BirdMania March 2022

Nancy AK said:
@gary I’m thinking about doing some macro photography, mostly flowers. Are the extension tubes(Kenko) worth buying? What’s your recommendation for FL on FF? Thank you
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ok, macro starts with a good book or two, you need knowledge on technique, it can be a very technical niche of photography, i am currently reading "the universe at our feet" by don komarechka, i am only on page 37 but it seems well written. pick up the latest issue of outdoor photographer, it is focused on flower photography and he is one of the contributing authors. he recommends and i concur that you need a 90-120 mm macro lens, i am pretty sure nikon has something, i have the sony 90mm f2.8. don speaks highly of the tamron 90mm f2.8 without vc, vibration control. that would be my recommended starting spot, my experience with my sony has mostly been flowers, especially orchids and roses. and as it just so happens when i opened up this thread today i had just picked up from ups and unboxed a nissin mf18 ring light flash. controlling the lighting is critical to macro, that and good practice, don't be frustrated at first if you have a lot of fuzzy shots. it takes some time to get good at this. i have done quite a bit of off camera remote flash in the rockefeller rose garden at ny botanical, but you always have to worry about someone stepping into your flash and you can't do that at all in the haupt conservatory for the orchid show, you would need someone to hold your flash for you. so i am looking to do some practice over the next few weeks in preparation for my annual orchid trip. extension tubes are a good accessory, certainly useful in macro, when i shot canon i had kenko, there is a kenko set for sony but i found a thread about meike brand, much less money than kenko and supposedly just as good.

another good resource is www.fredmiranda.com if you are not familiar with this site you certainly need to get on over there, i am there almost as often as here, and there is a whole forum dedicated to macro

amazon link for the tamron in nikon f mount https://www.amazon.com/Tamron-AF-90mm-2-8-SP/dp/B00021EE4U
 
gary said:
ok, macro starts with a good book or two, you need knowledge on technique, it can be a very technical niche of photography, i am currently reading "the universe at our feet" by don komarechka, i am only on page 37 but it seems well written. pick up the latest issue of outdoor photographer, it is focused on flower photography and he is one of the contributing authors. he recommends and i concur that you need a 90-120 mm macro lens, i am pretty sure nikon has something, i have the sony 90mm f2.8. don speaks highly of the tamron 90mm f2.8 without vc, vibration control. that would be my recommended starting spot, my experience with my sony has mostly been flowers, especially orchids and roses. and as it just so happens when i opened up this thread today i had just picked up from ups and unboxed a nissin mf18 ring light flash. controlling the lighting is critical to macro, that and good practice, don't be frustrated at first if you have a lot of fuzzy shots. it takes some time to get good at this. i have done quite a bit of off camera remote flash in the rockefeller rose garden at ny botanical, but you always have to worry about someone stepping into your flash and you can't do that at all in the haupt conservatory for the orchid show, you would need someone to hold your flash for you. so i am looking to do some practice over the next few weeks in preparation for my annual orchid trip. extension tubes are a good accessory, certainly useful in macro, when i shot canon i had kenko, there is a kenko set for sony but i found a thread about meike brand, much less money than kenko and supposedly just as good.

another good resource is www.fredmiranda.com if you are not familiar with this site you certainly need to get on over there, i am there almost as often as here, and there is a whole forum dedicated to macro
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@gary thank you. I appreciate the information. I’ll look up the book and magazine. I haven’t been on the website in a long time, so I’ll check it out too. I know there’s a certain Nikon that won’t autofocus on the Z cameras, which I think is ok, you don’t need autofocus with macro ? I was thinking about a 90mm, 100mm or 105mm for macro. Do you shoot most of your macro photos handheld or tripod? I’m not sure about the extension tubes, my current lenses are 14-30, 24-70, 70-200 and 200-500.
 
probably about 50/50 handheld as opposed to tripod/monopod, i have seen quite a bit of tripod use in the nybg rose garden, even on weekends, and during the featured rose garden weekend, with the chamber quartet doing disney tunes from the gazebo. macro does lend itself to manual focus, in fact that's quite often better,
 
Thought I'd post up a few of the other sightings during Birdmania...both to share the variety, and to help with IDs in case you guys also photographed one of these and wanted a reminder of what species:

Brown basilisk lizard on a cypress knee:
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Glossy ibis:
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Yellow-rumped warbler:
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Snowy egret flying past (black legs, yellow Crocs):
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Egyptian geese:
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Purple martin:
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Gulf fritillary butterfly (I misidentified this as a queen butterfly in the field!):
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Male red-winged blackbird flashing his epaulettes:
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thanks, this'll help a lot as i am keywording species names,. i can use it for reference next year
where and what day did we see the yellow rumped warbler, so far i haven't seen it. but it may have been in the blurry throw aways, i know some of those smaller birds were very hard

and anyone reading this thread who wants to see some gritty macro work go over to www.fredmirands.com, go to the macro thread, page 2 , black wasp butchering for baby the photographer was in his garden looking for things when a huntsman spider, missing a leg or 2 came staggering out from under a bush and seemed disoriented, well soon a black wasp came out, it had apparently stung the spider, but hadn't finished the job, he has a very good series of photos of the wasp proceeding to dismember the legs off the spider, then get on top and sting it again, and then from the top chew off the fangs, until it has a nicely controlled meal for the nest, one which can't threaten the little wasps . nature is a hard place
https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1738974
 
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gary said:
where and what day did we see the yellow rumped warbler, so far i haven't seen it. but it may have been in the blurry throw aways, i know some of those smaller birds were very hard
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That was on the first day - after we went to Wakodahatchee Wetlands and did one go-around - right before we went back to the car for drinks and a break...it was one of the last shots I took with the 200-600mm lens, then later when we went back in, I switched to the 100-400mm.
 
Very nice! Definitely looks like great resolution and focus too. Might be worth trying out more with the big lens next time too - combine the resolution with the 500mm reach. If the weight's a bit much to carry all day, you can monopod the lens when shooting and maybe either sling the lens or put the lens over your shoulder still mounted to the monopod when walking.
 
zackiedawg said:
Very nice! Definitely looks like great resolution and focus too. Might be worth trying out more with the big lens next time too - combine the resolution with the 500mm reach. If the weight's a bit much to carry all day, you can monopod the lens when shooting and maybe either sling the lens or put the lens over your shoulder still mounted to the monopod when walking.
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The problem I was having was that with the DSLR version of the 200 to 500 at 5.6 and the ftz2 adapter was that the focusing was too slow for the fast action.

It also tended to focus hunt a little, so with those two factors it was a non-starter.

I'm sure I could use it in certain situations where it's slow response time would be within use parameters but I didn't find it to be a good match for birding.

~Joanie
 
id needed, one of the last birds photographed on saturday, wakodahatchee, for some reason i am having a hard time making identification?? possibly least bittern??

 
gary said:
id needed, one of the last birds photographed on saturday, wakodahatchee, for some reason i am having a hard time making identification?? possibly least bittern??

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I believe with high certainty that it's a Least Bittern.

What did I win??
~Joanie

In all honesty, I'm using my bird book "BIRDS OF FLORIDA" by Pranty, Radamaker and Kennedy (Lone Pine publishers) and my laminated pamphlet "FLORIDA BIRDS" BY KAVANAGH/LEUNG
to work out my ID's.
 
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Yes - both correct. This is the least bittern - in particular, an adult male with some breeding plumage showing (the males always have the black on their head and back, while the females are brown there). The rich chestnut brown around the sides of the face, and the slight tinge of red at the base of the bill, are the early breeding colors coming in.
 
`yay, i was able to properly discern the markings and identify this bird using my laminated pamphlet entitled birds of south florida, illustrated by ernest simmons and published by earthskywater.net. purchased right after bird mania from amazon. i have purchased several of these laminated guides for birding. this one, sibley's backyard birds of florida, birds of florida's gulf coast, and birds of the mid atlantic coast, most illustrated by simmons. these are very good and useful guides. and being waterproof they can all go in the field.
 
and the red winged blackbird, posing for us on a railing, and justin was right on the money, birds are very close down here, and very used to people walking around and pointing cameras at them. it wasn't the million dollar fence at conowingo, but there was a fair amount of large glass out at the wetlands
and the keeper total was 185 , both days combined, out of approx 7500 taken, many pixels were murdered and cast into the pit of deletion

 
gary said:
id needed, one of the last birds photographed on saturday, wakodahatchee, for some reason i am having a hard time making identification?? possibly least bittern??

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Gary (and others following this thread)...I thought you might like to see one of the great party tricks of this particular bird. The least bittern (member of the heron family), looks to be a stocky little bird with no neck. But there's an astounding amount of neck coiled up inside those feathers that you don't see until they reveal it. This weekend I caught a female least bittern sitting pretty, looking like they usually do:
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But then I also caught her when she decided to do some fishing...and revealed just how much she can stretch out that neck:
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Now THAT'S a party trick!
 
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