Oh Deer!

We have several apple trees in our yard and there was a bumper crop of apples this year, so many that we couldn't give them away much less use them all. Surprisingly a lot have hung onto the tree well into winter and the local deer find them attractive. We've had anywhere from two to eight deer at a time feeding under our trees for the last several days. It's fine with me. I won't have to clean the dropped apples out of the lawn come spring. I don't consider myself to be a wildlife photographer but these deer are making it look as if I know what I am doing. In reality what I am doing is shaking the tree to get apples to drop and then when the deer come around I park myself in an upstairs bedroom window that overlooks the yard and snapping photos with my Canon SX50 HS. Today seven deer came around just before sunset.

They are fun to watch. They usually come in pairs, a doe and a smaller one, probably a yearling fawn. Sometimes a fawn gets a bit too frisky and the older deer nips the fawn on the hind quarters. I don't think they can see me in the window but they seem to sense that they are being watched and frequently go on alert like the young one above. Sometimes one seems to be looking right at me. On the other hand cars can go by and they don't get spooked enough to run away.

Occasionally one of the older ones will decide to pick an apple that is still on the tree by rearing up on their hind legs to reach it. That's a bit tricky to catch because it happens so quickly. I have to anticipate it, be already focused and aimed when it happens.

The nature show in our yard is turning a winter that started off rather unpleasantly into a much more enjoyable season.

As always I hope you enjoy the photos and if you want to share them please share the URL of this page. Do not re-post without permission.

The Moon Again

Last night as I was going out to take in the bird feeders* in I spotted this scene and dashed back to get my camera. It was shot with the Canon SX 50 handheld 1/15th sec. Judging by the tree at the right I'd say the image stabilization worked pretty well. I love the colors of the sunset afterglow.

*We take in the bird feeders at night because the raccoons get into them if we leave them out.

Nothing New Under The Sun?

There may be nothing new but if you haven't already seen it, it is as good as new. This flower was new to me this morning. It's a Deptford Pink according to my Audubon guide. I thought when I spotted it that it must be related to the Maiden Pinks I'd been photographing in my back field but there are distinct differences so I had to look it up. I don't recall ever seeing this variety before and I'm quite certain I've never photographed any of them before. So I end the month of June with a 'new' flower.

Canon SX50, Lightroom & Photoshop CC

The Smell of Snow

Today started off sunny but in the afternoon the storm that clobbered the mid-west started moving in. Around 4 PM it was coming down hard and I shot some 'cheater' images from the cover of the porch and out various windows. This one was made through the window in the laundry room, a clump of white birches that is attractive in almost any season but it looked especially nice in the falling snow which greyed out the forest across the field behind it.

This snow is wet and heavy. The first bit that fell immediately turned to slush. When I got up this morning the snow that fell last night was like tiny snow balls, round clusters not much more than 1/16th inch in diameter. The Eskimos have different words for different kinds of snow and anyone who lives in an area like this that gets frequent snow can tell you that there are different smells to different snowfalls too. This one smelled like spring, the kind of snowfall we get when the maple sap begins to run. The kind of snowfall that both reminds me that it is still winter but also promises spring.

Canon SX50.

Can You See the Forest Among the Trees?

The tree and rock just left of center have appeared here before. The tree is at the Northwest corner of a section of our small woodlot that extends into the corner of our back field. In case you haven't noticed, I fond of woods and trees. They appear frequently as subjects of my photography. I enjoy seeing other photographer's photographs of trees and forests, at least I usually do.

Yesterday I was in book store and they had a copy of Skogen by Robert Adams. I've read some of his books on photography and he has a very different view of the medium than I do. That said I wondered how he would do with woodlands as subject matter. The single review on Amazon was a rave and I had seen a couple of other favorable reviews but I wasn't about to order a copy sight unseen.

The reviews I've seen are uniform in their praise of the book, its layout, fine paper and printing, the quality of the binding and I have to agree that those things are very nice indeed. After thumbing through the book however it remains on the bookstore shelf nor will I be ordering a copy from Amazon at their 30% discount price. Suffice to say that had I made those photos they would all be in the reject bin.  A beautiful package that was a let down when opened.

I debated whether I should write my own Amazon review but since I didn't buy the book at all, much less from Amazon, it seemed churlish to write a "Customer Review" on their site. Instead I vent my disappointment here.

Woodlot, Northwest Corner was shot with my Canon SX50 and converted to B&W using NIK Silver Efex 2.0.

New Camera - Canon SX50 HS

I haven't been watching new equipment announcements so I didn't know about the Canon SX50 HS until a friend told me. I was dismissive at first because it was so inexpensive I had a hard time seeing how it could generate high quality images at a 1200mm equivalent angle of view but it nagged at me because of the times I've had to pass on photos simply because my lens wouldn't pull in the subject. I had a chance to get one on sale and on an impulse I bought it. This is a mini-review which is to say I'm not going into the kind of detail that review sites like DP Review do. Just my impressions in my (so far) limited use of it.

The photos here come from an outing yesterday to a local trail along the Racquette River. I took the SX50 HS but not a tripod. I was on snowshoes and did have one hiking pole with a small ballhead on the camera screw under the knob. I shot 65 photos. I lost one series of 4 or 5 photos because some water drops got on the lens and I missed seeing that until I got home. My fault, not the camera's.

The photos below were shot with the lens at or nearly at full extension. I used the hiking pole and a convenient tree for stabilizing the camera. Both have been subjected to my 3 stage sharpening (Detail controls in Lightroom, export to Photoshop, apply USM 15/60/0 and Smart Sharpening 75% at 0.3 radius). The Smart Sharpening settings I use vary according to final image size and the type of output. These are settings I frequently use for an 800 pixel wide web image.

 For reference below is a broad view, although not the full width of the widest angle the camera can do, taken from exactly the same position as the two icicle shots. All were shot as RAW images. The icicle shots both come from the area outlined in red, they are left and right at the base of the rock. The water's edge on my side of the river was about 8-10 feet in front of me.

 I'm still getting used to the controls which are significantly different from my other Canon cameras. The buttons on the back are too easily pressed, causing unintended changes in settings and the power button not easily enough. You have to press it with some deliberateness to turn the camera on or off. I lost 2 or 3 shots at the longest focal length due to camera movement, not surprising for such a long lens. A tripod would have been better than the pole and a cable release would help too. For the money though, and with care, the camera is quite a good performer.

 The closeups were 1/13th sec. @ f/6.3. The lens only stops down to f/8 and wide open is f/3.4. Neither closeup image was cropped, they are the full 3000x4000 pixels so at 240ppi I could print them 12'X16". At 300ppi they would be 10"x13".

This camera won't replace the 7D but  will be more like a supplement for when I need the kind of reach that I don't have and can't afford for the DSLR, not to mention that a DSLR lens of similar length could be a weight concern. The longest SLR lens Canon makes is 800mm. It weighs 9.9# and costs $14K. To get to approximately 1200mm you'd need a 1.4 Tel-extender which weighs only ½# but adds another $500. The SX50 HS cost me $400 on sale. Would the performance of the 7D with a tel-extender and 800mm lens be $14,100 better? I don't think so, at least not for me. I don't do that much telephoto shooting. The SX50 may replace the G11 for hiking when photography is not the object of the hike but I want a camera along.