Last Sunday I visited Testwood Lakes Wildlife Reserve. The day was overcast and grey – and I’ve never seen much there before – so what could I find this time out. Well not a lot until I visited the first of the two bird hides there – where a Green Woodpecker was outside on the grass. There were some distant ducks outside this hide too – but even with my
Farlington Marshes was the destination on the 12th February, the weather was not kind being overcast. However the Kestrals were. Showing well in the trees near the paths. This first one that I saw and photographed was balancing carefully on one leg. Later on another Kestral was spotted – again perched up high – before flying off when I pointed my Canon 100-400mm lens at it. This is the sequence
There were two very different types of bird that I photographed on Saturday at Blashford Lakes. First, there was the posing and singing Robins. They are plentiful at the reserve at the moment, and will tolerate the closeness of camera wielding humans like no other bird I know. Which was good as I was trialing out a 2x converter and 300mm F4 IS combination for the first time. The results
I got another Canon extender last week – a 2x mk III, so I had to go try it out. As I already had a 1.4x extender mk III, I read you could stack them to even further increase the range of the lens. You need a Canon 12mm extension tube to stack the mark III extenders. So with my 500mm and a tripod I had to have a play
Although the winter weather has not been kind recently when out at the weekends, I have managed to find a couple of outings which yielded some reasonable photographic results. The first of these was an almost fruitless trip to Middlebere, on the opposite side of the Arne RSPB Nature reserve. Fruitless as nothing came close to the hide for photographic purposes until late on when a Little Egret appeared up
Following my recent experiments with sound for video using both a Rode Videomic Pro – both on its own and with a Zoom H5 Recorder, it became apparent that even with leveling the sound to a reasonable level, there is still some background noise when recording in the field. After some research I found this noise could be cleaned up nicely using the free Audacity program. Here is an example
Having some time off over the festive period, I visited my local reserves of Blashford Lakes Nature & Hengistbury Head, a few times to try out the Canon 5d MkIV with both stills and its 4k video capability. It also allowed me more time to play with my recent lens addition with it – a Canon 100-400 IS L lens. Whilst out I at Hegistbury Head, I was able to
Today I took an afternoon trip to Stanpit Marshes, Christchurch. The day was a lovely December day with bright clear skies and not too cold either. Stanpit Marsh nature reserve at this time of year is a nice place to go looking for Stonechats. And today my luck was in as there were a few about posing on the gorse and brambles. I got a little luck with this next
I recently purchased my first full frame digital Camera, and with good weather at the weekend it was time to try it out with my Canon 500mm Lens and another recent purchase a used Canon 100-400mm IS v1 lens. I am impressed with the noise handling of this camera – especially when comapring it with my Canon 760D. Up to about 3200 the shots reveal very little noise, even when
I heard reports recently that there were good views to be had of three Short-eared Owls at Farlington Marshes nature reserve. So I set out this afternoon more in hope than expectation of seeing them. I was to be pleasantly suprised as I saw a pair of them fairly close up hunting over the fields. I took a short video of them flying and one later on sitting nearby in
