Eagles - lessons learned.

[ronlane]

#1 - I NEED longer glass. A 70-200mm f/2.8 L is not long enough at all.
#2 - These birds are AMAZINGLY beautiful and majestic.
#3 - See #1

Rinse and repeat, lol. All of these are heavily cropped, so that is causing some degradation of image quality.

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[Dean_Gretsch]

You know, if you sold just a couple of those great football photos you possess, you can get yourself a longer lens. Those are nice Ron. Local to you?

 

[ronlane]

You know, if you sold just a couple of those great football photos you possess, you can get yourself a longer lens. Those are nice Ron. Local to you?

I do sell some of those football photos but just not THAT much.

The lake we went to was about 2 hours north and east of where we are. Supposedly, Oklahoma has like 250 pairs of Bald Eagles living here. During this time of the year we get the ones from north for the winter.

 

[Nwcid]

I have a Tamron 150-600mm and does quiet well. I hear the G2 version is even better and the price is hard to beat.

We get a lot of eagles this time of year also. I shoot them every chance I get.

This was taken last week with a D7100. Handheld, 500mm, ISO 200, F 6.3, 1/160 sec.

 

[zombiesniper148 13]

Ron these are great images.

200mm is extremely hard to shoot wildlife with. I think you did excellent.

 

[Peeb107 3]

I'm still looking for my first real up-close look at a bald eagle in the wild. Even with 700mm (500 x 1.4)- Everything I've gotten so far is too distant! Here's one at 700mm and heavily cropped-

Bald eagle in morning over lake by Peeb-OK, on Flickr

 

[ronlane]

Thanks everyone. Those images are good too.

At 700mm, there were a couple we were close to that would have more than filled the frame.

 

[BrentC]

I have yet to see one in the wild. If be very happy to have those shots. Seems like you have been shooting birds quite a bit lately, maybe time to get a long lens.

 

[ronlane]

I have yet to see one in the wild. If be very happy to have those shots. Seems like you have been shooting birds quite a bit lately, maybe time to get a long lens.

I've shot a few birds during this time of the year now that football is ended and I don't have a lot of other sports to shoot. My plan is to get a 300 mm f/2.8 by the time football rolls back around and then I can consider getting a 1.4 TC or a 2.0 TC.

 

[Low_Sky]

Great pictures, Ron!

I have yet to see one in the wild. If be very happy to have those shots. Seems like you have been shooting birds quite a bit lately, maybe time to get a long lens.

Brent, come visit Alaska. I'll take you to the Soldotna landfill transfer station, or down the beach where all the halibut charters dump their carcasses and guts. You'll see more majestic, screeching, dirty wet eagles than you know what to do with, haha. You can come too, Ron. Bring that 70-200!

 

[Andonso]

I live next to the Pacific Ocean where there are different species of birds that spend time along the ocean beach. I'm very lucky if any of the eagles allow me to get close to take good shots using 200 to 300mm macro & zoom lenses. I have a Sigma 28-300mm and a Nikon 55-200mm however I need to be fairly close to get any good shots. (I've also used a Sigma 70-300mm that has a 1:2 macro ratio) The Sigma 28-300mm is more of an all around lens with 1:3 macro ratio is considered to be nice and compact for general travel, etc. None of my lenses are ideal for nature unless perhaps you become lucky.

If larger birds such as eagles are feasting on something dead it's less likely they fly off as soon when humans approach. So it may be possible to get some good shots of Eagles (possibly other bird species) if one or more are feasting on something dead.

Snowy Plovers I've gotten a few closeup shots while sitting in my car where the Plovers didn't realize a human was nearby taking photos. Once birds realized a human is near they fly off too far to take any good photos using a 300mm lens.

Unless you can sneak up, hide in foliage, etc. a 200 to 300mm lens imo isn't good enough for nature photography.

I think at least a 200-500mm lens is be needed for general nature photography under varying conditions.

However cost starts e.g. at around ~$500.00 dollars for a used Tamron 200-500mm lens.

Eagles feasting on something dead, most likely washed up on the beach. Things are always washing up on the beach and if not edible usually will eventually be covered in sand. The shore is always drifting so most items become buried in sand. I remember one summer finding what appeared to be part of a ship (uncovered after a storm) which appeared was built sometime in the 1800s. The shore changes with time which may be from a few days, a few months to more than a hundred years. Occasional I find items that drifted from various countries across the Pacific.

There is a world wide problem with plastic garbage being collected in our oceans, much of which is eaten by different sea life including birds. It's very important to collect and pack out any garage while around different types of bodies of water as most plastic has a very long lifespan and doesn't biodegrade.

Animals Eat Ocean Plastic Because it Smells Like Food

Algae is food for tiny animals such as krill — otherwise known as zooplankton, which is food for larger sea animals. When plastic becomes part algae it's eaten by krill or zooplankton, which scientists says plastics has integrated into all of the worlds oceans. Which adds to the problem of sea animals such as sea birds eating and digesting smaller pieces of plastic floating around in water.

Eagles on this beach, depending on the time of year, are very cautious around humans. I think humans are the only species on the beach and other areas that they actually fear.

I'm still learning how to use photo editing software which I've haven't used in the past. I'm trying out Adobe CS2, Digikam and a few others. Here I tried to crop and brighten up the above photo, but I think the bird is too far away using for using Nikon 55-200mm lens as the bird appears blurred. Perhaps could have taken time to perform some manual settings as the Nikon camera was on auto.

 

[Derrel]

One thought might be to look into a reallllllly high-MP camera that allows heavy cropping and stellar image quality...as a way to maximize lens length while shooting at 300mm or at 420mm with a 1.4x TC added to a high-grade,ultra-crisp lens. Or looking at a 150-600mm but slower-aperture zoom lens. Or at a camera that could use a 200-500mm yet affordable lens at say, ISO 1,250 to 2,500 ISO in good daylight, or that is ISO invariant and that could be under-exposed by three or four stops in the field (to "build shutter speed" so to speak) and then the dark RAW files brightened up in post.

There's also the thought of going to a pretty small-sensored camera, like m4/3, and using a 300mm f/4 as a "virtual 600mm" with that camera size's 2.0 FOV factor.

Still, I like the first picture as a wildlife in-situation type photo. As far as the straight BIF stuff, there's no substitute for being fairly close and with a pretty long lens, something in that 300-800mm length.

As far as a 300mm/2.8, I've owned two over thirty years, and both were pretty good imagers with their 1.4x TC's added. The new AF-S 300/2.8's focus FAST,and reliably, but are such a PITA for non-game uses....the 300/4 primes...VERY easy to carry, basically the Nikon or Canon traditional models fit into the 70-200/2.8 L's white Canon carry case, or the Nikon black carry case for their 70-200/2.8 VR-G model, so, the 300/4 is the easy-carry tele,and I think, probably as sharp as any zoom is, with the TC14e-II added and the lens stopped down just a bit. Buuuuuut...with a bird in the center and blue sky, the corners wide-open are "invisible", so you can shoot wide open, at 420mm and f/5.6.