I finally got up the road apiece to take some photos of the bald eagle
juveniles in Ruskin, FL. They're not chicks any more but neither are
they quite ready to fly yet. But as you can see from the photos they
are working on trying out their wings.
I haven't done this sort of shooting for many, many years and discovered
that I was woefully unprepared from a lens standpoint. I think I needed
at least 500mm and maybe even 1000. I shot these photos using my Tokina
80-200 at 200mm and f/5.6 with a Kenko 1.5X converter for an effective
focal length of 300mm and effective aperture of f/8. Shutter speed was
1/800 at ISO 400. Maybe the photos would have been better at 1/1600 at
ISO 800.
The first image shows the full frame of one of the shots at 300mm. The
remaining images are crops at 4x5 ratio of approx. 20% of the frame.
The image quality can't withstand enlargement beyond that. Fairly soft
due, I suppose, to lens/multiplier quality, wind (10-15 mph breeze) and
vibration... no mirror lock and no sandbags. The birds were so far away
that my viewing angle on the tripod was fairly shallow and I never did
need the 90 degree Minolta finder I mentioned recently.
I never did see the parents. The Little Manatee River is off to the
left about 200 yards so I assume mom & dad were off fishing there to
feed the youngsters.
<http://www.chucknorcutt.com/Bald%20eagle%20juveniles/index.htm>
--
_________________________________________________________________
Options: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/listinfo/olympus
Archives: http://lists.thomasclausen.net/mailman/private/olympus/
Themed Olympus Photo Exhibition: http://www.tope.nl/
|