We were to have pretty clear skies so the idea of a time lapse of the lunar eclipse crossed my mind. I went online and looked up the times for the eclipse at the house (didn’t have time to spend it on the flats) and saw that more than likely, the time of totality would be behind the mountain. And, it would be when the sun was rising in the east. None the less, I set up the D850 as it takes heavenly lights time-lapse to a whole new level of easy! I started with the D850 with the 18f2.8AF attached to a tripod. The D850 was set to Auto ISO with max of 6400 and shutter speed of 25sec, New Auto Natural WB, Aperture Priority at f/2.8, I went into the Time-lapse menu and dialed in the settings. I set the duration to 7hrs 59min, frequency to 1 every 30sec, Exposure Smoothing and Silent Shutter (which freakin rocks!). I shot one with the EH-5c/EP-5B AC adapter providing constant power to the D850. While no eclipse, I love watching what went through the skies while I slept.
It was SO worth the wait! All these years of coming to Yellowstone to be intimate with a pack was finally achieved. Sixteen members of the 8 Mile Pack made a kill the night before. The next morning nine were still working on the Bison kill. When we arrived we found them off in the distance with full bellies sleeping it off. There were two options when they woke up while we were there. They would come back and feed a little more or more likely, slip back into their secretive world of the forest disappearing from view. Within 30min of our arrival, they got up and at first, two of the adults walked back into the forest. My heart sunk! There were nine wolves when we arrived, now there were seven. Then they all started to get up, stretch and mill around. I figured that would be it. Then the alpha male made a 180 and walked right towards us and the kill. For the next two hours, I was treated to a lifetime experience I’ve been seeking for decades!
We were fortunate to witness so much amazing, total, cool and exciting biology! All this on the edge of a thermal casting steam about the scene. To be honest, I’m at the moment at a loss for words to describe it. Not having gotten through all my images to let them tell the story, I’m going to have to reflect on the spectacular time to better put words to it. In the coach driving back in, all I could come up to describe our time was, epic!
I wanted a sunset to sunrise time lapse of our winter skies, 16 hours of shooting time. Picking a night with no moon and moving clouds, I set out for what really is a simple process now. The D850 takes heavenly lights time-lapse to a whole new level of easy! At the same time, it produces some pretty darn clean results. I started with the D850 with the 18f2.8AF attached to a tripod. Using what I call the “too tired to think” settings, the camera set to Auto ISO with max of 6400 and shutter speed of 25sec, New Auto Natural WB, Aperture Priority at f/2.8, I went into the Time-lapse menu and dialed in the settings. I set the duration to 7hrs 59min, frequency to 1 every 30sec, Exposure Smoothing and Silent Shutter (which freakin rocks!). I shot one with the EH-5c/EP-5B AC adapter providing constant power to the D850. I got up during the night right at the 7hrs 59min mark to restart the camera to create the 16 hr time lapse. The D850 creates right out of the camera a 4k time-lapse movie as easy as touching the menu Start (yep, Menu is touch activated!). I just combined the two out of camera videos for what you see here. Really way too simple now, thank goodness. Now you can create an 8k time-lapse with the D850 as well. You would need to shoot Nef’s and then run those through a 3rd party program (like Photoshop) to create that high res time-lapse (which would produce the best results). Either way, it’s so simple it’s a ton of fun! Oh ya, didn’t know neighbors were going to throw an evening party. Kinda lit up the trees. mtc
Depth of focus, it’s how Depth of Field was termed back in the day when I started photography. Depth of focus is how I was taught to think about how the change of aperture changes my storytelling. My incredible teacher in high school would talk about the focus in a photograph, the reality and the perceived amount that was in focus. Those basic lessons which he taught us I still use today because focus and point of focus are so bloody important in visual storytelling. The mind’s eye goes to light and bright first, focus second. Being winter I’m spending office time printing up 24×30 images with the Epson P7000 that I took during the fall, many of those taken with the D850 and I’m seeing (as in visually noticing) that with my narrow DoF I’m seeing more in focus. Huh?!
Depth of Focus (or Depth of Field) is an actual, physical element in our photograph affected by the focal length, f/stop, subject and background distance. That is the reality of it, how most go about selecting their working aperture. Then there is the perceived DoF and it’s called perceived because the mind’s eye can be fooled, tricked into seeing more in focus that is really there. The one method I use the most is underexposure which adds black that tricks the eye. But in the printing of my images, I visually see more “perceived” focus because of the amazing image quality delivered by the D850! Because of its gorgeous pixels, there is more information in the photograph and that increased information makes the perceived DoF greater. Now, will you see this in a smaller print or in an image on the web? You might not! Is this a reason why you should buy the D850? Now that’s a darn good question. If in the sales brochure it was stated the D850 increases the perceived DoF, I would buy it just because of that statement! I know I really enjoy the D850 over any other megapixel camera I’ve shot with for many reasons but now I have one more I’ve identified and will employ as I manipulate your viewing of my visual stories. I will definitely now explore perhaps a third realm in the focus of my photographs, pixel depth of focus.
It’s the staple of life! Water, birds need water every day, multiple days a day. They need it for both drinking and for bathing, both essential survival needs. In the summer, free water is scarce in many regions because pools evaporate. In the winter time free water freezes. Both scenarios remove water from the system. That’s why we have so many bird baths on our property, five to be exact and they always see more activity than our feeders. In the winter time, they have a simple birdbath heater to keep them open. And all of this means a great photographic opportunity for you!
Red-breated Nuthatch captured by D500 / 300PF
The key is to have perches for the birds to land on coming to and leaving the bird bath. The Bullock’s Oriole above was coming into the bath and the 600mm isolated it against a great background. That was a planned perch, not luck. The bottom photo is a Red-breasted Nuthatch coming landing on a perch right on the bird bath up close with the 300PF. If the photo was to illustrate just the Nuthatch, I wouldn’t have included the bird bath. This is a very simple and effective way to attract and take care of your birds and photographic habit all at the same time. And when planned out, all from the comfort of your own home!
With no snow on the ground, I’ve been bouncing off the walls photographically. That’s because winter is all about snow and we live in the mountains, for the snow! I can only sit for so long! So with the New Year’s supermoon, I thought I’d head down the road to find something in the foreground to put with it to make it look super. Because otherwise, it’s just a full moon photo … right? Well, I struck out so came back home thinking I might do something with the pines on the property. Well, that blew chunks so I headed back in to put the 200-400VR when I noticed the clouds lit up by the moon. Then I thought about the corner tree all lit up that with the clouds in the background made it a complete photo. So I put the 24-70VR on the D850, headed over an made a couple of clicks. So while you can’t see the 14% larger moon in the frame, you can see the 14% brighter moon in the clouds. And with that, I headed back into the fire :-)
