Is This A Great Blue Heron?

Late Sunday Afternoon when I went to cross the fording, which Salty and ASH write about, I was lucky enough to spy this large bird sitting upstream from the crossing. I think it is a Great Blue Heron, but I am not certain. If anyone knows for sure, let me know. Locals call these birds “fish cranes” and from there it goes down hill. I won’t repeat the favorite local term. Also in backwoods Pennsylvania a stream crossing is not a “fording”,but rather a “forden” or “fordin”.

Over the years I have seen a lot of these birds and have gotten excellent video, but never a decent still shot. In this case the deck was stacked against me, but not impossibly so. I had the 70-200mm mounted with the camera on ISO 100. I would have liked to have had my 300mm to make the bird larger, and a higher ISO for the flying shots.

I cropped the image as much as possible without destroying it, which made the bird reasonably close looking.

Like “Wom Tigley” driving his Land Rover. I smashed my Chevy S-10 Blazer into the stream. At that point it all happened at once. I saw the bird, brought the camera to my eye, slammed the brakes, and fired a burst. Road hunting and 4 wheeling at its finest!

Canon 40-D 70-200mmL f2.8

Sharing A Moment

Curious Whitetail Buck: Canon 40-D 70-200mmL F2.8

If treated with respect, even whitetail deer will give their trust to certain humans and in turn reward them by giving them insights into their lives that few are fortunate enough to ever see or comprehend.

Canadian Thistle

I had to post this to show "Salty" that on rare occasion I do photograph other things than whitetail deer, or elk. Actually I like all types of nature photography and think that few things look better than a good close shot of a flower. Many consider this a noxious weed and it is a problem for sure when it becomes established in a field that is being crop farmed . I think though that it also is an attractive photographic subject both in summer when it is blooming and in autumn when its' life is ended and its seeds have been cast to the wind.

Canadian Thistle

Summer In October! and More Info. on DSLRs

The weather has been unusually warm throughout most of October with the last several days hitting the low 80s (Fahrenheit). It is even uncomfortable to the deer as this panting young buck demonstrates. At least it is raining today after about a month and a half without any significant precipitation.

Buck Panting-Canon 40-D 500mmF4

Doe and Fawn Nursing-Canon 40-D 500mmF4 with 1.4 Extender

I successfully captured another nursing scene, this time using the 500mmF4 with 1.4 extender attached which is equal to a 700mm lens. On a Canon Digital SLR such as the 10-D through the 40-D and the digital Rebels this actually results in an effective focal length of 1120mm. These cameras have a 1.6 crop factor.

When one goes higher up the scale into models such as the 5D and the higher end professional DSLRS you are back to the lenses performing as they did on a film camera.,with full frame sensors. For that reason many professional wildlife photographers actually prefer cameras in the first group as they give them more effective range. If one wants better coverage of wide shots however then it is best to have a full frame sensor such as the second group of cameras offers. Most manufacturers have found a way around this by making special wide-angle zoom lenses that offer increased angle of view for the cameras in the first class.

Which will win out? Who knows! At this point many think that at some time the full frame sensor will dominate, but they are going to have to come down in price substantially for this to happen, and then one will lose the "crop factor" of the 1.6 sensor.

I am really getting technical now, but one position maintains that a full frame sensor camera with a high mega-pixel rating can be cropped in imaging programs to give the same size as the 1.6 crop factor cameras straight from the sensor and still equal or better their image quality. I don't know as I do not own a full frame DSLR, or know anyone who does so that I can make a

personal judgment.

As a side note, the picture of the panting buck is severely cropped and it maintains its quality well. So it is hard to find a definitive answer on this subject. The major criteria for being able to crop a photo to this extent are 1. Good Lighting 2. Shoot with a premium quality lens 3. Shoot with a fixed power lens also known as a "prime", but the better quality zooms such as the 70-200mm L will also do very well. 3. Only crop images that are in perfect focus.