Category Archives: Year 5

Best Photos of 2018: Part 1

Background, Year 5

As 2018 draws to a close, I decided to take a look back at my photographic journey through the year. This is the first of two “best photos” posts. Part 2 will focus upon birds, but today I will leave my fine feathered friends out of the equation for a change!

If it is not obvious, I love Lake Superior. When one lives in Duluth, the lake is everywhere. I am so thankful my parents moved here when I was six months old. I have had a life long love affair with the lake ever since. While Superior is beautiful in the Summer, it is during inclement weather that her full majesty is displayed.

Sea Smoke: When the temperature drops well below zero this is almost always a call for me to head outside with my camera. Early in the winter the temperature differential between the lake which has not cooled off much yet and the frigid air generates sea smoke. For this first photograph I was out at the Superior Entry Lighthouse on a cold day when I heard the Coast Guard Cutter Alder’s diesel turbines. I quickly checked my marine app and confirmed a ship was approaching the canal. For ten minutes I waited till suddenly the cutter appeared. The photo opportunity was over in seconds. I got cold waiting as the temperature was well below zero.

A few weeks later I had moved from the South Shore of Lake Superior to the North Shore. Strong winds and fear of ice buildup on the ships meant viewing opportunities from Silver Cliffs. This route to Sault Ste. Marie is much longer, but in the early winter ships will take this path to avoid the wind.

Back to the Superior Entry Lighthouse and one morning I found the three roses. I wondered why the flowers were left on the beach. I will never know.

Finally, another day at Silver Cliffs during this fall’s big storm. A freighter making its way through the tempest measured the wind speed at 86 mph just before I took this photograph. Uff dah.

While I love photographing birds, mammals are not far behind. The first two images were taken in my own yard. While I live on the very edge of the Boreal Forest, in addition to the part of my yard which is heavily forested, the rest of the yard is tall grasses and perennials. My local mammal population likes the combination and we see all kinds of wildlife, including this Gray Fox which caught a chipmunk underneath my bird feeders, and a White-Tailed Buck in velvet which hung out often in my yard this summer.

Most long time readers of my blog know I love to cycle, and my camera is always with me. Most days will find me at some point riding up the North Shore on Scenic 61 (Bob Dylan’s famous road). Both these images came about during bike rides. For the red fox, I spied the canine watching me through the lupines. I jumped off my bike and this pic resulted. For the river otter, I decided to check out a local river. I found this otter diving for shellfish breakfast. It was very cooperative in terms of letting me watch. My bike ride took a 30 minute break that day … not so good for the work out, but a magical morning.

Finally, I like photographing the “dark side”. From sunset to sunrise you will often find me out with my camera. For the Canadian Pacific Holiday Train photograph I have actually first scouted the location via Google Satellite, then Google Street View, and finally in person. I knew the location was a winner. My only hope was the train would slow down as it approached Nipigon, Ontario … and that I would be able to hear the approaching train over the sound of the rushing water.

The next two images are from Grand Teton National Park. Although I had caught pneumonia while in Yellowstone, and was still quite sick, I could not spend my entire day sleeping in our motel room. Sunset and Moonset over the Grand Tetons.

My final image is the Milky Way over the Davidson Windmill in northwestern Wisconsin. I wonder if the Finnish immigrants that built this windmill to grind grain in the very early 1900’s could have ever imagined some software nerd (what’s software) turned wildlife photographer would decide their windmill was one of his favorite night spots in the Northland?!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone. The best birds of 2018 will come sometime before the new year.

Drunken Crows of NE Minnesota!

Background, Year 5

The crows in northeast Minnesota which Amazon Alexa uses to measure distance must be seriously straight line flight challenged, or drunk! Molly (my wife) and I had a HUGE laugh the other evening when we asked Alexa the distances between Duluth and Wisconsin, or Canada “as the crow flies”. The image is a screenshot from the Alexa App which shows your recent activity via the device … in our case the crow questions.

I don’t think Alexa knows much about birds and birding! Have you asked Alexa any birding questions? (In case you are geographically challenged about Duluth, our fair city borders Wisconsin and the straight line distance to Canada is about 100 miles)

Google Map’s crows must not have attended the same Christmas party, or were the designated flyers.

 

Canon SX70 Review: Snowy Owls & Spruce Grouse

Background, Year 5, ,

My new camera, a Canon SX70 ($549) arrived on Monday. I have been out birding twice in the past two days in both perfect light, and the low light of a northern winter morning as the sun tries to peak above the horizon. This review of the Canon SX70 will be the first of several reports. I will use this post as a “table of contents” and will ultimately link those additional reviews directly below in the bulleted list

Last update to this blog post: August 19, 2022

The first question one might ask is why purchase a “super zoom / bridge” camera? Would not a DSLR camera be better? The answer as often in life is … it depends. My Canon SX70 has a much smaller sensor than a DSLR, but also is a much more compact package than a DSLR with a long telephoto lens. My life is an active one which has included over 10,000 miles of self supported bicycle touring in North America with my wife, and closer to home I am always hiking into the back country in search of wildlife. Lugging a tripod, large and heavy telephoto lens and camera along  on these activities is not practical. A super zoom camera allows me to enjoy the outdoors away from my car.

The next logical question might be, why not this kind of camera for everyone. My new Canon SX70 has a 65x optical zoom lens, which is a 1365 mm full sized 35 mm camera equivalent. My SX70 has a much smaller sensor than a DSLR, which means less sensor area to capture light. Photography is all about light capture. If one’s sensor can not capture as much light during a standard unit time, then one must increase the number of time units the shutter is open. For wildlife, specifically birding photography, long exposures mean blurry photographs. Thus, what is the desired trade-off between sensor size and zoom cameras for an outdoor enthusiast like me?

I had owned my previous camera, the Canon SX60, for a little over four years. It was wearing out after having taken thousands and thousands of images. I gave considerable thought to the question I posed in the previous paragraph. Super zoom cameras now exist with significantly more reach than my 65x optical zoom. If 65x is good, would not 100x be better? The answer is not necessarily. The additional reach comes with image degradation. The laws of physics mean there is a practical limit to how much light a zoom lens can put down upon a sensor per unit time as the reach of the zoom lens is increased. For me 65x is a nice cross between reach and image quality. On days with decent light which allows me to use lower ISO settings, the super zoom cameras perform well.

Before moving on to my personal results with the SX70, Canon is showing major support for this new platform. They have now released a new “Software Developer’s Kit” for their EOS DSLR’s and SX70 cameras. Thus, the SX70 is Canon’s only non DSLR with this support, which will allow developers to accomplish neat tasks via the API.

Enough of my preamble … how is my Canon SX70 performing? The answer is I am very pleased. Remember cameras are now more computers than mechanical devices. My new SX70 keeps the 65x optical zoom, but has a new sensor and operating system at its core compared to my old Canon. These facts have also resulted in an increase of 16 to 20.3 megapixels (25% increase) which allows me increased resolution for my resulting images (better cropping options).

For my first two birding outings, my camera was configured in this manner:

  • Digital zoom turned off (can always crop in post production which is essentially digital zoom)
  • Spot focus (I quickly found letting the Canon SX70 pick the focus point did not work well. The camera often picked perches, or even the sky as the primary focus point, and not the bird’s eyes)
  • ISO max limited to 400 ISO.
  • Use of a monopod to stabilize photographs
  • Aperture or Shutter Priority, never Auto mode. For birds which were perched or in low motion situations I used Aperture Mode. When I wanted flight shots, I switched to Shutter Priority. The camera set the ISO setting in both situations up to a maximum of 400 ISO. To have a shorter exposure time for flight times, the camera would increase the ISO compared to Aperture Mode. Higher ISO means lesser image quality. However a blurred photograph of a bird on the wing is useless. I needed to let in more light. Increasing your ISO effectively increases the camera’s sensor sensitivity to light.
  • Raw files turned off (allows one to take more images per second, and conserves battery power … useful in northern Minnesota where winters are cold)
  • High Speed (14 frames per second) … Not Single Shot

Remember, you may click or press upon any image to view at full size and resolution. I was examining each of these photographs in this manner. I utilized minimal post processing. I tend to open image in “camera raw” (the jpf file, not the actual raw file). You may wish to read Tech Radar’s review of super zoom / bridge cameras.

First Birding Expedition: Snowy Owl and Red Tailed Hawk

The lighting conditions were near perfect. I started taking photographs 75 minutes before sunset, and continued right up till sundown. I was extremely happy with my new camera’s results. Here are the images I kept alomg with the photo settings. Believe it or not, the flghts shots of the Snowy Owl were about the 10th to 15th photographs I ever took with my new SX70. Here is one more curious fact. I found two Snowy Owls and the Red-Tailed Hawk hunting within 500 yards of each other late Monday afternoon. I was amazed that there was never a fight between the raptors over the winter hunting territory. I suspect that battle is coming as catching prey proves more difficult later in the winter.

Snowy Owl: Settings: ISO = 200; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/1000th of a second
Shutter Priority … I was poised and waiting for the take-off

Snowy Owl: Settings: ISO = 200; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/1000th of a second
Shutter Priority

Snowy Owl: Settings: ISO = 100; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/640th of a second
Aperture Priority … fifteen minutes before sunset … beginning of golden sundown light

Snowy Owl: Settings: ISO = 125; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/320th of a second
Aperture Priority … minutes before sunset … golden sundown light

Red-Tailed Hawk: Settings: ISO = 100; Aperture = 6.3, Shutter = 1/500th of a second
Aperture Priority

Second Birding Expedition: Spruce Grouse in the Superior National Forest

Unlike my outing with the Snowy Owls the prior evening, lighting was subdued. I found the Spruce Grouse just a few minutes after sunrise. Here in northern Minnesota, the sun does not get very high in the sky in mid December. Thus, from a practical vantage point, the sun was still down. I could not even see the golden orb through the trees, and although I had clear skies, the sun would not pop above the Boreal pines till almost 90 minutes after I photographed the grouse.

Once again, here are my images. Please note I quickly manually changed the ISO level to 800 ISO. This doubled the amount of light entering my camera. At the 400 ISO level the shutter speed was just too long. Please note I threw out 90% of my photographs for being blurry. An exposure setting of 1/60th a second is normally way to long for bird photography. However, I made my choice of settings knowing this in advance. The SX70 allows one to take 14 images per second. The beauty of digital photography is one does not mind taking significantly more images than needed to “get the shot”. I was quite pleased with the ISO 800 Spruce Grouse images.

Spruce Grouse: Settings: ISO = 400; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/30th of a second
Aperture Priority … this image was not crisp enough … I next increased the ISO to 800

Spruce Grouse: Settings: ISO = 800; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/60th of a second
Aperture Priority … I was pleasantly surprised with the image quality at ISO 800, which also allowed me to halve the shutter time (i.e. twice as fast)

Spruce Grouse: Settings: ISO = 800; Aperture = 5.6, Shutter = 1/60th of a second
Aperture Priority

Camera Buttons and Controls

With respect to these items, all I can say is I have never met a camera menuing system I really liked. I don’t think Canon has any software usability experts on their staff. I can’t really say the menus are intuitive, but then I have the same complaint about my Sony A6000. With any new camera, one must just “grin and bear it”. Eventually one will learn where various menu commands reside.

I did take one landscape of sunrise over Greenwood Lake. As I knew the sky conditions would change fast, I do not consider my image a test. I did quickly force the ISO to 100, use a monopod and a 2 second delay for the image.

Conclusion: So far … so good. I like the Canon SX70. As noted I will be continuing this evaluation process. As with any zoom camera, it is good to understand the limitations of this genre of camera. However, this newer model compared to my old SX60 does seem to have better image quality … particularly in the low light arena (ISO 800 test).

Sunrise Over Greenwood Lake
Slight Zoom … ISO 100, Aperture 8.0, Exposure 1/40th of a second

One more sunrise image, but taken with my Sony A6000 …
Two Harbors Highlands Railroad Tracks Sunrise

Auto-Focus Issue in extremely light reflective situations …

Added on January 26th

Two days ago I discovered an auto focusing issue which appears to happen in very bright light situations. In my case, while photographing a Snowy Owl, even though I had good light (extremely light clouds with reflective light off newly fallen snow). I was using Aperture Priority with the sun pretty much behind me. My ISO was set at 100, and the camera picked a 1/1500 shutter speed. I noticed that I was having difficulty getting a focus lock. At first I thought the issue was white on white (Snowy Owl on fresh snow). I did manage to get some good photos, but also a lot of garbage shots.

Later in the afternoon I visited a Bobcat den I have been watching. Once again I started to have focus lock issues (aperture priority once again). The combination of new snow, and a reflective shed wall was fooling my camera. This time I wondered if that was the case, switched to full manual … halved the shutter speed and kept the ISO at 100 and the aperture as low as possible. Immediately my auto focus problem was solved.

I now suspect that in any highly reflective high light situation I will need to make certain I am in full manual mode … no big deal for me, but for the more casual user it could ruin a lot of images (i.e. they will rarely use, if ever, manual mode). I expect in the summer while out on any of Minnesota’s 15,000 lakes the problem will reoccur. One again, for me it will be a non issue as I am now prepared.