Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Who are You?

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (March, 2020) - Located a family of Great Horned Owls nesting in the Bolsa Chica Wetlands. The female has been on the nest for 40+ days, so babies should hopefully hatch soon. I found the male hanging out in a nearby tree and captured a shot. Also included at the bottom are some photos of a juvenile Great Horned Owl from Yorba Regional Park in Anaheim.





More Osprey please

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (March, 2020) - More images from the Sunset Aquatic Marina of the male Osprey feeding. On this day he ate first and then took half the fish up to the nest for the family.

Seahawk Nesting

HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. (March, 2020) - In the Sunset Aquatic Marina, Edison built a nesting platform on a retired power pole for the local Ospreys. I spent some time this month shooting the family and captured some images. I find it fascinating that the male hunts for fish and then delivers food to the female and babies. Below are some images from the month of March.








Sunday, March 29, 2020

High Resolution Panos

March, 2020 - Finally got my pano rig together after a few months of acquiring all the parts. The base components are primarily RRS, however, starting from the bottom is my Gitzo carbon fiber tripod. Above that is an RRS ballhead with a panning base above the ball. The pano rig sits on top the panning base (see image below).


The other item I picked up is a Voightlander 50mm f/2 APO-LANTHAR lens. This is a very high resolution lens that is capable of rendering imaging over 100+mp. Below are some sample images showing the sharpness to the edges (note that these were all handheld as the sun was setting).





So on to my pano test. The images were individually captured at 1/250, f/8 at ISO 100 on a Sony A7RIII. The image below was stitched from 10 individual jpg images and the resulting size is 170mp! If I used the RAW images, this would have been 400+mp. Just to note, the Voightlander performed amazingly and at 50mm there is virtually no distortion. The detail that is rendered is pretty unbelievable. You can see blades of grass in the foreground and can read the letters on the tires. At the same time, you can read license plates in the driveways across the street as well as see detail in the leaves and bark on the trees. The one anomaly is the couple who walked their dogs through the scene. You'll see that the women disappeared from the stitch overlay but her dog is still in the frame.


Here is a link to the 170mp DNG file if you are interested in pixel peeping.