Tag: great blue heron

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Use Lightroom’s Match Total Exposures Feature For Quick And Dirty Panoramas

A great blue heron stands along the shore of a canal in early morning light

When I shoot landscape panoramas, in addition to tripod use and careful alignment, I always follow one basic technique – set my camera in manual exposure mode. To determine the optimum exposure for a panorama, I set my aperture (typically between 11 and 16 for landscapes), and meter different parts of the scene. I select the brightest portion of the scene and over-expose the meter to a point that no highlights are blown out. Then I set the camera to manual exposure, dial in the appropriate shutter speed, and I’m ready to capture all the frames of the panorama, knowing that they will blend together nicely in post production.

However, when I am photographing birds or wildlife panoramas, I am often forced to use quick and dirty techniques. These panorama situations usually arise when I am close enough to an animal that their face can fill an entire frame, but I still want to capture their entire body. Instead of backing away, I usually resort to taking multiple overlapping images, knowing I can stitch them together later. This often happens with large water birds such as this great blue heron, that are docile enough to allow me to get close.

Because I know that the animal can move at any time, I need to be quick with my overlapping photos, taking them in rapid succession. This means I don’t have time to carefully meter the scene and dial in the optimum exposure. Usually I will leave my camera in aperture priority (for overlapping photos to stitch together, aperture MUST be the same throughout all images) and let the camera decide the exposure. Usually no photo is more than 1 stop from any other photo.

Now that I’ve taken my photos and have imported them into Lightroom, I need a quick way to align the same exposure across all photos. Enter the “hidden” Match Total Exposures feature.

Use the Match Total Exposures feature to synchronize the exposures between frames that will make up a panorama.
Use the Match Total Exposures feature to synchronize the exposures between frames that will make up a panorama.

I pick one of the photos with which to optimize the exposure. Once I’ve adjusted the exposure slider to my liking, I select all the photos in the series and click the menu Photo->Develop Settings->Match Total Exposures. All of the other photos in the series will move their exposure sliders up or down so that the adjusted exposure is matched to the original. For example, let’s say we have three photos all shot at f/5.6, with the following shutter speeds: 1/500, 1/250, and 1/1000 (the exposures will typically be much closer, but I’m using easy math for illustrative purposes). If the first photo (1/500 seconds) is selected as the original to match, then the exposure slider for the second photo will move up one stop and the exposure slider for the third will move down by one stop. This is a quick and easy way to make sure the exposures for all photos in the series are similar so that they blend properly.

Once I’ve adjusted all the exposures, I keep them all selected and click Photo->Edit In->Merge to Panorama in Photoshop. This will result in a perfectly blended panorama.

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Bird Photography With The Canon 7D Mk II

A great blue heron stalks fish in still shallow water, Belmont, CA.
A great blue heron stalks fish in still shallow water, Belmont, CA.

I spent about an hour this morning doing some bird photography with my new 7D Mk II. My primary use for this camera will be birds and wildlife, and I found and photographed some of the usual suspects around my home. This is not meant to be a formal review by any means, but I wanted to share some of my first impressions.

A black-crowned night heron perches above water in pre-dawn light, Belmont, CA.
A black-crowned night heron perches above water in pre-dawn light, Belmont, CA.

Aesthetics

Before we get to performance, I have to address how the camera felt out in the field. It was a real joy! The build quality is solid and the camera was extremely responsive and accurate. Ergonomically, the buttons are laid out well, and I can tell a lot of thought went into designing the UI. The number of settings on this camera can be daunting, but almost everything can be customized to suite your exact photography needs.

A golden-crowned sparrow perches atop an ornamental bush, Belmont, CA.
A golden-crowned sparrow perches atop an ornamental bush, Belmont, CA.

Auto-focus

Obviously auto-focus capabilities are one of the headliner features for this camera. Canon’s new auto-focus debuted on their flagship pro body, and have been filtering down to less expensive cameras in the last couple of years. I haven’t tried out the myriad AF algorithms available (I’ll do further testing with these using birds in flight), but I can say that auto-focus was fast and accurate. Almost everything I captured was tack sharp. I’ll be setting up the camera with different AF settings depending on whether I’m photographing stationary animals or birds in flight.

A blacktail jackrabbit pauses in the morning light to watch for predators, Belmont, CA.
A blacktail jackrabbit pauses in the morning light to watch for predators, Belmont, CA.

Noise Performance

As the sun was rising, I shot mostly at ISO 1600, gradually dropping down to ISO 400 as the day got brighter. At ISO 1600, there is still some noise visible in the shadows, but it was easily corrected in post processing. I found very clean shadows at ISO 800 and below. With my previous camera (7D), my starting ISO was usually 400 and I’d go up from there if the situation demanded it. Based on the performance of the Mk II, I will probably do most bird photography at ISO 800, giving me a full stop of extra light to play with in most circumstances.

A great blue heron is reflected in still water in early morning light, Belmont, CA.
A great blue heron is reflected in still water in early morning light, Belmont, CA.

Frame Rate

Shooting at 10 frames per second felt awesome. Even though I’m used to 8 fps with the older 7D, the incremental speed boost was noticeable. While I didn’t have any action situations that called for this speed this morning, having that capability was reassuring. With the large buffer, I never hit any card write delays, even though I was shooting with a slow card.

A black-crowned night heron stands on a buoy, watching for fish, Belmont, CA.
A black-crowned night heron stands on a buoy, watching for fish, Belmont, CA.

Silent Shooting

At one point, I crept close to a black-crowned night heron and began to fire off 10 fps bursts (mostly just for fun). The chatter of the shutter was loud enough to get his attention, and he stared at me, looking a bit anxious. I then remembered that the camera features a silent shutter mode (it applies extra dampening to the shutter mechanism so that it is very quiet). I set the camera to silent burst mode. This reduces the fps from 10 down to what felt like 3 or 4 fps, but it was nearly silent! I continued shooting photos of the now comfortable bird. This feature will actually be very helpful for getting close to some of the more sensitive wildlife – a nice little bonus.

A greater yellowlegs is reflected in shallow still water, Belmont, CA.
A greater yellowlegs is reflected in shallow still water, Belmont, CA.

Overall Image Quality

So far, the results are fantastic. One caveat is that at the time of this writing, Adobe does not yet support the camera’s RAW files, so I had to use Canon’s software to convert to tiff before processing them in Lightroom. I’m sure I’ll get better results once I can process the RAWs directly with Lightroom, as Canon’s processor seems very poor. But the images are sharp, and the tones are pleasing. Auto white balance seems accurate. If anything, it seems that the Mk II overexposes a little more than the 7D, but I’ll get a feel for where the exposure compensation needs to be for various lighting conditions as I use the camera more.

Of course, the camera also has some goofy crowd-pleasers like multiple exposure and in-camera HDR. While I wont be using these for any serious work, they can be fun to muck around with if you’re bored.

A black-necked stilt fishes in shallow water, Belmont, CA.
A black-necked stilt fishes in shallow water, Belmont, CA.

Overall, this is a fantastic camera, and I had a very enjoyable first time out with it!

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Great Blue Heron Chicks

Two great blue heron siblings huddle together as a strong wind blows across their nest
Two great blue heron siblings huddle together as a strong wind blows across their nest. Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-7D. ISO 400. Evaluative metering 0 EV: 1/400 sec. at f/8

Recently I joined two photographer friends in photographing two large great blue heron nests. One nest (above) held two relatively young chicks, while the other housed three siblings who were almost ready to fledge. In the smaller nest, the two chicks waited and waited, but I never witnessed a parent return with food. The other nest, however, was a different story.

Three hungry great blue heron chicks eagerly await the return of a parent with food
Three hungry great blue heron chicks eagerly await the return of a parent with food. Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-7D. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +1/3 EV: 1/2500 sec. at f/6.3

About ten minutes after ariving on site, we were rewarded with a parent’s return to feed its chicks. That was when the aggressive battle began.

An adult great blue heron returns to the nest to feed its hungry chicks
An adult great blue heron returns to the nest to feed its hungry chicks. Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-7D. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +1/3 EV: 1/2000 sec. at f/6.3

As the parent was trying to regurgitate its meal for the hungry chicks, they took turns squawking in its face, demanding food.

Hungry great blue heron chicks surround the parent, begging to be fed
Hungry great blue heron chicks surround the parent, begging to be fed. Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-7D. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +1/3 EV: 1/2500 sec. at f/6.3

When it took a while for the food to come up, the chicks got more aggressive. One would grab the parent around the beak, and yank its head down into the nest. When this didn’t work, one of the chicks bit around the parent’s neck and yanked at the throat. I was shocked to see such a display, but figured this kind of behavior fostered some of the competition amongst the siblings that would serve them out in the “real world”.

A great blue heron chick aggressively bites at the parents beak and neck, waiting to be fed
A great blue heron chick aggressively bites at the parents beak and neck, waiting to be fed. Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the EOS-7D. ISO 500. Evaluative metering +1/3 EV: 1/2000 sec. at f/7.1

After the parent finally dumped the food at the bottom of the nest, it took off, presumably to continue to feed these young insatiable appetites. The youngsters continued to battle each other over the remnants until it was gone. The next time you see one of these seemingly docile creatures standing at the edge of a marsh, remember that they are also predators, trying to eke their own way through the world.

Copyright 2017 Hank Christensen