail Rut and Camera Thoughts

It has been over three weeks since this blog was last updated and that has not happened since I began blogging in 2007.  This blog has always been issues oriented, but I find it increasingly difficult to write about this type of subject matter.  It is amazing how time consuming it can be just to write a short article about a controversial subject when one is striving for accuracy and objectivity.  With that in mind, I will limit today's post to sharing some photos from the recent whitetail rut and some thoughts on cameras for stills and video.

With all the talk of the introduction of the 7D MK II I decided to get the old 7D out of mothballs and use it for some long range work this autumn. It turned out that it  and the 600mm was an excellent choice to photograph this buck which was about 125 yards away.

Eight-Point: Canon 7D-Canon 600mm F4.0 IS L-ISO 400-1/2000 Sec. F 5.0

The buck had followed a doe into the meadow and I captured them both in another frame.

Eight-Point Buck and Doe: Canon 7D-Canon 600mm F4.0 IS L-ISO 400-1/2000 Sec. F 5.0

Of course it is always good to capture wildlife other than whitetails and an encounter with Eastern Wild Turkey gobblers is a rewarding experience and no before you ask I wasn't THAT close to the bird. The old 7D can stand up to severe cropping as long as the light is good and it is focused accurately.

Wild Turkey Gobbler: Canon 7D-Canon 600mm F4.0 IS L-ISO 400-1/2000 Sec. F 5.0

Why, you might ask have I even mentioned the 7D MK II when I have not even seen one yet, let alone used it?

I am mostly a video oriented person, but I love still photography also. Beginning in 1997 I used high-end prosumer Canon camcorders such as the L2, XL-1s, and XL-H1, but with the introduction of video in dslrs such as the Canon 7D, T3i, and 70D I found myself shooting more and more of my video with these cameras, although their video quality left something to be desired in many cases.  I saw footage from a Panasonic GH2 in 2012 and it was much sharper than that of the 7D.  This began a period of shooting video with both Canon and Panasonic cameras.  With the advent of the 4K Panasonic GH-4 I have shifted entirely to the Panasonics for video and recently acquired a fixed lens Panasonic FZ-1000 as a secondary camera to use when the GH-4 has a big telephoto mounted on it.  The downside is that the GH-4 is not as good as the old Canon 7D for still photography and the the FZ-1000 is a good step behind the GH-4.

Frosty Morning Buck: Panasonic FZ-1000-ISO 1000-1/100 sec. F 4.0

The thing about the small sensor cameras for still photography is that their image may look very sharp at a glance, but if one zooms in to 100% or higher in Photoshop it is  noticeable that they do not have the fine detail of the larger sensor cameras. With that being said, they are perfectly usable for many purposes including taking images for publication and they have the advantage of being very small  and portable in comparison to the Canons with the big prime lenses.

Now back to the 7D Mark II-- At this point I would not buy one for the video features as there is no flip-finder and no 4K video for starters, but this does not detract from its' appeal as a still camera.  I can understand why Canon does not put a flip LCD on the pro-level still cameras, but it is severely crippling to shoot video without one unless you use an external monitor and as of yet external monitors do not work nearly as well on the Canons as they do with the Panasonics. The main attraction of the 7D MK II to me would be low light performance comparable to that of the 5D MK III. Another point to consider is that technically an un-cropped image of distant wildlife from a 7D MK II sensor should have better detail than a 5D MK III cropped to the same perspective. I do not know, as I have not tried a 7D MK II, but after extensive use of the 70D and original 7D  I still cannot make up my mind if it is really worth using a crop sensor for stills over cropping the 5D MK III image more in Photoshop.

In closing I wish to emphasize that I discuss only Canon and Panasonic cameras here as those are the only cameras I own and  have experience with.  As to the 7D MK II, I look forward to seeing results from this camera and reading users experiences.  At this point it looks like I will not be an early adopter, and perhaps may never acquire one, but who knows?  It may become my favorite wildlife still camera.

Originally published at Pennsylvania Wildlife Photographer by Willard Hill.