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Ano Nuevo - Home of the Elephant Seals
Stumblebum
Registered Users Posts: 8,480 Major grins
Ano Nuevo is a coastal park, located between Santa Cruz and Half Moon Bay in Northern California. It is one of the largest main-land breeding colonies for magnificent elephant seals. I discovered it recently and instantly it has become one of my favorite spots. End of January would be even better time to catch the breeding season in its prime. I did not get to witness any fights amongst the dominant bulls, which was what I wanted. However, whatever I did witness was joyous and worth sharing! Any helpful suggestions and critique is always welcome.
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Comments
Wild Westhampton
I like the sand showers.
Nice moments with the pups too.
I especially like #14
https://www.flickr.com/people/scardenphoto/
Link to my Smugmug site
Thanks Joel! In SF there is a place called "Chimney Rock" where there is supposed to be a colony. Hope to get there some time this season!
Thanks Shawn! Pups made my day!
I have the same body/lens combo - I need to get out and try to get some results like this...
Do you have an Extender or is this native 100-400mm?
Hi Eric, great to know you have same gear. This is the recipe that is working for me (I always publish anything I learn as I am always bugging others for knowledge):
1) No extender as auto-focus may not work at all and even if it works it is 75% slower by Canon's own admission, so for purposes of wild life it is truly useless.
2) AV (aperture priority mode, let camera figure out the shutter speed and right exposure. When you swing it around to try and track a bird, exposure needs to change dramatically and this auto-mode works better)
3) Shutter speed of 1000+ minimum (meaning its okay to be at 1600 ISO even in bright day light)
4) Set the tracking sensitivity to "subjects that can move in any direction randomly"
5) IS set to 6.5 meter setting unless you get lucky and something comes closer. This helps it find focus faster
6) High Speed Continuous shooting burst
7) Priority focus for High Speed Continuous shooting burst (it has 3 settings, equal priority to shutter release and focus, shutter release priority and focus priority. By setting focus priority, it will try to focus first before launching the burst)
8) Focus is most critical and 90% of the time even with all of the above, it does not get focus fast enough, if you want to capture action shots. So you have to study the animal behavior, like trying to predict which bird would take off or track it farther away and then press the shutter half way multiple times so it achieves focus. This is like acquiring video game skill
9) Find a spot and let animals accept you and recognize you as no threat
10) Crop zoom - most of the time I am lucky to get 20-25% of the picture that can be used.
11) Hand held.....simply no time to adjust tri-pod or carry it closer to animals without scaring them
12) Expand the auto-focus from single to 5 points. It gives higher probability of locking onto a target.
13) Have Sun at your back, or will just get silhouettes (ideally wind at the back too, but that never happens)
14) Lot of stuff on cutting room floor....like 99%.
It is fun when you get lucky.....like Geese flying right at you!
Hope to see you posting! Cheers!
I have a 1.4 III extender that I've put to good use on the 5DMkIII with pretty
good AF performance after the firmware update that enabled AF at f8 on that body...
But you're right, there are limitations.
Once again, thanks for sharing these fine captures and tips - #4 image rocks!