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Our year started out with us leading five week-long photo tours of Yellowstone by
snowmobile in a row! It was a snowy winter that offered fabulous photo opportunities in
the park!
Japan’s Winter Wildlife
After the last snowmobile tour, we had twelve hours to pack . Then we flew to Japan to
photograph their fabulous wintering wildlife. It was a private tour with just four of us.
We traveled with professional nature photographer Tom Walker (one of Alaska’s best)
and his friend. Izuru is a native Japanese who photographs a lot in Alaska and the
Arctic, as well as Japan. Izuru was taking us to his special places and speaks the
language of course, so it was easy to get around.
We didn’t really know what to expect of Japan. Tom said it was rural with lots of forests
and fields which sounded like home to us. We spent our two weeks photographing
endangered red-crowned cranes, whooper swans, and eagles. The cranes are
attracted to feeding stations where they are easy to photograph at close range. We
also spent quite a bit of time along the cranes flyway so we could capture them in flight.
We were blessed with a couple of sunny mornings so we shot many wonderful flight
images of the cranes.
Whooper swans arrive from Siberia and winter in Northern Japan. They are attracted to
hot springs that keep certain portions of the lake open. Once again, there are feeding
areas for the swans, so they are easy to approach. Indeed, the swans eat out of your
hands’ and they do bite the hand that feeds it. Imagine being surrounded by hundreds
of wild swans. When the swans weren’t begging for food, they slept on the floating ice
only a few yards away. It was a snowy period when we visited the swans, so our flight
photos were of swans flying toward us in snowstorms. We got just a little bit of sun and
blue sky, so we did manage to get some flight shots under these conditions. Sadly, we
had to move on without a clear and sunny morning. The potential for exquisite flight
images of swans is superb here. We hope to return to get the perfect conditions.
Our last stop was along the ocean where fishing boats operate just offshore near the
floating ice fields. Luck was with us here. Before our arrival, no boats that are set up
for photographers were able to leave the dock due to severe winter storms. But, our
first morning was clear, calm, fairly warm for winter, and spectacular! We were still
wondering how this eagle photographing was going to go as we motored about 40
minutes out to the floating ice fields. Soon the boat crew began throwing fish remains
on the ice. Within 20 minutes, more than 150 White-tailed and Stellar’s Sea Eagles
circled the boat offering numerous flight opportunities. The eagles got bolder and
bolder until some perched on the ice 15 feet from the boat making full frame portraits of
their faces easy to do. Usually the boats only stay with the eagles for about one hour,
but this morning was so good that we stayed two hours. As it turned out, the captain
was a serious photographer too! He was busy shooting away on top of the boat. Our
second visit to the eagles on the following morning was terrific too. Our third visit was
calm, but cloudy so we didn’t get quite as much done photographically. It is harder to
do flight shots in the dim light, but still an awesome experience!
Due to time constraints, we didn’t visit the snow monkeys, but plan to photograph them
on another visit. The wildlife photo opportunities in Japan are absolutely superb!
However, you really need to have someone who can speak Japanese since English is
not widely spoken outside of Tokyo. We are currently working with Izuru and planning a
trip to Japan-most likely in 2011. We will let everyone know by sending the details
when they are finalized to our Email newsletter list. If you have not signed up for our
newsletters, please do so at once. Go to our home page on the web and sign up now!
New Cameras.
We both were shooting new cameras on this trip. Barbara used a Nikon D3 as her
primary camera. The autofocus was terrific with her Nikon 200-400mm lens and it shot
about 9 images per second. Even at high ISO settings, the noise was very low. The
Nikon D3 has a full frame sensor, but much fewer megapixels (around 12 megapixels)
than Canon’s 1Ds Mark III (around 21 megapixels). Since the sensor size of each
camera is full-frame, Nikons pixels are larger than the Canon pixels. Small pixels are
more prone to having problems with noise, so Nikon smartly opted for larger pixels to
reduce this problem. Her Nikon D3 can effectively use much higher ISO values such as
ISO 3200 and even ISO 6400! The Nikon D3 is an action photographers dream
machine, especially when you must shoot in dim light.
John used a new Canon 1D Mark III for most of his images in Japan. He bought this
camera because he loves photographing wildlife action, especially birds in flight. This
camera shoots 10 RAW images per second, and keeps it up for 22 consecutive shots
before the buffer fills to capacity. This is an awesome flight shooting machine! The
photographers next to John said, “it sounds like a sewing machine.” John got plenty of
wonderful flight images of the cranes, swans, and eagles with this new camera and
does plan to write a detailed article on flight photography eventually. By the way,
John’s favorite type of nature photography is wildlife action which includes running and
flying.
As you may know, we like using the custom functions to make the camera help us
shoot outstanding images. The Canon 1D Mark III has 57 different custom functions.
Some are of little use while many others are enormously useful for certain situations.
Please go to our web site at www.gerlachnaturephoto.com to read a detailed article
about the custom functions that are found on this camera. Although, you probably don’t
have the Canon 1D Mark III, nearly all cameras have custom functions and many of
them do the same thing, so this article provides ideas on how to take advantage of
custom functions. Just go to the Articles section of our web site and look for “Canon
EOS 1D Mark III Custom Functions”.
On another note, exposure has been a huge part of our workshops for more than 25
years. We helped thousands learn to expose slide film fast and accurately. Now that
nearly everyone is shooting digital cameras, exposure is easier that slide film, thanks to
the highlight alert and more importantly-the histogram. We did try autoexposure with
digital cameras, but have mostly abandoned it because there are too many serious
problems with it. We now use manual exposure for nearly all of our digital images.
Please read our detailed article in the Spring 2008 issue of Nature Photographer to find
out what these serious problems are. This article is also posted on our web site.
Where We Buy Our Camera Gear
We buy all of our new equipment from Roberts! They are a huge camera store in
Indianapolis, IN that has New York prices, tremendous service, the latest and most
advanced photo gear, and the staff is super. The staff at Roberts is happy to answer
your questions, so you buy what you need. They sell new and used equipment. Please
consider giving Roberts a try. We found them awhile ago when we were trying to buy a
Nikon D200 for Barbara. Nobody else had one in stock, so we called them and they
shipped it right out to us! Contact:
Roberts
255 South Meridian Street
Indianapolis, Indiana
www.robertsimaging.com
(800)- 726-5544
Live View Strategies
We challenged our summer Michigan workshop participants to find valid uses for the
new live view technology that many of the new cameras have. We found live view to be
invaluable for detecting tiny amounts of subject motion when shooting closeup images.
Before live view, we used a tripod and cable release when shooting natural light
closeup images. Since a flower or butterfly subject is rather far away when using the
180mm or 200mm macro lenses we prefer, we peered through the viewfinder to see the
lines etched on the viewing screen. If the subject moves at all, this tiny movement is
easy to detect as the subject bobs against the lines in the viewfinder. We trip the
camera with the remote release when the subject is perfectly still. Now we use live view
to detect this tiny amount of subject movement. Turn on live view so you can see the
image on the LCD monitor. Any subject movement is easily detectable, especially
when we magnify the image by 5x. We also use the 5x setting to precisely manually
focus the lens on the subject.
Live view is invaluable for seeing the depth of field you really have at various apertures
because it projects a bright image-even when the lens is stopped down to the shooting
aperture. Both the Nikon and Canon cameras we tested with live view also have grid
lines to help keep horizons level too, so we use live view for landscapes too. It is a
wonderful tool that is most useful!
Wireless Flash for Creative Effects
We are really pushing the use of off-camera fill flash and main light flash in our
workshops now. Everyone needs to master these techniques. Flash is a wonderful
way to open up dark shadows in closeups, light foregrounds, and increase contrast
when it is helpful by making the flash the main light. The Canon and Nikon wireless
flash systems with their dedicated flashes are incredible! However, you must get the
flash off the camera’s hot shoe with either a dedicated cord or wireless controller for it
to work well. While in California in October, we used flash a lot to light up the
foreground such as sand tufas at Mono Lake and arches in the Alabama Hills with the
gorgeous red sky at dawn in the background. It is so easy to do. Most of our student’s
are really missing out because they don’t have or seldom use their dedicated flash
made for their camera system with a wireless controller. You must have the ability to
get that flash off the camera to use it well! Using a dedicated cord to connect the flash
to the camera is better than mounting the flash in the hot shoe, but it isn’t nearly as
versatile as wireless control.
Notes from our 2008 Kenya Tour
As always, the wildlife photography in Kenya was superb. We shot many wonderful
images of nature in action. The cheetahs and lions were especially successful catching
prey in front of our groups. Even though we have led some thirty photo safaris to the
best game parks in Kenya, every trip brings new thrills. Barbara got her most adorable
common zebra images ever when a baby and mother zebra crossed their heads while
drinking in a pond. She also captured some wonderful baby warthog images too. John
got his best pictures ever of a cheetah catching a young Grant’s gazelle and saw and
photographed an Egyptian vulture for the first time at Samburu National Park.
It is amazing what digital does for you. John’s new camera is the Canon 1D Mark III
which can shoot 10 RAW images per second, so it is terrific for action photography.
Since it can shoot so fast, it really makes it fun for photographing running zebras or
vultures in flight. During our two week trip, we shot more than 20,000 images.
Naturally, we edit very hard, so most are deleted to get down to the very best. Both of
us use continuous autofocus and have the focusing function removed from the shutter
button to the back of the camera. Often this is called back-button focusing or thumb
focusing because your thumb does control the focusing on the back of the camera. It is
an enormously effective way to precisely focus on the face of an animal. No other way
works better. If you aren’t using back-button focusing, you are missing out on a terrific
way to quickly and precisely focus on the eyes of an animal. This also makes it easy to
go from static subjects to action in the blink of an eye. Every Nikon and Canon DSLR
we have seen has this capability. Unfortunately, camera models do it in different ways
so we can’t tell you precisely how to do it unless we have your camera model in our
hands.
Metering continues to evolve. Both of us use the RGB histogram to guide our
exposures which can be set with most modern cameras. The default is usually the
luminance histogram which shows an average of the color channels. However, it is
possible to blow out or overexpose a color channel such as the red one in Kenya (due
to all of the golden colors) and it won’t appear to be overexposed when the average is
taken. Using the RGB histogram shows a histogram for each of the color channels, so
you can see when you have given the image too much exposure which eliminates the
chance of blowing out a color channel. Oddly enough, neither one of us relied on the
histogram too much because things happen fast in Kenya. We do monitor it though
which means we check it every once in awhile. Our group metered in three different
ways.
John’s Way
In my late teens and early twenties, I shot a lot of competition skeet (clay targets). I
was brutally competitive because I was able to combine speed with excellent precision,
and pressure (fear of missing) didn’t faze me. I won many of the tournaments I entered
with perfect scores of 100 straight. Skeet shooting doesn’t mean anything to me now,
and I haven’t shot any in years, but the skills I developed breaking clay targets helps
me to photograph action or anything else with extreme speed and accuracy. This
means I can easily focus, set the exposure, and compose the shot in a second or two.
This let’s me shoot as soon as my landrover driver turns the vehicle off to eliminate
vibrations. Since checking the histogram takes time, my strategy was to set my camera
to a three shots autobracket in 1/3 stops. I metered manually off something using the
spot meter in the camera and compensated for the reflectance of whatever was being
metered. Most of the subjects in Kenya are surrounded by golden grass in August
since it is the dry season, so manually setting the camera for a plus 1 1/3 compensation
using the analog scale in the viewfinder and letting the camera bracket that exposure by
1/3 stop lighter and 1/3 stop darker worked very well. When I look at the set of three
bracketed images on the computer, I pick the best exposure as shown by the histogram
and delete the other two images. Since I shoot RAW images only (a recent change is
to shoot RAW + The Highest Quality JPEG), the best exposure is determined by
looking at the RGB histogram and picking the color channel that has data snuggled up
to the right side of the histogram without climbing (clipping) the right side. I don’t bother
looking at the left side at all. Use the important highlights on the right side of the
histogram chart to guide you to the best exposure. Always remember the worst sin you
can do to digital capture is to overexpose important highlights that have detail.
Autobracketing works great here because in only takes the Canon 1D Mark III 1/3
second to shoot three images.
Barbara’s Technique
By her own admission, she isn’t as fast as I am. She is normal in speed so perhaps her
technique may work best for you. She also shoots Nikon while I shoot Canon. The
Nikon color matrix meter seems to be able to get good exposures better than Canon’s
dynamic matrix meter so she relies on aperture priority most of the time. (I still think
she should use shutter priority). It is simply faster for her because all she needs to do
is precisely focus using back-button focusing techniques and compose the image.
(Note: Barbara only uses autoexposure for wildlife photography because speed is
essential. She uses manual exposure for landscapes and closeups and uses the RGB
histogram to guide her to the best exposed digital file.) Due to the nature of a RAW file,
you have quite a bit of exposure leeway anyway so her excellent results speak highly of
Nikon’s automatic metering technology. Barbara is careful to monitor the shutter speed
to make sure she isn’t wasting shutter speed in bright light by shooting at too high of a
shutter speed. Sometimes you want more depth of field. There is no point is shooting
a lion standing still with a shutter speed of 1/ 2000 second. You might as well go for
more depth of field. On the other hand, she is also careful to make certain the shutter
speed doesn’t get too long. That lion image is a loser if the shutter speed drops to 1/30
second - for example - with her 400mm lens because the image isn’t as sharp as it
could have been with a higher shutter speed.
Tour Participants who have Trouble with F/stops
Many photographers have never learned the f-stop fundamentals or simply aren’t quick
with them. Since photographing Kenya wildlife requires shooting quickly in some cases,
we helped many participants set their cameras up with autobracketing and shutter
priority autoexposure. In Kenya, during August, most of the tones in the images are
lighter than middle tone due to all of the golden grass and fur. Therefore, we set their
cameras for autoexposure while using shutter priority. We instructed them to set ISO
200 on sunny days and ISO 400 during cloudy periods. With the camera set at a
shutter speed of 1/ 250 second, this locks in a shutter speed that makes it possible to
shoot sharp images most of the time, if the lens is properly focused. We showed them
how to set the autobracketing to plus and minus 2/3 stops of light. This means the
camera shoots the first image at what it thought was the best exposure and then shoot
two more images, but varies the exposure automatically. One image is 2/3's stop
darker and the other is 2/3's stop lighter. This covers a 1 1/3 stop range around what
the camera thinks is the best exposure. This strategy works very well in Kenya. We
tweaked this autobracketing idea a bit more. Remember most images are of subjects
somewhat brighter than middle tone so we also set their cameras for + 2/3 stops
compensation and then let the camera autobracket around that. It works well.
Nearly all Canon camera’s have a safety shift in the custom function menu. Be sure to
set this, especially if using shutter priority. If you set the camera to 1/ 250 second and
the lens has a maximum aperture of f/4, you have a problem if the camera needs to go
to f/2.8 to maintain a good exposure because it can’t so it shoots underexposed
images. Activating the safety shift let’s the camera adjust the shutter speed if it must to
get a good exposure so the shutter will shift to 1/125 second. There is no reason not to
activate it. The shutter speed only changes when there is no other choice. Safety shift
is seldom beneficial when using aperture priority because there is such a wide range of
shutter speeds to make exposure adjustments. Unfortunately, the shutter speed the
camera picks may be too slow to get a sharp image so be sure to monitor it.
Some camera’s now offer another choice where the ISO value can be varied
automatically. If I used autoexposure, I would use this feature with my Canon cameras
all of the time. In the example above, setting safety shift let the camera lower the
shutter speed from 1/ 250 second to 1/125 second. If I used the custom function to set
a floating ISO, the camera would have kept the 1/ 250 second shutter speed and f/4,
but bumped up the ISO value one stop. If I had the camera set at ISO 200, it would
have used ISO 400 to take the image.
High Dynamic Range Photography (HDR)
We have been trying a new technique with wonderful results and shot many HDR sets
of images while we finished out instructional DVD in October on photographing the
Eastern Sierra from Fossil Falls to Bodie-an area that we have been photographing for
more than 20 years. You must look into HDR (High Dynamic Range) as it solves most
contrast problems. While many of you have heard of and may use split neutral density
filters to lower the contrast in a scene, HDR is much better and works far better on all of
the scenes we tried it on. Indeed, split ND filters now seem primitive by comparison.
Using HDR software (Photomatix Pro-www.HDRsoft.com) let’s you shoot an image that
has extreme contrast, more than your digital sensor can handle anyway. Shoot a series
of identical images that vary in exposure by at least one stop covering a range where
there is excellent detail in the brightest highlights (unless it is the sun or a light source)
and superb detail in the darkest shadows. Put all of the images in the series into the
HDR software and it will combine the images into one so that excellent detail is found
throughout the image. It eliminates overexposed highlights and you get detail in the
darkest shadows (if you wish), without having a lot of noise problems in the shadows. It
truly is revolutionary. We are no experts by any means at it yet, but the results are
wonderful. If we can do it, anyone can! In time, I will write a detailed article about HDR
for this web site. In the meantime, the book we have been reading covering HDR and
we highly recommend is the following:
Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography by Ferrell McCollough
It is well written, easy to understand, and the images are superb!
Workshop Updates
Yellowstone in Winter
We had a couple cancellations in our Yellowstone Winter photo tours by snowmobile
that are run in late January and early February of 2009. If you wish to join us, you
might be able to get in if you call Tracie at 1-800-221-1151 now! We love winter in
Yellowstone and know you will too, so please join us. By the way, Yellowstone National
Park was buried with deep snow in late December, so it promises to be a superb year
for photographing Yellowstone in the magical season of winter.
Hummingbirds of British Columbia
We are running five consecutive hummingbird photo workshops in 2009. However,
they have been sold out for nearly a year so it is tough to get in. We do get
cancellations from time to time, so call Michele at (208) 244-1887 and ask to be put on
the waiting list. Better yet, sign up for 2010 so you are certain of getting in eventually
and tell Michele you would like to be moved up to 2009 if space becomes available.
This is an awesome workshop where you learn to photograph hummingbirds with
multiple 4-flash setups and natural light. It is wildly popular due to outstanding photo
opportunities, superb lodging, and gourmet food, so you must enroll now to have a
good chance of getting in a 2010 session.
Horse Photo Tours
As many of you know, both of us are avid equestrians who ride our horses all year long-even in the snow. We love the horses and where they can easily take us. Our passion
is wilderness riding in Yellowstone and the alpine regions of the Lee Metcalf
Wilderness. We lead photo safaris on horseback to both places and both are
wonderful in different ways. Yellowstone offers plenty of magnificent waterfalls and hot
springs that are incredibly photogenic, plus tons of wildflowers. The Lee Metcalf
wilderness offers incredible mountain peaks that plunge into gorgeous alpine lakes
where we camp. Although we lead this trip in late July, it is spring at our base camps
around 9,000 feet. Tiny babbling creeks are everywhere and wonderful alpine
wildflowers beg to be photographed. These were nearly sold out last time we checked,
so please call our outfitter who handles registration to find out the current status. Call
Terry Search at (406) 646-7230 right now!
Michigan Summer and Fall Color Workshops
We have some spaces still available in these, so act now to get in. We feel these are
our best teaching workshops and we will really push you to develop your photo skills. It
is amazing to watch how our students are stumbling around a bit on the first day, but
the entire group is a refined shooting machine by the end of the week. These
workshops will change you. We stress mastering your equipment (that is the easy part)
and developing your photo eye!
The Best Game Parks of Kenya
We are skipping Kenya in 2009. Instead, we have pushed it back a bit and will be
touring Kenya in January and again in August of 2010. January is the best time to
photograph animals with their young and all of the European birds that winter in Kenya
will be present too. Our Kenya tours still have a few spots remaining so please call Kim
at International Expeditions (800) 633-4734 to get all of the details and to reserve a
spot.
We hope you also enjoyed a productive and fun-filled year. Thanks to our many
inquisitive students and going on our own photo trips where we could shoot thousands
of images, we learned a tremendous amount of new photographic tricks that work well
for us and will for you too. We plan to share all of this in future books, DVD’s,
magazine articles, and especially our workshops. Speaking of books, our second book
on digital landscape photography is due out this summer. We are working hard to put
the final touches on it right now. We want to thank everyone for buying our first book,
DIGITAL NATURE PHOTOGRAPHY-THE ART AND THE SCIENCE. The first edition
sold out in record time and it continues to sell well around the world. Thanks to your
support, our publisher (Focal Press) is eager to publish as many books as we can write,
so several more books are planned!
All the best,
John & Barbara Gerlach
Michele Smith
Yogi Bear and Saki-our dogs
Joker, Bandit, and Teton-our horses (TN Walking Horses)
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