[Theme] Show Birds

[Brute]

Nice Kingbird Brute

Here are a Bee eater calm sitting on a tree, Eleonora's  Falcon, and a Cuckoo  all from the same outing Z8/180-600

Thanks Nasos.
Looks like you are getting some great shots your mirrorless equipment. I still have not gone that route yet.


Lazuli Bunting

[Nasos Kosmas]

This morning, it's a manual focus capture.

Very nice shoot Arturo and with manual focus is even harder

Thank you Ken, I decided to use the advantage of the mirrorless technology now as I grow up
This Lazuli Bunting is a very beautiful bird!

[ARTUROARTISTA]

Thanks Nasos, the swallows fly at great speed, I took that photo yesterday morning, with an old and heavy lens, it is the 600/5.6 Nikkor ED AI, I think about 1600 of my model were manufactured, it has the number: 177191, I took the photos with the lens by hand and without a tripod, for me it is an exercise, I put some more details of that day,

[Øivind Tøien]

The Continental Great Horned Owl was hooting in the dark nights throughout the winter this year. It is very calming natural sound, and I long hoped to be able to spot one. This spring came a period were the hooting also happened at daytime and all around in multiple directions from my cabin, which brought up my hopes up for a sighting, however it remained elusive. Then one morning I heard a lot of noise from ravens in a tree at the back of my cabin, and there were 3 of them apparently being very exited, dropping sticks at something. As the owl was still at the front of my mind, I realized that what looked like a squirrel nest was a Great Horned Owl hiding in the branches of the spruce tree. I thanked the ravens and quickly went to grab my Z8 and the 300PF that was most easily accessible and got a quick shot of one of the ravens with the owl hardly visible. Then I run back inside for my 500PF, and luckily the owl remained put so I  started a photo session from the other side of the tree.

[Øivind Tøien]

After a while it started hooting, so I got a good view of what it takes to make that deep sound. Note the white area of feathers expanding considerably.

I also got a video clip of the hooting that I managed to stabilize in Da Vinci  Resolve: https://youtu.be/cfSx3A0ku0U

[Øivind Tøien]

Yet another capture, and one of my friends, the ravens, captured a few days later. The right raven is working on a stick - not sure what was causing the excitement on this occasion.

[Bruno Schroder]

Congratulations. Beautiful bird and pictures!
Fascinating behavior too. Last century, the Eagle howl was used as a bait to hunt ravens. They would tie it to a post and wait for the ravens to harass it, which they would inevitably do.

[Øivind Tøien]

Congratulations. Beautiful bird and pictures!
Fascinating behavior too. Last century, the Eagle howl was used as a bait to hunt ravens. They would tie it to a post and wait for the ravens to harass it, which they would inevitably do.

Thanks Bruno and thanks for that detail. Historically ravens also can have different roles too, the other one is to alert wolves and possibly traditional hunters to prey for their mutual benefit.

[Nasos Kosmas]

Very nice capture Øivind
Not so lucky with owls in general
It happened to me once this kind of birds (Ravens) to reveal the position of an owl but was unable for a shoot ( only a shoot from the back while flying away

[Øivind Tøien]

Very nice capture Øivind
Not so lucky with owls in general
It happened to me once this kind of birds (Ravens) to reveal the position of an owl but was unable for a shoot ( only a shoot from the back while flying away

Thanks Nasos. Around here the young ones of the year sometimes occupies light poles in the summer, receiving the attendance of the adults.

[Øivind Tøien]

I finally got around to process the rest of my Ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus) images from this winter, captured with the 500PF on the Z8 during a period of house-sitting - I had almost daily encounters with these birds. One post earlier in the thread here: https://nikongear.net/revival/index.php?topic=1938.msg204729#msg204729 If in a safe location they seemed to completely ignored the dogs I was looking after. Although I had encountered these birds many times before, I had not seen the ruffing of the lower neck feathers of the males this way before.

This called for my first experiment with focus stacking with a Zerene Stacker trial. I do not remember exactly how I managed the five handheld focus steps without getting too much misalignment between frames. Perhaps I did a quick twist of the focus ring while keeping the shutter pressed, they were all captured within the same second. While I am not trained in spotting artifacts, I am surprised how well it worked. The backlighting was challenging enough in itself for the PF lens. I am starting out with the unstacked shots first (open in new tab to view larger version).

[Øivind Tøien]

One more unstacked with focus on the the neck feathers:

[Jürgen Pfeiffer]

A gray heron as a focus test object for the 500mm Reflex Nikkor on the Zf.

[Fons Baerken]

A gray heron as a focus test object for the 500mm Reflex Nikkor on the Zf.

Excellent result!

[Jürgen Pfeiffer]

Yes, Fons, I think that the lens can definitely be used on the Zf. So far I had the problem that I got the green focus confirmation box when using the Nikon FTZ adapter (the reflex Nikkor is equipped with a Dandelion chip), but unfortunately the IBIS of the Zf does not work with it. When using a “stupid” F to Z adapter and entering the non-CPU lens data, the IBIS works but no green focus confirmation.
Now I have the Reflex-Nikkor on the Zf with a dumb Nikon F to Sony E adapter, combined with a “Funmount ETZ Pro” adapter; voilá, both IBIS and confirmation box work!
Of course my 400 Z is much better, but the reflex Nikkor is very compact - and besides - where would we be without a little lens-nerdness?