No Subject Cooperation But A Memory Of Time With Friends

Bald Eagle Soaring Above (click to enlarge)
Fujifilm X-T3; 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens @ 400mm (600mm FF equivalent); 1/2000th sec. @ f/7.1; ISO 640
~100% crop

Last week, as we periodically do, a couple local photographer friends and I got together, ate breakfast, talked photography, picked on each other and just enjoyed the time friends spend with one another.

Typically after breakfast, we drive somewhere close and spend a few hours photographing together.  That is what we did.  We set out to photograph Bald Eagles, ospreys and other birds as it is "nest building time" for the ospreys and "sitting on the eggs waiting for them to hatch time" for the bald eagles.

Unfortunately, every raptor we saw was so far away that it was futile to create good images.  However, that didn't stop us from trying and making a few snaps.  The images I made that day are posted here and are at about a 100% crop as that is the only way I could "make something out of nothing."  The raptors were just not cooperating.  Lol.

Obviously, you always want to compose carefully in the viewfinder and not have to crop your images.  Sometimes you have no choice.  If you don't practice good technique when you heavily crop your images or even crop all the way to 100%, typically your images can easily break down and you end up with soft, slightly out of focus, slightly blurry images or images suffering from other defects.  Cropping heavily can be your worst enemy.  But if you practice good technique, the images can hold up "reasonably" well.  Never as good as fully composing in-camera, but when your subjects were a few hundred yards away and wouldn't come closer, you have to settle what you can get.

In the end, these images (which were all hand held which is certainly not the best technique since I had a large tripod and gimbal head in my vehicle) are more of a memory refresher of a good time I had with my two friends than anything I would use for anything other than illustrating this blog.

I'm going to post the original along with the cropped version so you get a better idea of how far these raptors were even while using my Fujifilm 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens, which has an equivalent full frame field of view of a 600mm lens.  One was even made with the 1.4X tele-converter attached for an equivalent field of view of 840mm.

Same image as above. (click to enlarge)

Entire frame. (click to enlarge)

Osprey sitting on nest which they constructed on the corner of an old abandoned dock. (click to enlarge)
400mm (600 FF equiv.); 1/2000th sec. @ f/7.1; ISO 1000

Entire frame. (click to enlarge)

Bald Eagle male watching and guarding. (click to enlarge)
400mm (600 FF equiv.); 1/2000th sec. @ f/9; ISO 2000

For this image, I braced my arms against the roof of my vehicle to steady the camera. (click to enlarge)

Mom "to-be" on her nest.  This nest is particularly hard to get a decent image of the eagles as the nest is high in a tree
and tilted away from the only position you can stand. Normally, you can only see the top half of them.  (click to enlarge)
400mm (600 FF equiv.); 1/1000th sec. @ f/7.1; ISO 800

Again, the full frame. (click to enlarge)

Osprey pair,  The two of them return to this tree each year.  Last year I captured one of these two dive bombing and
attacking a Bald Eagle that was sitting in this tree (see below).  Evidently, it didn't appreciate the interloper. (click to enlarge)
X-T3; 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens + 1.4X tele-converter @ 560mm (840mm FF equiv.); 1/1000th sec. @ f/8; ISO 500

Full image area at 840mm field of view, hand held with the lens wide open.  I made a number of images of these two to
ensure some were in sharp focus. (click to enlarge)

Here are three of the Bald Eagle being attached by the osprey in that same tree from last year.

See it coming!

You can just see the talons of the osprey in the upper right
of the image with a branch partially obscuring them.

Strafing the eagle.  No Fear!

On the positive side, if you ever doubted the Fujifilm X-T3 and 100-400mm lens combination to be able to record sharp images hand held using the image stabilization built in to the lens, it does.  This camera lens combination works very well.

As I said, there is nothing here that is good enough for anything but reminding me what a great time I had with two great friends, sharing breakfast, conversation and photography.  

You know, It doesn't always have to be about bringing something spectacular home.  Sometimes, no matter what the shared activity may be, it is more about the experience and the memories made.  Good images, nice sized fish, a favorite trail hiked or any other shared activity is just a bonus.

Join me over at Instagram @dennisamook or my website, www.dennismook.com. 

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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