Sunday, January 24, 2010

Crimson-Breasted Flowerpecker (Lifer)

It was a "dry" outing at Sungai Sedim this morning, no sight of Broadbill (Green or Banded), Scarlet-rumped Trogon, forest Bulbul and etc. I almost wanted to "call it a day".
As I walked toward the car park, I came across this fella, Crimson-breasted Flowerpecker, busy fed on pollen. It turned out not a bad day at all, at least another photo lifer to my bird photos collection.

Canon 7D EF 800 mm IS
ISO 800 F8 Aperture Priority






Thanks for viewing, feel free to comments.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Video Shot of Mr Green (Green Broadbill)

A video clip of Green Broadbill, which I took few weeks ago with the Canon 7D with EF 800 mm IS lens.




Thanks for viewing.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Chestnut-winged Babbler (My photo Lifer)

Last Sunday morning, I encountered this rare species of Chestnut-winged Babbler (CWB) at Sungai Sedim lowland forest. The voice of  (call) CWB is really sweet and sounds like a melody song.  It was an exciting moment to photo-taking this super active bird. It likes to perch behind dense forest vegetation, thus causing difficulty in focusing on the subject. Furthermore the dimmed sunlight under the forest shade prevented me to use a higher shutter speed, I ended up erasing many of the photos due to motion blur.
I shot the CWB with the 7D and EF 800 IS. I set the ISO at 1250, although I can use a higher ISO but I wanted to preserve the feather details thus I only limited it at 1250 level.

Chestnut-winged Babbler
Canon 7D EF 800 IS
ISO 1250 F5.6 Aperture Priority
580 EXII with Quantum Battery Pack










You may visit my pbase gallery (CWB gallery) for the additional photos.

Thanks for viewing, your comments are welcome.



Sunday, January 3, 2010

My Close Encounter with Mr Green

This morning I had a close encounter with a pair of Green Broadbill ( Calyptomena viridis 15-17 cm) at Sungai Sedim Recreation Park for 2 hours. The sighting of this species is not easy as this is a forest bird. It is very difficult to see this bird on a dense lowland forest, moreover the greenish feather made it a very effective camouflage.
Is it my lucky day ? This pair was willing to perch steady on the unblocked tree branches. On some occasion, it even came down to the eye level. I shot about 10 GB of photo with my Canon 7D and EF 800 F5.6 IS lens. I shot this subject mostly without flash light in aperture priority mode, in order to get a more natural color of the feather. Since I was shooting under the forest shade, I have to struggle with very low shutter speed of 1/15. The 4 stops IS function of the EF 800 really useful in low shutter speed shooting, I managed to get high percentages of photos in good sharpness.
Shot without flash
ISO 1000 F8 or F5.6 Aperture Priority Mode



This one was shot under the rain





You can view more photos of the Green Broadbill at  Visit this Green Broadbill gallery.
Thanks for viewing, your comments are welcome.


Friday, January 1, 2010

My Digital Dark-Room

There is a notion among serious photographers that if you don't make large print out off your photo collections, you will not know how good or bad of your photo. Today, I start my own digital dark-room with the Canon Pix Pro 9500 mk II printer together with the following hardwares and software:
1) Apple 24 inches i-mac
2) Western Digital (WD) 1TB external HD
3) Maxtor 640 G external HD
4) Adobe LR 2.6 and Photoshop CS3 for editing and indexing.
5) Spyder 2 express for monitor calibration.

I made a couple of A3+ (19 inches x 13 inches) size print using the Canon Photo Paper Plus (semi gross) paper. I am quite impressed with the quality of the print. The prints are with fine details and excellent color reproduction. I made the comparison between the print and the picture on the screen, the color is very identical. Here is the photo of my first A3 + print:
Collared Kingfisher in A3+ size print


Orange-breasted Flowerpecker in A4 size print

Side by side comparison


My Digital Darkroom



Overall here is what I like and dislike about the Canon Pix Pro 9500 mk II printer:
Like:
1) Easy to setup and operate.
2) Superb printing quality with fine details and color reproduction.
3) Good printing speed.
4) Dedicated black and grey ink tank, it produces superb black and white print.

Dislike:
1) It utilizes small ink tank, I was hoping it comes with 80 ml ink tank similar with the Epson 3880 series printer. It is more economical to have bigger ink tank.


Thanks for viewing.