Barred Owl - Corkscrew Swamp
The barred owl, also known as northern barred owl or hoot owl, at the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary in Florida this afternoon. The swamp has way too much water and as a result, the number of birds is minimum. This owl remained with its eyes closed for what seemed like an eternity. Finally, when the park staff came by to say we had to leave, I stopped by to get this image.
Space Coast Wildlife & Birding Festival - Day 1
It was a gorgeous 84 degree day yesterday when I arrived in Titusville for the Space Coast Festival but this morning it was a cold 51 degrees. This rapid change is no good for bird photography as most of the birds were hunkered down in the mangroves. The few that braved the cold were mostly way out of reach even with an 800 mm equivalent lens.These are a few decent images albeit severely cropped. Now for the good news - the new Leica 200 mm f/2.8 arrived and I have just unpacked it. Will give this lens a shot tomorrow morning.
"Refugees Welcome"
After a lot of debate I decided to title this image "Refugees Welcome". In the past 6 months the topic of refugees has been dominant in the news. With Canada as one of the countries that has openly welcomed refugees, I felt this image represented the statement appropriately. The concrete totems can be viewed as either emerging or going into the St. Lawrence river in Northern Quebec.A little back story on this image: we had picked a number of location to photograph this morning but the incessant rain messed up our plans. So we stopped for a second breakfast and more coffee. - Well one just cant keep sitting in a restaurant for ever so I decided to get this image rain or no rain. It was pouring but I had my GH5 with the 12 - 35 mm f/2.8 (version 1) lens attached. I wanted to slow the shutter down so as to prevent capturing the water drops splashing on the water but was not going to venture back to the car to get my ND filters. I had my polarizer on so I closed down the aperture to f/18 that was enough to give me a shutter speed of 60 seconds at ISO 100 - yes it was quite dark and miserable. I held my hand over the front of the lens to prevent rain from ruining the image. The camera and lens were soaked but I got the image. I am convinced, first hand - the Panasonic Lumix GH5 is great in the rain. One day I might consider doing a dust test - Africa or India would be great for that.The following images are ones I have already posted on Facebook but wanted to include them as a record of the trip to Northern Quebec and New Brunswick over the 4th of July weekend 2017. 
The GH5 continues to excel
With the exception of the last three years we typically go to Damariscotta Maine to photograph the Osprey fishing for alewives. The main reason for not going was the decline in activity. However we did spend this past weekend in a lovely B&B - The Mill Pond Inn in Nobleboro. It is a great place and has two of the finest hosts.My main purpose was to test out the GH5 for its tracking capability and the Dual IS 2 function. Both these images were shot with the GH5 and the Leica 100 - 400 lens, hand-held. Exposure was set to "Manual" and the ISO was set on Auto. The focus was set to 1 Area and reduced to its smallest size. All images processed using Capture One Pro, version 10I intentionally left the shutter speed slow so as to get a lot of motion in the wings and to have the water droplets streak. I panned this shot keeping the 1 Area on the bird's eye.
As we waited for more action (that never happened) a Bald Eagle flew by in the distance and finally landed on a tree on the far bank. I knew that the bird was just to far to get a decent shot but I wanted to see what I could get irrespective. Once again this was hand held. I did increase the shutter speed to 1/1600 sec and the lens was out at 800 mm (FF equivalent).This next image is the un-cropped version.
The next image is a crop at 1400 by 1050 pixels:
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Ding Darling NWR and The Venice Rookery
So impressed with the capability of the the Lumix G85 and Leica 100 - 400 mm combination. Here are a few images from Venice Rookery and Ding Darling NWR.
Ruffled Feathers
A few more images from Ding Darling NWR. Wading birds in breeding plumage just look wonderful when they have their feathers ruffled. 
Lumix G85 4K Photo
On my visit to Ft. Myers I wanted to test the 4K Photo Mode capability of the Panasonic Lumix G85. The image shown was captured in 4K photo mode on March 14, 2017. The entire sequence was imported as a video file. I did not want to select and save a JPEG file in camera. Saving a JPEG is the suggested method for 4K Photos. The video frames were exported at individual TIFF files with a frame resolution of 3328 by 2496 pixels (an 8Mb file) this was processed in Capture One ver. 10 and exported as a JPEG for web display. The camera was mounted with the Leica 100 - 400 mm lens, hand-held using "Dual IS". For reference purposes the scene's exposure triad was ISO 800, f6.3, 1/250 sec.
Aquatic Birds of Florida
Before I say anything, I want to make it perfectly clear that I am not a videographer. I captured these clips while I was in Florida during the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife Festival, late January 2017. All these were captured during my photo walks/drives in Black Point Wildlife Drive in Merritt Island. The primary purpose was to tryout the "In Body Image Stabilization" aka IBIS of the Panasonic Lumix G85 camera body. The camera was used with the Leica 100 - 400 mm lens at its full extension that is an equivalent of 800 mm (most of the time). All footage was captured hand-held and in many instances during high winds and rain. It is important to note, that all the footage was captured before Panasonic released two major firmware updates, one of the camera and the other for the lens. What this means is that the Dual IS function was not in effect when these videos were captured. I was very impressed with the performance of this camera and lens combination and will be doing a comparison to see the impact of the new firmware when I am at the next conference in St. Augustine in April.To see the video in 4K please CLICK HERE to be directed to YouTube [video type="youtube" id="i1exFCyhtGU" width="600"]Default Message[/video]
Panasonic GX85 with the Leica 100 - 400mm lens
I received my GX85 a few days ago but yesterday was the first opportunity to try it out. The GX85 with the Leica 100-400 is a superb combination. Both these images are considerable crops. There are two recently fledged Downy Woodpeckers, a male and a female who frequent the back yard. I am most impressed with the detail from the GX85 (no anti-aliassing filter) and excellent image stabilization.
