Echoing Curves
The beaches beyond Marineland in St. Augustine have some beautiful rock formations. This image was captured while the colors in the sky still had some magenta while the horizon was turning warm gold. The way the ocean had receded taking sand away from the front of this rock and exposing the bright green moss caught my eye. Even more interesting were the curves in the sand, the shape of the waves and the shape of the face of the rock. Each curve in harmony with and echoing the other.
Captured with the Panasonic Lumix S1R with the 24 – 105 f/4 lens. A Benro filter holder with a 3 stop ND, a polarizer and a 3 stop soft edge grad was used for this image. The lens was at 35mm and the exposure triad: f/8, 8 sec, ISO 100.
Marineland Beach - A1A St. Augustine
Sunrise the day before leaving St Augustine was mostly cloudless with just a small band just on the horizon. The few clouds were enough to defuse the light and create a lovely warm glow on the rocks. I set up the Lumix S1R with the 24 - 105 f/4 lens. A Benro filter holder with a 6 stop ND, a polarizer and a 3 stop soft edge grad was used for this image. The lens was at 52mm and the exposure triad: f/10, 15 sec., ISO 50.
Lumix S1R - The value of great resolution with good pixels
Last month I spent a few days in St. Augustine at Florida's Birding and Photo Festival. I took the Lumix S1R along even though I knew I would be shooting predominantly with the Lumix G9 and the Leica 100-400, an ideal bird photography combination. I was also hoping to try out the Sigma MC21 and some of the long glass that Sigma makes - more on that in future posts. For my very first shoot I decided to lave the G9 behind and just use the S1R with the Lumix Pro (Leica certified) 70-200mm f/4. Boy was this a great combination. The following images are an example of what impressed me most.
I am a strong believer on exposing to the right to maximize the ammout of data captured and this root image is an example of this technique.
The image below is of a Roseate Spoonbill that had landed near some alligators to drink water.
Typically I will adjust exposure, white /black points, highlights and shadows to get the image to what it looked like. These adjustments are shown in the screen capture as below.
As the composition was limited by the focal length of the lens I decided on a tight crop while maintaining the reflection as in the image below. The original image is 8368 X 5584 pixels and the cropped image is 1934 X 2528. Though not exact it is close to a 2X crop or the equivalent of a micro four third sensor. This provides a field of view equivalence of 400 mm.
Seeing the detail and the quality of the cropped image, I went a step further and cropped further to 1934 x 1434. This is approximately another 50%.
In my opinion this is a perfectly good image and useable in and digital competition as most competition require the image to be 1400 X 1050 px.
So why not take it one step further. A severe crop of the neck and head.
To further test the quality of images from the S1R, I took this small jpg image above and resized it to 1050 px high.
Using the same original jpg image a further resize was done to 1920 X 2678 px. This is more than sufficient for any screen/monitor display and any photographic competition.
ull disclosure, I am a Lumix Global Ambassador and use Lumix cameras and lenses for my photography. I will say that after using the S1R for a month, in my opinion, it is an exceptional camera and the best digital camera I have used to date.
The LUMIX S1R is Panasonic's new 47.3-megapixel full-frame CMOS sensor camera.
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.
MINWR Field Workshop
January 25, 2019 - 7:00 AM field trip to Merrit Island National
This year the number of Glossy Ibis in the reserve is exceptional. I have never seen so many flocks of 20 Ibis or more.
On the other hand, the Roseate Spoonbills are not as abundant as in past years.
More from SW Florida
Even though the copy of the Leica f/2.8 200mm lens is a pre-production unit I foun it performing exceptionally well. It focuses fast and the camera and lens combination have no problems following birds in flight. 
This was a very active nest. The adult had brought 5 or 6 fish and regurgitated them multiple times. 
This was the first time I witnessed a Green Heron Sky-Pointing which is a very common mating behavior with Great Blue Herons and various Egrets.
Ding Darling NWR was a big disappointment. The birds were sparse with the exception of Pelicans, Willets, Dowitchers and Dunlins. As the sun set, these Pelicans started departing the sand-bar they were on, probably to roost elsewhere.
Anhingas can look good too
Really wanted to see the G9's performance with dynamic range and the ability to capture good shadow detail. I was very pleased with the performance as you will see from these images.
Space Coast Wildlife & Birding Festival 2018 - last post
This Roseate was in good light and I liked it as a square crop. The image of the Pin-tail pair was another digiscope image that has been cropped for composition. 
The Luna Moth - albeit not in a natural environment the moth stayed on the gymnasium wall at Eastern Florida State College for hours. Used the 30mm macro on the G9 handheld and I continue to be impressed with the IBIS. The 30mm macro is currently discounted and available for under $300.
Rain is Good
It rained all morning and then we had a little break and the light got better, albeit not like the golden hour, the clouds helped diffuse it enough.The next image of the Black-crowned Night Heron was a daily image. Always in the same mangrove by the road. In all the days there was no action from this bird. 
The Glossy Ibis is another digiscoped capture - wish the light had been better for this one. It would have definitely brought out the iridescence. 
A trip to the Kennedy Space Center
Yesterday January 27, 2018 I had the opportunity to go with a group of 18 participants to the Kennedy Space Center to find and photograph the Florida Scrub Jays.
The Florida scrub jay (Aphelocoma coerulescens) is one of the species of scrub jay native to North America. It is the only species of bird endemic to the U.S. state of Florida and one of only 15 species endemic to the continental United States. The Florida scrub-jay is the rarest of five species belonging to the genus Aphelocoma, which means ‘smooth-hair’ and refers to the absence of the head crest possessed by some of the more ubiquitous North American jays. The Florida scrub-jay has a co-operative lifestyle. Each Florida scrub-jay pair mates for life and builds a new nest each year between February and March.
As there was a fair amount of hiking through the scrub I carried no tripod and hand-held the Panasonic Lumix G9 with the new Leica 200mm f/2.8 lens and the 2X teleconverter. This is an amazing combination with 6.5 stops of image stabilization the configuration was perfect for this excursion.
For this last image I used the pre burst feature to capture RAW files with the camera set to auto focus continuous. I selected this image for the truly awesome wing position as the jay too flight.
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. 
Reddish Egret at Ding Darling NWR
Managed a little time at the Ding Darling NWR on Sanibel Island. The Reddish were very active but because of the water levels remained at a distance. These two images were captured using the Panasonic Lumix G85 and the Leica 100 - 400 mm lens. It is nice to have an 800 mm equivalence. 
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 Leica DG Vario-Elmar 100 - 400mm F/4 - 6.3 lens
Last week at the Space Coast Birding and Wildlife festival I had the opportunity to briefly try out a pre-production unit. The lens was one of the first pre-production units and a lot has changed since it's manufacture. The final units will be way better in image quality, performance and handling. With that said, I will say I was truly impressed with the way the lens performed.The Leica 100-400mm is an f/4-6.3 telephoto zoom lens that gives the equivalent of 200-800mm in 35mm equivalence.The lens has a lockable zoom pull feature, so you can pull the end of the zoom to set the zoom position, or when it is locked, you need to rotate the zoom ring to vary the focal length. The lens has Power Optical Image Stabilization, and high-speed 240fps AF drive, which makes it incredibly fast in focusing performance. It is also, splash and dust proof.A feature I found most useful was the lens collar and foot that also rotates all the lens function switches. This allows you to easily access these in any orientation, landscape or portrait.In thumbnail view, hover over the thumbnail to see the focal length and exposure details. To see a larger rendition of this slide show please click here
SW Florida Workshop Day 4
Tiger Tail Beach, Marco Island was the location for today. The weather was perfect for the beach and the birds.
A plethora of peeps including the least sandpiper. All the images in the gallery were photographed with a Canon 7D and a 500mm F4. 
A Reddish Egret flew in and entertained us for quite a while:
An Osprey nest provided some great photo ops with parents flying in with fish - feeding the the single chick.
We decited to take a break and head for lunch. Dark clouds rolled in and while at lunch we had torrential rain. Fortunately we got a few breaks in the afternoon and were able to photograph a few burrowing owls on the island. We then headed back and further to Cape Coral for more Owls. The following are images from both locations.
SW Florida Workshop Day 3
Venice, Florida was the venue on today's agenda. First stop the Venice Rookery. Despite the decimation of the Brazilian Pepper bushes there is still plenty to photograph on the island.
All the images above were captured with a Canon 7D and a 500 mm F4 lens mounted using a Sidekick.As the light got harsh we left for the Venice Dump - yes the dump. The dump has an abundance of vultures and eagles but we were found Sandhill Crane pairs - eight of them.
The two Sandhill images above were photographed with a Canon 7D and a 500mm F4 lens.Lunch and then on to the fishing pier:
Both the Tern, Ruddy Turnstone and the two Gull images were shot with a 7D and a 70 - 200 mm F2.8 lens.We waited for sunset - dinner and back to Fort Myers Beach. 
This last image was shot using a Canon 7D, 16 - 35 mm F2.8 lens and a Singh Ray VariND filter.All images in my florida posts with the exception of the Venice Pier were processed using Lightroom 4 only and no plugins. The Venice pier was processed in Photoshop CS5 with Nik Viveza and Nik Color Efex Pro plugins.
SW Florida Workshop - Day 2
Day two of the workshop was an early trip to Ding Darling WR. We were at the entrance soon after it opened. One of the members in the group was a car length ahead of ours and was fortunate to see a Bobcat scurry by in front of his vehicle.The first stretch of the drive had a yellow crowned night heron hunting along fairly dark mangroves - we took a few shots for the record.The next stop was the first turnout where we were greeted by a large flock of American White Pelicans, Brow Pelicans, a Reddish Egret and Tricolor FIshing.
As the morning progressed the Red Breasted Mergansers and Pied Billed Grebes were showing up every where.
After a productive morning at Ding Darling - we went to Sanibel fishing pier for some diving pelicans.
Lots of fun. Now on to a bit of exploring we headed back to Fort Myers Beach and went further to check out Harnes Marsh.It is a lot of walking as no motorized vehicles are allowed. Saw a few Snail Kites and a pair of Sandhill Cranes with young.
That was day two. Day three to come
SW Florida Workshop - Day 0
An early morning uneventful but bumpy flight to Fort Myers got us in on time. We collected our bags, rented the car and off to Fort Myers Beach. The workshop included a trip to Cape Coral for burrowing owls so day zero required a scouting trip to the area. The typical locations were devoid of owls but the vacant lots yielded some active burrows.Here are some images from this scouting trip:
