This Old Blog

Taken yesterday, these are the culls from day two of the Great Hawk Photo Safari. Unlike Monday, Tuesday was a bit overcast and a bit darker because of it. That, along with the desire to close the 50-200mm + EC-14 down about a half stop to f/5.6 forced me to shoot at ISO 200 (base on the E-1 is ISO 100). The top photo was taken wide open at f/4.9 with me as close as I could get to fill as much of the frame as possible. But I still had to crop more than I would have liked. Since I was shooting against the sky, I decided to process the raw file in black and white with Silver Efex Pro 2, and to process the hawk and just let the sky to go white and loose all the detail. The effect I was after was a pen-and-ink like drawing on Bristol board. The problem with this photo is that the extreme manipulation of contrast inadvertently enhances the E-3 sensor's tendency towards banding in areas that have the same luminance and toning, such as the parking lot light the hawk was at rest on in

Today was the day that three important factors finally came together for me: a bright clear day, the red hawks in the area and on a tree I was familiar with, and me walking along with my E-3 plus 50-200mm with the EC-14 tele-extender. Racked out, the combination is about 300mm at f/5, twice as long as my M.Zuiko 40-150mm and a bit brighter wide open. This combination gives an effective focal length of 600mm, which is a pretty considerable reach for everything else I've taken with this combination, except for these hawks. I've been smitten with the hawks since finding them flying about my work area mid-February. Since that time I've been attempting to photograph them. I've been trying to photograph them sitting because when they take to wing I'm so taken with them in flight that I forget momentarily to try and track them with the camera I have in my hands. Being an absolute beginner at this I need to practice photographing them at rest. Once I get that part nailed