Great Blue Heron
birdfotos.com
Great Blue Heron
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April 19, 2003
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Now, before we go any farther let me show you how difficult it was photographing these Herons
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That tree is at least one city block away from where I had my cameras set up.
The property between my self and the nest is private property & I was not allowed
on it and besides it would not have been any better shooting because
the angle would have gotten steeper as you got closer to that tree.
The tree we call "spot #2" is where the images of nest #3 were taken.
The distance is approximately the same but from a different angle.
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500 mm lens plus a 1.4X plus a 2X teleconverter.
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So, here's how we did it.
One 500mm lens plus one 2X teleconverter plus one 2X teleconverter equals a 2000mm lens.
And some times we added a 1.4X teleconverter to that.
Film used was Fuji NPZ ISO 800 & 1600 C41 type film. Exposure was 1/500 of a second at f/4.5,
that's wide open & no depth of field allowed. The 1/500 of a second was under exposing the film by one stop.
I have found that by using C41 film you can over and or under expose the film
by as much as 2 stops and still get a usable print or image whereas with K14
or E6 film you can not miss by even a 1/2 stop and come out with a good slide.
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I could have used more sand bagging if I would have had more.
In order to check the cameras movement when the shutter was released,
we leveled the lens and we stood a nickel on edge on the end of the lens hood and ran the
shutter on high speed motor for about 20 or 30 exposures.
the coin did not fall or move so we figured we had it about as
good as we were going get it under these circumstances.
However with those 2X teleconverters between the lens and the film the quality of the
images was greatly reduced, also I figured there would be some camera movement thus giving us soft images
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OK, now that you know what we had to do to get these images let's get on with the show.
You may contact me at birdfotos@aol.com