Saturday 17 January 2015

A Step Up In Quality?

With some clear skies and light winds forecast and a few new tricks up my sleeve to try out on the Barn Owls, I made my way out last night arriving at an undisclosed site at 7.15pm where I spent 3 and a half hours watching and photographing the Barn Owls. I had borrowed a Jessops 360 AFDC flash which I hoped would give me a little extra light to play around with. Whilst I have been been very happy with my shots the past sessions I was looking for a bit more quality in the shots and hopefully some better lighting and feather detail. A few initial shots seemed to work well and after a few adjustments I was able to set up at f8, ISO 320 and a speed of 250. I spent the next 3 hours watching up to 6 Barn Owls with 4 in view together on the posts allowing me to fire off a number of shots. I occasionally had to put the camera down and just watch these beauties at close range hunting from the posts, the views are just awesome. With the added bonus of not having to get out of the car, the heating on and a good flask of coffee to have as the frost set in, this again ended up being another good session and I think looking at the shots of which no doubt more will be posted, the change in settings certainly has made for a better quality shot. Around 11pm I left for home and hopefully the next session will not be too long away!






Barn Owl

12 comments:

  1. Great shots Marc all the new gear seems to be performing very well.

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  2. Fantastic shots of the Barn Owl. Do you use a flash?

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  3. Certainly can see a bit more detail on these shots Marc. Did you use a 320 ISO on the previous Barny posts ? Shutter speed of 250 seems quite low, but hasn't caused any problems :-)

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    1. Warren, the amount of time the flash is lit is the effective shutter speed, not the 1/250s dialled into the camera. Cheers

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    2. Ah! I see, not done any ''flash'' work yet :-) Ta for the info Marc.

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  4. Fantastic, wish I made thoose! Gr. John

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  6. Oh dear, did I say something wrong?

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    1. No Derek, nothing wrong. Just wanting to keep site as undisclosed as i'm sure you understand.

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