Morning in the Woods

So I have had some time to play around with my Nikon D-300. So far I have to say I am pretty impressed with the camera. I am not an expert in hardware so I do not have access to lab tests to put the camera through, so I am going by the results I have been getting from regular everyday shooting. I love going up to Mud Lake in the west end of Ottawa because the area has lots of potential subjects to photograph. It's one of Ottawa's prime small and water bird areas. It also has numerous turtles and other amphibians. The trails around the lake bring you through a couple of ecosystems from forest to meadows.

One of my favourite times to go out shooting is first thing in the morning, especially when the sun is just coming up over the horizon. The light is coming in a more horizontal direction unlike the direct over head light of the mid-day sun. This leads to some interesting effects on tree trunks and plants. Light in the morning takes on a golden hue due to the greater amount of atmosphere it has to pass through. The exact same thing happens at sunset. The sky turns golden then to red as the sun gets lower in the sky. In the morning it just happens in reverse. The light is also not as intense as when the sun is higher in the sky. This makes it easier to shoot in the forest and get those shots where the sun is high, lighting one area in amongst the trees or light falling onto undergrowth foliage without the need for polarizing filters. Speaking of polarizing filters, if your going to try taking forest shots in the midday it is a good idea to use a polarizing filter on your lens. Shooting without the polarizing filter will cause the sunlight areas to over expose when you expose your sensor to get detail of the forest. If you expose for the sunlight areas the rest of the shot will be too dark. The polarizer will allow the longer exposure time and not have the sunny areas overexposed.

Out with the old, in with the new.

A little less than a year ago I had purchased my second DSLR camera from Henry's Camera Shop. I decides to try out the Sony Alpha 100. It was in the price range that I could afford and was a 10.2 megapixel camera. My Pentax K100D which I am very happy with is only a 6 megapixel. Needless to say I was never very happy with the Sony 100. I found it very noisy even at ISO 400. That was bringing me back to the old days when ISO 400 film first came out. It was very grainy. There were a few other things that I was not happy about with the Sony but won't go into details.

So after doing alot of thinking I decided to trade in my Sony gear since Henry's has a policy of trading in and trading up. As long as your within the year of your purchase you will get 50% of the original purchase price. For me this was great as the Sony was selling for less than 50% on Ebay. Once Sony brought out the Alpha 700 then their new line of cameras the 200, 300 and 350 the price of the Alpha dropped like a rock in water.

I had thought long and hard as to the direction I wanted to go. I narrowed it down to either Nikon or Canon. Both companies make excellent cameras. Canon has a larger selection of lenses and the larger lenses for wildlife shooting are about 20-30% cheaper in price. This is not to say they are cheaper in quality as I have seen the majority of journalists using Canon cameras and lenses.

Both Canon and Nikon have image stabilization built into their lenses. Canon calls theirs IS or Image Stabilization. Nikon has VR or Vibration Reduction on the lens naming. If the lens does not have either of those in their designation then they are more than likely older non-image stabilized lenses. Sony and Pentax both have image stabilization built into the cameras. I am not sure which method works the best.

Lenses with image stabilization will tend to be higher in price than their older counterparts. This does not mean that the older versions of the lens are not still valuable. IS or VR is only really important for hand held shooting. If your shooting from a tripod for landscapes, macro or extreme wildlife photography, where the lens is impossibly big to carry then image stabilizing is not as critical. Some photographers turn off the image stabilization as they find it slows down the lens.

After doing more research and talking to various shooters I have met over the last year I decided to go with Nikon and in particular the D300. The D300 is a 12.3 megapixel camera which does not put it much above the 10.2 MP Sony. But it has alot of features that I found interesting. I won't go into all the features as I would be writing a book to cover them all. If your really into reviews you can read them online at www.dpreview.com. These guys cover just about everything dealing with photography and do so in great depth.

So far I have been impressed with the D300 and the 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 G VR lens that I got separately. This lens covers alot of the range I use for landscape shots as well as portrait. It retails for about $699.00 Canadian here in Ottawa. It is a great walk around lens for every day use. There are better lenses and worse lenses in the zoom range but this is Nikon's Super zoom with a 11:1 zooming ratio. I took some very nice shots of a sunset at Andrew Hayden Park a couple of nights ago. These can be found on my website under the Scenery/Sunsets2008 page. My website address is www.mtcmediaproductions.com.

Because I like to shoot wildlife the 18-200mm does not have the range I need. So I have ordered Nikon's 200-400mm f/4 . This is a good sized lens, from talking to the people who own this lens it is very sharp at both ends of the zoom. Being a f4 I would recommend only adding the 1.4x extender. This will drop your lens to an f5.6 which is good for birds in flight. If your shooting stationary slow moving animals then a 2x extender on a tripod should work fine in high light conditions. A 2x extender will drop your lens 2 f stops. I do not have the lens yet so I cannot comment on any degradation of the sharpness. But I would recommend using a Nikon extender even though they are pricey. Cheaper third party extenders might decrease the lenses sharpness.

When the lens comes in I will update my blog to let you know how it works.

Canadian Tulip Festival

The cool weather we have been having has been good for the annual Canadian Tulip Festival in Ottawa. For those who are unfamiliar with the Tulip Festival it began back in 1953. It has now grown into the worlds largest Tulip Festival. The Tulips were a gift from the Dutch Royal family. During the second world war the Dutch royal family were given refuge in Ottawa. Princess Margriet was born in the Ottawa Civic Hospital, her room was declared Dutch soil so she could keep her Dutch nationality.

Over the next sixty years the Tulip Festival has grown in size and in importance. Many tourists come to Ottawa just to see the tulips. At Dows Lake alone they plant over 300,000 bulbs. You can find them also along the canal, Parliament Hill and Majors Hill Park. Each spring over 600,000 people from all over North America, Europe and Asia visit the tulips.

Through the 1990s and into the new millennium, the Canadian Tulip Festival celebrated the Tulip as a symbol of Peace and Friendship creating an annual international bond by twinning with Friendship Countries including the Netherlands, Turkey, France, Japan, the United States, Great Britain and Australia.

I would highly recommend going down to see the festival or visiting Ottawa from out of town. At Major's Hill Park which is situated behind the Chateau Laurier hotel. Not only are there hugh amounts of tulips to see in the daytime, there is also tents full of entertainment going most of the day and evening.

Mud Lake

It has been a very busy week so I did not get any chances to get out shooting. On Sunday April 20th I decided I needed a fix of photography so headed out to Mud Lake near the Britannia filtration plant. Last time I was there the trails were still snow covered and walking was too difficult, but Sunday the trails were good for walking. There were a few wetter spots but these were easy to go around. It was such a beautiful spring day and many of the forest denizens took advantage and came exploring. While walking the trail with my head looking up for birds I heard a sound from the forest floor. Kind of a buzzing sound. I first thought it was bees but then I noticed this cute little one. Fortunately when it noticed me it froze long enough for me to approach and get this shot. While many people do not like or are actually afraid of snakes I think they are extremely beautiful reptiles. Mind you I am not about to run to the pet shop and start purchasing every snake I see, but in their own environment they are an important part of the ecosystem.

After the little Garter snake slithered off we continued on our trek around the South Western end of the lake. The small bay is quite often the home of turtles and various ducks. Earlier on in the spring I got pictures of a pair of Wood Ducks. It seems they moved into the small bay area as the area by the road is getting quite busy with people coming to see the spring birds and the greater number of Canada Geese that have moved into the lake to breed. But while in this area we spotted another of the lakes reptiles. This medium sized snapping turtle at first had just it's head in the water maybe looking for food to swim into range of its jaws. But I know they could not hold their breath forever so I waited for it to come up for air. I say it is a medium sized turtle even though its shell was probably a good 1.75 to 2 feet from end to end. But on a previous trip last year we had the opportunity to see the granddad of snapping turtle. I have pictures of it on my website. This one's shell had to be a minimum of 3 feet across in width. The head was like the head of some prehistoric creature.

We spent about 2 hours wandering around Mud Lake that day. Other creatures we saw and photographed were Wood Ducks, Canada Geese, Painted Turtles, Common Flicker, White Breasted Nuthatch and a male Cardinal. There are still many more spring birds that have not arrived, but the walk is well worth taking.

The Elusive Wood Duck

Many times while shooting water fowl I have seen the very beautiful Wood Duck far out in the middle of Mud Lake. Yesterday I decided to do another tour of the birding areas in Ottawa. The Duchense Rapids were fairly busy last week with the usual Mallards, Canada Geese and Ring Billed Gulls. While I was there a group of about 8 Pintailed Ducks flew in and settled on the open water. Unfortunately this week the water was pretty much free of ice to the Quebec shore, so the number and variety of birds was greatly diminished.

Moving on to Mud Lake I finally got a chance to get some very nice pictures of the elusive Wood Duck. Like most birds the female of the pair are fairly plain in colour. This is to make camouflage easier for them when sitting on their nest. The male on the other hand looks like it has been painted by a master artist.

Hopefully these tamer Wood Ducks will stick around the close shore areas and I will be able to get more photographs.

After touring the west end of the city I decided to go out to the Wall Rd area in Orleans. Wall Rd is a very good place to see Northern Harriers and Rough Legged Hawks during the summer time. I did see a couple of Harriers in the fields but they were too far off to get good shots so late in the day. What got me the most was the amount of water running along the road side. They were like small rivers, complete with rapids. One area even had a foot wide whirl pool. With the amount of snow still in the fields I imagine this draining of the fields will be going on for a while yet.

St. Lawrence area

On Thursday March 27 I returned to the St Lawrence area to see how the spring migrants were going. The river was still well covered in ice. This allowed me to get close to the thousands of Canada and Snow Geese that have stopped over on the journey north. When I had a chance to return to the area yesterday the geese had either moved on or moved to another location. There was alot more open water than before so this may have had something to do with it.

While driving along the parkway one has to go slow as any number of interesting animals and birds could be missed. I have seen Turkey Vultures circling over head many times but Thursday I was given the opportunity to observe one closely. This one was perched in a tree just over a Raccoon carcass. It did not seem too interested in it as it was pretty much intact.

I knew they were large but did not realize just how big they were until this one took off as I was moving towards it to try to get a better shot.

Further on the road very close to the Turkey Vulture I had another opportunity that does not happen very often. Sitting all by itself taking in the territory was a juvenile Peregrin Falcon. This was my first time seeing a Peregrin for any length of time. I could not see the feet under the feathers so its hard to tell if this is a wild birthed one or a baby from the ones that were banded in Ottawa or another city close by. I was hoping to get closer but a couple of local people came by and asked me what type of bird it was, this led to a pleasant conversation but the Pergrin flew away while we were talking.

I find the St. Lawrence region to be a good area for nature shooting during this time period as not many people are around and the animals are closer to the roadside. Every day is different and this summer should be interesting to see what summer birds are around.

Three sets of Eyes better than one

Had the opportunity to join two other Ottawa photographers on an outing yesterday. While the clear skies and sunshine we had hoped for did not show, the pleasure of the company made up for the lack of sun. We decided to travel the back road towards the St. Lawrence River to see what migratory birds had arrived. On the way there we stopped at Forest Park to see if the Tufted Titmouse would make an appearance. I was under the impression the feeder was in the park area but as it turned out the bird was seen at a private feeder in someone's back yard. Looking through binoculars we could see some Evening Grosbeaks at the feeder so I politely knocked on the residence door and asked permission to take some pictures from the back side of the house. The resident was very accommodating to us and gave us permission. Both male and female were present, with the males being a beautiful bright lemon yellow with white and black on their wings.

After that we continued our journey to the river keeping an eye out for anything unusual along the way. When we reached the area we were looking for we drove along the road searching for something to photograph. There were robins and starlings everywhere along the road so spring must be around the corner. Along some of the waterways there were a few spots here and there with open water but for the most part the river is still frozen over. In one small open area there were a couple of Canada Geese, some Red Headed Mergansers and a Bufflehead. Canada Geese could be seen flying in squadrons over head. Sometimes there were just to many to possibly count. Further along we did find a larger area of open water and found where these squadrons were landing. The picture shown is just a small percentage of the geese that were in the area and more were coming in all the time. Also mixed in with the Canada Geese were a number of Snow Geese. These unfortunately were to far away to photograph.

After touring the area for a while and stopping for a bite to eat we were on the way back through the parkway and I happen to spot a Raccoon in a tree. Usually raccoons are higher up a tree but this one was only about 5 feet or so. I have to admit most of my experience with Raccoons is usually in my back yard trying to get into my garbage cans so they are not usually looked on favourably by me or most people. But this little darling must have been a young one, maybe a year or more old. While it did not seem to be too frightened of us we did not want to be two threatening and get too close to it. But I will tell you I was not the only one that wanted to go up and pet it like it was a domestic animal. Which as we all know would not be a good idea. Wild animals are exactly that "wild". They are not used to human contact so always stay a considerate distance away from them no matter how cute they look. It made our day being able to get some good shots of this animal and to just see it in another way other than an urban nuisance. They are actually quite beautiful animals.

All in all with the company of the other two photographers and the photographs we got it made for a very enjoyable day. Time sure does fly when one is having fun.