is not what you make up.
supporting your fading memory
You adviced Joanna to post even a portion of that strong crop on a birding forum
(inspite being discussed at full length)
and beyond to publish in a newspaper because you know …
really silly
That’s one issue; the other is only two days of real experience photographing birds, and what I call “fooling around” (maybe I should have written “testing”) things that I obviously don’t yet understand.
If you watched the video I posted, you got to see this fellow taking a large number of photos, most of which would never be acceptable here if for no reason other than that they didn’t fill the frame enough.
I think you already know “everything”, and have long since forgotten your first attempts at things, I’m already aware I “suck” at still life photos, and I’m just beginning to learn how to photograph birds. You’re smarter than I am, more experienced, and you have a wonderful talent. It’s likely that I’ll never catch up with you, and several other people here, but I’ve been doing pretty well at capturing images that I like.
For me, it’s lots of reading, lots of watching YouTube videos, and LOTS of practice trying to catch up with the more talented people. As to my “fading memory”, I accept that it’s only going to get worse. As for publishing, several magazines here and abroad paid for my “photo habit” because they liked the material I sent them, and what I wrote. …could I do that again now? Doubtful.
Anyway, this is the last stationary bird photo I took on the last expedition.
Practically no editing, no cropping, and my arms hurt, and wanted to “wobble”. Before I worry about getting the most out of PhotoLab, the first priority is to be able to capture an acceptable image to edit. I wish I had the skill that I still lack, but how does that saying go: “Rome wasn’t built in a day”. And as for the image, it isn’t very captivating, but it’s the last picture like this that I took that day. (A monopod would help, a lot!)
However much I “suck” at bird photography, seeing this image puts a smile on my face!
780_4469 | 2024-04-04.nef (27.9 MB)
780_4469 | 2024-04-04.nef.dop (13.1 KB)
Eventually this will become a vertical image, with enough cropping. Eventually I’ll even figure out what the name of this bird is.
Oh, and my main goal for next time? Learn how to get my camera to focus better.
So, instead of taking the image vertically, making the most of your 24Mpx camera, you decide to take it in landscape and crop it to 9Mpx, thus losing an enormous amount of detail in the bird - that can never be recovered
It might look alright but don’t look too closely.
As already said, I’m no wildlife photographer – and don’t care about birds either.
When I come across I take photos, but it’s not my topic/interest.
Technically, your reasoning is 100% right. Forgetting the other considerations, the lens was already at 300mm. Had I rotated the camera, there was no way to zoom in more, making the bird larger, to fill my screen.
Also, by then, I was tired, my arms were tired, the lens felt twice as heavy as earlier, and I was ready to leave.
Side note - I haven’t yet found a comfortable way to shoot the most Nikons in a vertical orientation; it’s easier for me to hold the camera horizontally, especially when I’m tired. My D3, with the built-in grip, makes it more comfortable to take vertical photos. My new 50-500 lens would allow me to do what you suggest, turning the camera 90 degrees, and zooming in closer.
Thanks - what you suggest is obviously the right thing to do, when possible. At that moment in time, my “get up and go” had already “gotten up and went”.
Had I shot in vertical mode, as you suggest, with my lens already at 300mm, what would you have done?
What are the most enjoyable things you take photographs of nowadays? I think I remember you enjoying old-time sailing ships. I don’t mean what are your favorite subjects, exactly. I mean what things do you get the most enjoyment from photographing?
Or, if you’d rather not say, that’s OK too.
I think for a lot of people, myself included, my “favorite” keeps changing. Right now, it’s birds. In India, it was the “daily life around me” in whichever city I visited. It used to be race cars, before that it was radio control race cars, and long before that, motorcycles and racing.
Back to PhotoLab…
When I have been processing photos in PhotoLab, I use whatever tools are necessary as I see it, and when I’m done, I add my watermark.
I’m speculating that the answer is “no!”, but is there any way to add a “title” to a finished image, such that when I post it somewhere, those people viewing it, can read it easily? For example, my bird photos - I would like the photo to include the name of the bird for the majority of viewers who don’t know it. Or, maybe post the name of the location. Whatever.
Using the EXIF data may not be adequate to accomplish this, as I suspect most people in the various forums never heard of EXIF. Plan “B”, is there any app that will take an image, and add a “text block” below it, into which I can add relevant information?
If no such thing exists, I’ll just do what I do now, as in add information about a photo into the forum text above or below the photo.
If DxO knows how to add a “watermark”, adding a “text box” should be trivial, unless nobody else in the forum had any interest in this idea. Then it wouldn’t be worth their time to do it.
in case you are interested – check my profile
I use an MB-D18 battery grip on my D850…
… and third party grips are available for the D780 but, of course, that will add to the overall weight, especially with the big zoom you have just bought. So, you might think about a monopod with a gimbal head like the guy in that video.
I’ve asked on a number of occasions for export options of:
embedding the original raw filename as a keyword/exif tag upon export
being able to designate a keyword or exif field as a watermark upon export
@George - yikes! I was still in bed, half asleep, when I glanced at my phone and eventually found your photo. I think I’ve seen too many science-fiction movies, because my very first thought (before I came to my senses) was this was a being from another planet. Of course your second image put an end to that. The first image looks too smart, too real, and because of how you took the photo, it is looking right at ME! Wow, those eyes!!! Amazing photo!!!
I don’t really want to add any weight. I didn’t think the D780 would be nearly as comfortable in a vertical orientation on a support as my D3, but I see your grip provides another shutter release. I will pass on this for now, but I’ll check out what grips are available for my D780. Spending too much, too fast.
What is that support that is holding your camera up? My friend Ray has something like that - is it useful?
My friend bought a new monopod, and gave me his old one - a Feisol Carbon Fiber CM-1471. It needed a head, and because of your advice on what tripod to buy (Manfrotto, carbon, just what you suggested) I bought this:
Manfrotto Tilt Head for Monopod
My friend told me I should have considered a head with a locking screw a little lower, making it easier to clamp the head in place. I thought with a Manfrotto, it would be more like my tripod.
Yes, I this is what I would like, but I’ve never found a way to do it - I want it embedded, just like I do with a watermark. I need to think about this some more, but I want it in addition to my watermark, not instead of.
Yes, it really as easy to hold as the “normal” grip, you just need to familiarise yourself with the buttons, which are almost in the same place.
It’s a Manfrotto L bracket and, yes it is amazingly useful for tripod work as, when set up, it allows you to maintain the optical centre of the lens above the centre of the tripod, rather than having to crank the camera over, where it can feel top heavy and ready to tip over.
I think you are talking at cross purposes. What @Sparky2006 is talking about is embedding metadata in the EXIF of the file, not visibly in the image - for which I can see no sane reason. But you already embed a whole load anyway, it’s just a matter of adding other tags and I don’t know why you insist on that awful watermark when your copyright details are already in the EXIF.
lots of opinions on this - here’s one:
Why post your name on the front of your published photos?
When I was posting my photos on various r/c car racing sites, I had the feeling that many people were downloading them, and like most r/c car racing photos, there is no way of telling who the photographer was. Many people have “watermarks”, most of them much more fancy than what I do. Nowadays, I probably don’t need to, but it’s a habit.
My watermark - nowadays it’s just my name, and the year. And you’ve probably noticed I learned how to make it smaller, and I try to use a color that is already in my image, when possible.
My buddy, Ray, is posting photos now to Instagram. I would never do that without my watermark. I suspect 95% of people online don’t know anything about EXIF, or copyright, and they just freely “steal” other people’s work without giving it a second thought, not even aware what they are doing is wrong.
Well, the birds - and the focal lengths involved.
Uncropped image of the male black redstart checking the chicks. About 5 meters away and taken with a lens of equivalent focal length of 520mm.
Same location, female black redstart feeding the chicks, taken with a FL of 400mm.
I’d have to crop off quite a bit of the image for a close-up that is not completely void of the nest’s environment.
This was taken with a 24mm lens on a FF body. It’s not what I’d call a bird photography, it only shows about 20% of the available pixels, boo-hoo … and I like it anyway.
Well, Joanna and Wolfgang are going to shoot me, or worse, but I got curious - you’ve got baby birds in that nest!
Would you like to borrow my 500 mm lens?
I wonder if a small electronic flash would help, or scare them?
You are also bringing back memories. Years ago, I left my old window shutters half closed, as the open/close mechanism got stuck. Birds decided to make a nest in the open space, and I got to see the eggs hatch, and the babies grow up. They certainly made a mess of my windowsill.
Months later, they did it again, but shortly after the workers arrived to replace my old windows with hurricane windows, and while I didn’t see it (or want to see it) they disposed of everything on the old windowsill before replacing all of it with new windows. I may have taken photos - if so, they would be buried away in ten year old Lightroom folders.
Back to you, with a ladder, and a long lens, this would be nice. Once they leave, you can remove the metal guarding which is destroyed anyway, and several months later, you could get some fascinating photos - from the ladder, of course. Or, you could buy one of those “spy cameras” that I see advertised on TV, and put it real close to the nest, which I’m sure will stay there forever (until someone cleans it out…)
Well, the blackstarts build their nest or don’t and I have no indication if they’re going to breed or not. Installing a permanent camera is out of question, and it would have to be there permanently. Birds tend to be shy and they are fast to abandon their chicks if disturbed at the wrong time. I had to clean out a nest a few years ago, nest with broken eggs and half-rotten dead chicks.
Some light could help but… (see above), getting closer could help but…(see above)
As for the wires: They prevent the doves from nesting, moreover, the redstarts prefer these bars. The official breeding box can be mounted in a corner and its open longest side has vertical bars that prevent other birds from using the dedicated location. The wires are part of “the story” too, and they belong to the apartment, so the’ll stay.
One more thing. The little birds are so fast, that I got an image of a transparent mother. She was in and out again within a fraction of a second and exposure time was just long enough to show it. See how the twig shines through the bird’s rear end?
BTW, this time, they built their nest in a different place next to my kitchen door. I still had to be about 5m away to see the nest and to not scare them away. Tech: 640mm equiv. FL.
Tidbits: Up to a certain age, the chicks excrete their poop in a kind of package that is flown out by the parents. During the last two weeks or so, diaper service ends and poop just gets thrown out. Amazing, how birds that small can make a mess that big!
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Based on what you just wrote, those bars are part of the story, and they belong there. Much nicer photo. I suspect you could make it even nicer in PhotoLab.
Were you up on a ladder for this shot? Three babies, with mouths wide open - nice! I like this photo a lot more than the previous shot. Maybe you could post the raw image, so we can all try to edit it?
I wonder if the “eraser” tool might help? Or, the similar, but more powerful tool in PhotoShop. Bars-B-Gone!
While in India, I removed a whole car that was blocking my view. 
Anyway, just a few minutes after failing to remember how to use PhotoShop to remove details…
I wil figure out how to do this later. But I did want to see more of the bird - this was done in Luminar, to see if I even remembered how to use it.
I could, but my input here is, that even with a bird so close, focal length, speed, reactivity or sensor triggers etc. play a role in capturing the beasts in the first place.
Makes sense to me now, but a month ago I wouldn’t have understood.
Just thinking out loud - you could take this photo every day for a while, so you can capture how the chicks grow up. I first thought there were three, but now I see four.
Thank you for posting!
A question for @Joanna - I bought the Manfrotto tripod you recommended, and I bought the Manfrotto head for the monopod my friend gave me. Maybe you (or anyone) can suggest the best way to carry a camera boy and a long lens around? Am I right that I should mount the lens on my D780, and hold the assembly by the lens? I have a camera strap that goes around my neck, but with a lens this heavy, maybe the strap should go to the lens, not the camera? I like that with the Manfrotto, it should be so easy and secure to mount a camera with Manfrotto mount onto either my tripod or monopod.