Crayfish Dinner
Lumix GF1, Lumix 100-300mm
This little lake is a favorite hunting place for Great Blue Herons. I went back here recently and saw this heron catch two crayfish for its dinner. :) It simply swallowed them whole!
--Warren
Crayfish #1
Crayfish #2
Labels: Birds, DMC-GF1, Golden Gate Park, Heron, Wildlife
posted by Warren T. at 11:17 PM
6 comments
6 Comments:
Wonderful catch, its had delicious dinner, nice timing shot,lovely photos...:-)
Lena,
Pulling on my gag reflex... !! Great colours and patterns though. Such a pretty mix of greens and yellows. And the front-on neck shot shows its feather pattern really nicely. Almost looks like rope.
This was an amazing capture Warren!! Wow... I love how the mixture of yellow and green forces your eyes to focus on the heron and his soon to be afterthought.
Can I ask what time of day this was and what your settings were??
Am I aloud to embarrass myself and guess for the sake of learning?
Time of day: I don't see any really hard light focused in on any one area but there is a slight golden hue to the pics. So maybe around 4pm. Even though I picture you in my mind as a morning person.
Aperture: I think in the first one it was smaller than the rest so maybe F/10 and dropped to F/6 or maybe F/4?
ISO: 400 Shot in the dark...
Speed: I cant seem to get my shots this sharp..hmm. even with your steady hands... maybe 1200?
I don't know but for some reason am really excited to find out. Forces me to understand better.
With great respect,
~Carl~
Thanks for your comments, Carl, much appreciated. Great guess on the time of day :).
#1: 3:42pm, 1/400 f5.6 ISO 160, 300mm
#2: 3:47pm, 1/400 f5.6 ISO 400, 300mm
#3: 3:49pm, 1/400 f5.6 ISO 320, 300mm
#4: 3:50pm, 1/400 f5.6 ISO 250, 300mm
#5: 3:50pm, 1/400 f5.6 ISO 200, 300mm
I happened to be using my older, Lumix GF1 body that day. If I had been using the G5 body, I probably would have used a slightly higher ISO just to be on the safe side, but as it turned out, these shots came out just fine.
The max aperture of the lens is f5.6 at 300mm, which was where I was shooting it. The in-lens image stabilization is superb, and this lens is super sharp even at max aperture and max zoom (600mm equivalent of FF). Everybody has probably noticed that I've been doing a lot of photography with this lens, and it's because it's such a pleasure to use. The fact that it's Micro 4/3 allows the whole package (body plus 100-300mm lens) to be amazingly light and compact. I cannot imagine having to lug around an equivalent setup in a DX or FF format dslr (dslr plus 600mm lens). In my opinion, this is where the strength of the Micro 4/3 system lies.
--Warren
Thanks for the detailed response.
Yea I really love the sharpness of the camera. I noticed your ISO changes through each photo. Do you shoot in a specific mode when shooting wildlife? I find myself trying to anticipate wether or not specifically the birds i chase are going to lift off and want to freeze them. I don't feel my camera is doing a good job of that at 1/400th of a second. I have just started roaming outside of manual.
I agree on lugging around the full size DSLR. I look forward to getting a smaller camera for everyday use. I looked up your Lumix and may put it on the something to shoot for list.
I also saw a 4/3rds adapter for my camera that was fairly cheep. Would that be a close equivalent to your camera or does it vary based on technology and the adapter may be a gimmick?
~Carl~
Carl, the only adapter that I know about are the Nikon to Micro 4/3 adapters that will let you use a Nikon lens on a Micro 4/3 body. I have one of those, and I do you my Nikkor lenses on my MU-43 bodies occasionally. I still prefer using native lenses on their respective bodies for maximum performance.
I shoot in different modes depending on the situation, and I usually use as much automation as I can get away with. As long as you know what to expect from the camera, it's perfectly fine to use automation if the situation calls for it.
For this series, I was shooting in "S" (shutter priority) mode because I wanted to make sure I was getting sharp images. The S program called for max aperture which happened to be f5.6 at 300mm for this lens. I had Auto-ISO turned on, so that's why you see the ISO changing between shots. The camera was using the ISO variable to correctly expose the image because the other two variables could not be changed.
--Warren
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