Common Mergansers in Fall


Posted by Paul Rossi on Tue Jan 08, 2019 8:34 am

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Image
Taken on a creek in Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula.  Mom is on the left, the rest are juveniles.

Canon EOS 1D Mark 2 + 600mm IS lens
1/800 sec, f/5.6
Mode: Av
Metering: Multi-segment
Exp comp: -1
ISO: 400
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by Ron Day on Tue Jan 08, 2019 1:51 pm
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The background habitat, and its reflections in the water add a lot to this image. It appears you selectively focused on the closest Merganser and achieved nice detail and a good reflection of it. I can also envision a version with a little more depth of field and more of the ducks in focus.
 

by Paul Rossi on Tue Jan 08, 2019 5:56 pm
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Ron Day wrote:The background habitat, and its reflections in the water add a lot to this image. It appears you selectively focused on the closest Merganser and achieved nice detail and a good reflection of it. I can also envision a version with a little more depth of field and more of the ducks in focus.

I did focus on the face of the closest merganser.  I knew the others would be out-of-focus and deemed it acceptable.  All the mergansers were swimming, so I needed enough shutter speed for a sharp image. At the time the image was made (years ago) I would not go above ISO 400 because the camera would yield unacceptably noisy images, and I did not envision the noise-reducing technology that now exists.  I could have gone from f5.6 to f11 to try to get them all in focus, gambling that the much lower shutter speed might stop the action, but with the 600mm lens (as opposed to, say, a 300mm lens) I would not have had enough DOF, so I deemed it useless to try.
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by Mako_Elite on Tue Jan 08, 2019 9:15 pm
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Nice family picnic on the water :-) Beautiful birds.

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by Karl Egressy on Wed Jan 09, 2019 6:33 am
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For a moment I thought I had some problem with my eyes (as I do), than I clicked on it and saw the one in focus. Nice image.
 

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