[bender16v]

What’s your setup for those?)

Thanks! I’ve been trying many different things, all with a 100mm f2.8 macro lens. It’s been hot here too, but I’ve been trying anyway. Some I’ve been chasing around the yard like a moran and last night I spent an hour hanging over the side of my boat on my belly scouring the lily pads. I even tried a motion sensor trigger that I made, but they were too small to set it off. I’m getting better at guessing their movements but these ones haven’t been hovering at all.

I’m pleased with some of the stills, but really want to get them in flight.
Still 1, Still 2, and Still 3.

[bender16v]

My bees:

http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb1.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb2.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb3.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb5.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb7.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb8.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb9.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb10.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb11.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb14.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb15.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb16.jpg
http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb17.jpg

And this one is kind of frozen, but not a very high shutter speed so I didn’t use it: http://www.bender16v.com/fark/farkfreezeb13.jpg , but it was from a marathon(?) run on a very cold morning.

I really, really tried to get razor sharp dragonflies in flight for this contest. In the past two days I have over 1,000 clicks on my camera and I’m not completely happy with any of them. I’ll keep at it because I’m sure the results will be worth it once I get it right.

[bender16v]

I’m thinking of trying to dig up some sports action photos since I don’t have a high speed flash rig (yet). I think that there will be a big contrast in entries this week which I’m looking forward to seeing.

[bender16v]

We’ve had extraordinarily clear skies all week until tonight and we have total cloud cover:

Latest Forecast = in 30 minutes, the Aurora will be at ‘STORM’ LEVEL!

[bender16v]

Those are great, especially the double. We haven’t had any lightning (or rain) around Michigan for a long time. There was a storm a couple weeks ago when I was in Greenville, SC but of course I didn’t have my as-of-yet-untested trigger or anything with me. Here’s the best I got hand holding at 1/4 sec.

[bender16v]

I hope that we have clear skies. Last time the forecast was good I was way up north but never saw anything. I’ll keep an eye out this weekend because I really want to see it. I’ll also keep checking the forecast here too.

[bender16v]

Would a flat list of filenames be feasible? That way you could Ctrl-F to search against an existing file you were checking

So no thumbs, just a list of file names?

Please keep the thumbs, my website has been down a week for “maintenance” by the host and I put my photos all over the place with names for each contest. So I scan the thumbs to make sure they match up with all the photos in my “fark” folder. Is there any way to put the names below the thumbs?
Also I’d like to thank you for keeping track of all this, it helps me a lot.

[bender16v]

To do “serious” birding, one needs at least a 300mm on a APS-C, 400mm on FF, an extender doesn’t hurt either. Naturally, the five thousand plus dollars for such lenses tend make that a little…ah, daunting.

That seems to be true from what I have seen. Remember, teleconverters don’t work with many of Nikon’s lenses and you lose 1-2 stops when using one which causes you to lose auto focus on cheaper lenses. I’ve been looking at upgrading but it would be about $3k for a 70-200 f2.8 + teleconverter, which wouldn’t gain much as far as range goes. The Nikon 300 f4 isn’t insanely expensive but it lacks VR. Another option would be the Bigma, but that’s not cheap either. It would really get some range on my crop sensor though.

Alternatively I could just work on being more stealthy and getting closer, but in many cases that’s not possible.

[bender16v]

What a great group of photos posted so far, I really love U-Man’s Duckling and Kestrana’s Pygmy Falcon. Also it does seem that herons are pretty popular birds these days.

Unfortunately I just received an email from my web host that all of my domains might go down for about 1-2 hours for maintenance sometime in the next 48-72 hours. If my photos disappear please don’t delete them, they should be back up shortly. If not I can host them somewhere else. Why can’t they do this sort of thing over the weekend?

[bender16v]

I hear you Uranus. I’ve spent ten times more time on this contest than any other and finally have chosen my three entries and am left with 17 bees. I probably spend 70% of my time photographing birds and am always learning. I looked back at photos I took last year and can’t believe how crappy they are, so hopefully I’m learning something by doing it so much.

Great, now I’m second guessing my choices again!

[bender16v]

3, which really surprises me since I don’t even. I did turn off all the other lights in the room to help.

[bender16v]

It’s not completely out of civilization, but it’s close.
We’re actively talking about moving here 😉

Back in the ADK? 😀 I do miss living there. And yes, it is remote. Take lots of photos and be safe.

[bender16v]

+1, I like water.

[bender16v]

I can delete one if you want to post that instead.

Thanks, but I’ll wait to maybe use that somewhere else.

[bender16v]

I’ve been out driving around in any of the little free time I have after work trying to get something for this contest, but the only one I had I mistakenly deleted from my memory card when I thought I had already copied it. So I waited until it went live to dig for a final entry and two minutes after pressing submit I remembered one that I should have used instead: car.

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