*OFFICIAL* Snapshot of the Day (one image per post please) #1

[cooh23]

Robinson Brothers (Taken with a Nikon F4 BW Film)

[The1]

where is that?

[dcstep]

We got a surprise snow on Saturday, but the birds were very active:


Juvenile red-tail hawk hunting in snow by dcstep, on Flickr

[The1]

i like the snow build up on the nose of the bird.

what was the shutter speed here?

[dcstep]

Originally Posted by The1

i like the snow build up on the nose of the bird.

what was the shutter speed here?

Yeah, the snow really makes it for me also. It's actually got a vol in its talons, but the pictures that showed that weren't as good as this one otherwise.

That's the 500mm lens on the 7D at ISO 400, aperture preferred at f/4, +2EV to allow for the snow and resulting in 1/640th second. Handheld by the way. I normally want a little higher shutter speed for hand holds, but the light put me at my limits. The 7D is much better at ISO 400 than 800, although I do use it a lot at 800.

Dave

[M_Six]

Very cool capture.

[The1]

Originally Posted by dcstep

Yeah, the snow really makes it for me also. It's actually got a vol in its talons, but the pictures that showed that weren't as good as this one otherwise.

That's the 500mm lens on the 7D at ISO 400, aperture preferred at f/4, +2EV to allow for the snow and resulting in 1/640th second. Handheld by the way. I normally want a little higher shutter speed for hand holds, but the light put me at my limits. The 7D is much better at ISO 400 than 800, although I do use it a lot at 800.

Dave

are you shooting in Program mode? it's pretty amaizing that at 1/640th of a second, the eagles wings can still make a slight blur... a human would be pretty much motionless at that speed.

I printed a buddies pictures at 3200 ISO the other day in a 4x6 to prove to him that he doesn't need to worry too much about the quality that shows up on compter screens. He was really suprised at the sharpness of the image. however, i told him at that ISO, there is no point in printing any bigger then that though. an 8x10 will start to show the softness, and maybe a hot spot or two.
I've noticed that the 800iso isn't as nice on the 7D as it is on my 5D, but it's still a lot better then most other cameras i've tryed. It gets a couple hot spots, but nothing that shows up on images i've printed at this point.

that's the problem with computers, they show us things that might not really be there because we are blowing the image up so much hoping to see details.

[dcstep]

Originally Posted by The1

are you shooting in Program mode? it's pretty amaizing that at 1/640th of a second, the eagles wings can still make a slight blur... a human would be pretty much motionless at that speed.

I printed a buddies pictures at 3200 ISO the other day in a 4x6 to prove to him that he doesn't need to worry too much about the quality that shows up on compter screens. He was really suprised at the sharpness of the image. however, i told him at that ISO, there is no point in printing any bigger then that though. an 8x10 will start to show the softness, and maybe a hot spot or two.
I've noticed that the 800iso isn't as nice on the 7D as it is on my 5D, but it's still a lot better then most other cameras i've tryed. It gets a couple hot spots, but nothing that shows up on images i've printed at this point.

that's the problem with computers, they show us things that might not really be there because we are blowing the image up so much hoping to see details.

Yes, that's AV program, aperture priority.

For most birds you need 1/1200 to 1/2000th second to totally stop the wings. Hummers need even more. The real worry at this "low" speed is that I'm hand holding a 500mm lens. To be safe, many use 1/2000th second for handheld at that focal length. I've worked hard over the last year and gotten quite good at hand holding, but I wouldn't recommend 1/640th second to anyone without a lot of experience hand holding a super-tele.

I'm keenly aware of noise. The +2EV is critical in this situation because of the overcast and all the snow. The sensor tries to make white snow look grey, so you need to add EV to compensate. Underexposure really multiplies noise. If you look at this in it's Original size by following the link to Flickr, you'll see great feather, eye and snow detail. Still, when I have no choice, I pump the ISO up. In fact, I started the day at ISO 6400 before the sun came up. Still, the 7D start showing mosaic smear above ISO 800. Since I use the full-screen to see my images in slideshow mode on my computers and on my 47" HDTV, I can easily see it and don't like it. Anyway, I move the ISO down below 800 whenever conditions allow, which they barely did in this shot.

I don't print a lot and when I do, it's usually a vanity 11x14" book; however, I am thinking about selling a few prints at local art fairs and plan to print them pretty big. People like details in their nature shots.

As you might imagine, shooting at 8-fps I had several shots to chose from. My priorities for picking the "winner" that I'll post are pose first, eye contact next and sharpness third. I'll look at the eyes at 100% to 200% in a preview to pick from my finalists. I'm totally pleased with this shot, but I often end up chosing something with a little bit of noise or slight OOF because the action or pose are just too compelling.

Your "how will it be used" strategy makes a lot of sense to me. I fold that into my descision process. For nature and scenics I put a bunch of emphasis on sharpness. With scenics, I'm almost totally in control of sharpness because my tripod will allow any exposure and almost any ISO that I chose. OTOH, nature doesn't always allow "ideal" settings, so I'm often picking from among imperfect compromises while keeping in mind, "how will it be used?"

Dave

[The1]

what auto focus are you shooting with? AI servo for the moving animal? or do you find it's too imprecise? I tryed that back in the summer with my 5D when shooting my girlfriend horse jumping, and i found that when focusing on the horses head, the servo would be too slow to keep up with movement and i'd have the horses ass in focus.

some of the shots made me feel a lot like a horses ass when this happened.

I ended up pre focusing on the jumps and waiting for the horse and rider to get to the location i wanted, then snapped, this worked best in the end with the 5D's auto focus.

I'm hoping my 7D will be better for that. but if not, i'll still get to take about 3 -4 shots before horse is back on the ground. so far i've been able to have a little fun with it while standing in the ring with my girlfriend jumping right beside me, but i won't be able to do that in the summer. Then it's back to the side lines figureing out if i can auto focus or prefocus to get the shot. At least i'll have proper lighting in the summer again

[Ali.K_BMW]

[dcstep]

Originally Posted by The1

what auto focus are you shooting with? AI servo for the moving animal? or do you find it's too imprecise? I tryed that back in the summer with my 5D when shooting my girlfriend horse jumping, and i found that when focusing on the horses head, the servo would be too slow to keep up with movement and i'd have the horses ass in focus.

some of the shots made me feel a lot like a horses ass when this happened.

I ended up pre focusing on the jumps and waiting for the horse and rider to get to the location i wanted, then snapped, this worked best in the end with the 5D's auto focus.

I'm hoping my 7D will be better for that. but if not, i'll still get to take about 3 -4 shots before horse is back on the ground. so far i've been able to have a little fun with it while standing in the ring with my girlfriend jumping right beside me, but i won't be able to do that in the summer. Then it's back to the side lines figureing out if i can auto focus or prefocus to get the shot. At least i'll have proper lighting in the summer again

I used AI servo set on Fast and 9-point active AF points, because I was looking for a flight shot. The hawk had landed on a vol behind some cattails where I couldn't see the bird, so as I approached I prefocused on a point that I thought was the right distance. When the bird came up I kept it in the middle of the box of nine AF points and shot several bursts of three to five as it flew away. This was probably about the 3rd shot out of the series.

I also own the 5D MkII and find the 7D way better for this kind of thing. Here I was using f/4 and was pretty close to the bird, so the AF had to be spot on. If I hadn't pre-focused I'd have been likely to miss the bird since it would have been several shots before the camera caught up. Also, since the bird was low, I need to make certain that I kept the AF points on the bird because the camera will focus on the background if you let the points get off the subject.

For your horse type situation, I too would have prefocused on the jump, but I would have tried to shoot at f/11 or smaller to increase DOF. At wide open apertures it could be very trick, where you might get the horse's eye in focus, but not the rider. You have to be careful that the camera doesn't focus on the jump, so I'd experiment with single-point, expanded point and even 19-point. With the 7D you can even manually activate individual points, in case the middle of the frame is not what you need.

I learned to work around the AF of my 5D2 and it works fine in most situations, BUT the 7D is faster and more flexible in these regards. I hope the MkIII is as good as the 7D in this regard and the fps speeds up to at least 5-fps.

[The1]

Originally Posted by dcstep

I learned to work around the AF of my 5D2 and it works fine in most situations, BUT the 7D is faster and more flexible in these regards. I hope the MkIII is as good as the 7D in this regard and the fps speeds up to at least 5-fps.

I hope the mark III has at least as good of an auto focus as the 7D It's impressed me the few opportunities i've had to use it.

and if they get it up to 5 fps, i'll definitely be looking to sell my 5DII and maybe even the 7D but it is hard to argue with 8fps.... time will tell.

I definitely have some more work to do as far as the jumping goes, i'm generally shooting around an F8, but i've since been shooting with higher ISO so i should be able to close up the aperature some more this year and improve my shots while maintaining the higher shutter speeds.

I think the 7D will be a nice asset to have. I just have to get used to shooting with a crop body again.... it's been interesting trying to adjust to the 2 bodies while using a lens that i thought worked one way, but works so differently when combined with the crop.

Very fun

[dcstep]

My only issue with my 7D is that its high-ISO performance is a couple of stops worse than my 5D MkII. If you're not careful you'll get a really thick, painting like mosaic distortion, even with a lot of +EV.

[The1]

just goofing around on my 11" laptop and tryed to make a picture i took today out of bordom and make it look old using windows live photo gallery....

kind of ended up looking like a news paper clipping.

[Litos]

here's a couple pics i took last year when my wife and i went to D-Land.

the first one of "Stitch" was at the Disney Parade - clown pointed right at me.

the second one was the fireworks they do every night.

funny thing is that i strapped my 18-200 VR DX lens onto my D700 FX camera and hoped for the best (had my D700 for 2 weeks and didn't know that you're supposed to use FX lenses on it, doh) - not the best combination ever HAHAHA !!!!

[Litos]

[Tondtar]

[Chewy734]

cool pic!

[The1]

Originally Posted by Chewy734

cool pic!

agreed.

[M_Six]

Originally Posted by The1

agreed.

Yep. Excellent.

[Tondtar]

Originally Posted by Chewy734

cool pic!

Originally Posted by The1

agreed.

Originally Posted by M_Six

Yep. Excellent.

I am (so) hoping you guys are referring to my pic

If so, I have to admit that it was totally and miraculously a "Lucky Shot"

[The1]

Originally Posted by Tondtar

I am (so) hoping you guys are referring to my pic

If so, I have to admit that it was totally and miraculously a "Lucky Shot"

we are referring to yours (at least i was)



as for a "lucky shot" some of the best shots are. that's why we have our cameras strapped on our necks. for that once in a life time opportunity that sneaks up. You never know when something is going to happen, and you proved it.