Of Mood and Birds

This afternoon I went to go look for birds for my new 500mm lens. I found birds and some mood.

All images are scaled to 1920 pixels across otherwise substack can complain.

Please click on images for full size. Best seen on a monitor of course.

The afternoon was a steady wet snow, not cold enough to accumulate, falling out of a gray windy sky. Not great conditions for wildlife photgraphs but I thought ‘what the hell’ it is all about getting experience and nothing is lost in time spent outdoors.

I packed up the camera and dog and headed toward Hawkins Point on Lake Pend Oreille. One can often find waterfowl out there and perhaps some bald eagles.

The weather worsened as we drove out with thick snow. I wasn’t hopeful. Not being a wildlife photographer I still understood these are not great conditions. Low light with big ISOs, slow shutter speeds, and a wide open aperture. Sharp image were going to be difficult to find in moving subjects.

As we drove along the shoreline which recedes every fall when they draw the lake down we saw four bald eagles on the waters edge who promptly flew off one by one as I slowed to hopefully get a photo. Oh well so much for that.

We pulled over a few hundred yards further to watch two other immature eagles lift off the shoreline as well. Another missed opportunity but no matter. We got out and walked over slippery stones to the waters edge. Snow was falling streadily but the wind we felt on the highway was absent here.

I stumbled and slipped along the shore and managed a few images which were more mood than wildlife. Some turned out quite pleasing. Mollie for her part waded in the lake a bit but was taken with mostly exploring the summer shoreline while I prowled the water’s edge. The shore was littered with fish bones. The eagles clearly had been gorging themselves along here.

The two immature eagles ended up in a ponderosa right next to my truck. I snapped them occasionsally as I walked the shore toward the point but found the best images came when I climbed the hill above the road on the way back.

The mature eagles flew by use twice as we walked but I could not get any good photos owing to their speed and close proximity.

Finally Mollie and I got back to the truck quite wet from the snow.

As we drove back one of the eagles ended up on some piers and allowed me to stop and shoot it from the open window of the truck.

Comments on Camera and Lens

I made good use of the camera’s water resistant feature as I did not shelter it the entire walk.

The conditions made for diffculties getting sharp images. The final eagle image was the result of discarding nine others as they were not sharp enough. In the end I was lucky I decided to try and manually focus few times because one of these was the best result. It took a very slight focus adjustment to get it wrong. I am not sure if the autofocus was confused by the falling snow that streaks the image. Depth of field is very narrow at f5.6 on this lens.

The camera is just not up to focussing on flying birds. The autofocus is not nearly fast enough so it is limited to more or less static images.

I did like many of the moody images I got. The lens shows much promise in this regard with its ability to bring up and isolated geographical features.

It is abundantly clear that a wildlife and bird photographer would be nest served by either another camera or the GFX 100s ii which has superior autofocus according to reveiews. The GFX 50s ii is a great landscape camera however.