Brief Photography Outing

Osprey guarding the fledgling. From JPEG file, cropped almost to 100% (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T1, 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm; 1/550th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400

Yesterday was one of those hot, humid summer days in southeastern Virginia.  For me, just a bit too hot and humid to spend much time outdoors.  The temperature topped out a few degrees over 90 F (30 C).  The sky was overcast and white.  I call it a bald sky.  You know the kind of day.  

Full image of above (click to enlarge)

A couple of my good photography friends and I met for breakfast, as we do on occasion. After talking photography and solving the problems of the world, we decided to caravan over to the Colonial Parkway, a lovely drive which runs between Yorktown and Historic Jamestown, Virginia to see if we could find any raptors to photograph.  My hopes weren't high as this time of year is not really the best for active and plentiful raptors.  However, we know of 6 Bald Eagle nests and many Osprey nests along the Parkway.

We did see a few birds.  They were very distant. Nothing was close enough to really photograph even with an equivalent 600mm lens, but photograph we did. There were some young birds in nests that occasionally made themselves visible for only a moment or two.  I had my Fujifilm X-T1 and 100-400mm lens.  I had the ISO set for 400 and aperture priority set for f/5.6—wide open.

All images in this post are from the JPEG files.  Yes, I trust the Fuji engineers that much to use JPEGS instead of only RAW files.  To me, not in every case but in many many cases, the JPEGS are indistinguishable from the RAW files. Unfortunately, due to the distance to the birds, I had to crop extremely heavily to get a proper composition, but the files help up excellently.

Young Osprey poking his/her head from behind dead tree (click to enlarge)
Technical info same as above

About a 100% crop of a young Osprey in a nest in the middle of a waterway, from JPEG file (click to enlarge)

Fujifilm X-T1, 100-400mm lens @ 400mm; 1/680th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400

Pretty well obscured Bald Eagle on Right with Young on Left high in a pine tree, JPEG file (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T1, 100-400mm lens @ 400mm; 1/300th sec. @ f/5.6; ISO 400

Full frame of same image (click to enlarge)

Also, just for perspective, I've included a couple of the full frame images just for illustration as to how much cropping I did so you can see how well these JPEGS held up.

I've done this same photography with my Nikon D810 and the expensive f/2.8 Nikon professional lenses.  Although the Nikons produce very sharp and detailed images, I would never think to use the JPEGS out of that camera as I do with the X-T1.  To me, they just don't compare favorably.

All in all, not very good images, but I wanted to share with you what we did find and show you that not only can you feel comfortable using Fuji JPEGS, but you can also heavily crop and still maintain excellent quality.

Even better than the photography was the comraderie, companionship and sharing of a meal, conversation and photography with two good friends.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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