Sensor cleaning with Ian @ the perc ponds

Steve Cavigliano

Hello All,
As you might have read in Ian's post, we met up yesterday afternoon at the perculation ponds near us. We were there around 5 and the Sun was in and out of the clouds :dunno

Anyhow, I had some dust bunnies on my sensor and I was going to try the magic tape method to remove them. Ian generously offered to meet me and let me use his sensor brush. Whlie we were there we figured we might as well shoot some. When we had talked about meeting at the perc ponds, I mentioned that I had seen a nice big opsrey in that area a few days ago. I figured maybe we'd be lucky enough to see him on our walk.

Well, we started out around the first pond and saw a couple of Canadian Geese and their brood.



Then we saw a group of terns and figured we'd try to get a few shots of these, difficult to expose properly, birds. Close, but no cigar. More importantly, no eye :rolleyes


I happened to look into a tree that people were fishing next to and saw a small Green Heron sitting on the branches.


Finally, Mr Osprey showed up. He was too far off at first and he left and returned when we got closer to our vehicles. Then he posed for us





He was a real showoff....lol When he had flown away again, we packed up our gear and made ready to leave. This wiseguy returned again and started circling and laughing at us from about 20 feet up :huh About 1/2 the closest distance we shot him at when we had out cameras out :rolleyes

Anyhow, I had fun. It's always kewl to shoot with someone else and even kewler if it's another Dgrinner Thanks to Ian I had a clean sensor to shoot these BIFs with :clap

Thanks for looking and I hope you enjoy,
Steve

bfjr

Nice Day Nice Shots, no Excellent shots
Great series thanks

jwear

osprey is fantanstic the wrens are hard to get it took me a few times to get the feel for them and with my 50 some odd shots one has the hint of an eye nice set Steve did you use the tape or brush ??

Eric&Susan

Hey Steve
Nice series. I like the pose in that last one.

Eric

Harryb

Good pics Steve and not one lousy night heron among them.

Those terns are hard to shoot. I've taken hundreds of shots of them and I think I can see the eye in maybe two of them,

Cool osprey shots.

Khaos

Nice gosslings pic.

Andy

it's about time you cleaned that sensor :poke

GREAPER

That last osprey is very nice Steve.

It's always fun to meet up with a friend for a shoot.

Seamus

Looks like you had a good day steve, .

Shay.

ian408

Well, did the bunnies go away

Your osprey looks very nice as does the heron. Just a bunch of butt
shots of the heron for me.

Ian

Steve Cavigliano

bfjr wrote:

Nice Day Nice Shots, no Excellent shots
Great series thanks

Thanks Ben

I only expected to have a clean sensor, the bird pics were an added bonus....lol


Steve

Steve Cavigliano

jwear wrote:

osprey is fantanstic the wrens are hard to get it took me a few times to get the feel for them and with my 50 some odd shots one has the hint of an eye nice set Steve did you use the tape or brush ??

Thanks Jeff

Yep, those terns were tough. I took about 40 shots and that one was the best Where I was standing made it tough to get the light right. So no tern eyeball That's the toughest part of catching those guys. Not to mention how quickly they fly and dart about. I saw your tern shots and you did well

I wound up using the brush. Or, more accurately, Ian wound up using the brush on my sensor. He was demonstrating and it looks like the demo got all the dust bunnies


Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

Eric&Susan wrote:

Nice series. I like the pose in that last one.

Eric

Thanks Eric

Yeah, this guy was a ham. As I mentioned, once he saw us put those big guns away (the Bigma and Ian's 300mm), he swooped down low We could have stayed for another hour fooling around with him. But, we were already late for dinner....lol

Thanks for taking the time to comment,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

Harryb wrote:

Good pics Steve and not one lousy night heron among them.

Those terns are hard to shoot. I've taken hundreds of shots of them and I think I can see the eye in maybe two of them,

Cool osprey shots.

Thanks Harry

I agree wholeheartedly about those darn terns They are so kewl to watch and hard to shoot because of their speed and erratic flight. Add in that black head and black eyes, with those white wings and you've got a tough exposure too :uhoh These are my best to date though. I'll have to keep on working at it :


@ the Night Heron comment. Nope, no Night Herons there. They must still be hanging around the rookery. I was surprised to see the little Greenie. There have been few or no egrets or herons at the perc ponds for months now.

Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

Khaos wrote:

Nice gosslings pic.

Thanks Khaos

We had a tough vantage point on those lil guys. We were up the bank and if we moved closer, they would have fled We did get some nice pics though.

Here's one with them playing follow the leader.....lol


Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

andy wrote:

it's about time you cleaned that sensor :poke

Yeah, I guess so. Every 11,000 shots whether it needs it or not :lol I appreciate what you tried to do up at Yosemite It just reinforced the point about taking before and after shots It looks OK right now, though. So I'll keep my fingers crossed and the Bigma mounted....lol

See ya in a few weeks,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

GREAPER wrote:

That last osprey is very nice Steve.

It's always fun to meet up with a friend for a shoot.

Thanks Greaper

Yep, it's always nice to shoot with Ian. He's really easy going, fun to talk to and he doesn't need feeding as often as Andy :lol

Thanks for looking,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

shay wrote:

Looks like you had a good day steve, .

Shay.

Thanks Shay

Yep, shooting is like fishing. Even the worst day is better than working (or in this case, BBQ'in for the family......lol). Suprisingly, even though we didn't get any rain, 5PM onwards gave us the best light of the entire day. So we were pretty happy about that

Thanks for taking the time to respond,
Steve

Steve Cavigliano

ian408 wrote:

Well, did the bunnies go away

Your osprey looks very nice as does the heron. Just a bunch of butt
shots of the heron for me.

Ian

Ian,
Thank you so much. I looked through all of the pics from that day and didn't see anything. Of course, I was only shooting @ F8, but even the F22 "after" shots looked good I think everything is clean now

Thanks re; the osprey and greenie. I must have taken 50 shots of the osprey and only 4 or 5 are decent I tried to get him with the right lighting, but I missed more than I got.....lol Not only that, but he was just too far away in most of them. Plus, 5fps is too slow :lol I need a machine gun like you've got Those extra 3fps would have cured all my problems.....NOT After that 1st Green Heron shot, all the rest of mine were butt shots too

Anyhow, a pleasure to shoot with you and thanks for helping me get my sensor clean See, and I didn't even post any pics of you either....lol



Steve

Seamus

Steve Cavigliano wrote:

I didn't even post any pics of you either....lol

Steve

spoilsport, the pics of the participants were my favourites from yosemite. Sportsshooter has a great gallery of fun pix, candids of people chimping / sleeping / eating. Share them please

Seamus.

jeff lapoint

steve,

these are the types of shots i'm aiming for! very well done. there is a dust spot though on the last pic on the upper left. thought you'd like to know

jk

really, these are all great. when are you nocal guys going to made it down here and show us a few things?

-j

Steve Cavigliano

jeff lapoint wrote:

steve,

these are the types of shots i'm aiming for! very well done. there is a dust spot though on the last pic on the upper left. thought you'd like to know

jk

really, these are all great. when are you nocal guys going to made it down here and show us a few things?

-j

Thanks Jeff

You had me looking for that dust spot

As for us coming down South, I'm not sure when we can make it. If you can make it up North a little way (like 3-4 hours), there will be a shoot at Pinnacles SP, 2 weeks from this Friday Check this thread out, for more info.

Thanks for your comments,
Steve