Bird footage
 

It's brood season up in northern part of europe this time of year. I'm beeing out taken lots of footage of these birds working hard to feed their youngster.

Toghether with my XL-2, a superb camera-system I'm able to get near the action.
The lenses used are Sigma 300mm f/2.8, Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 and Canon 20x L IS.
Shooting outdoor I'm always using a pola-filter, gives me a nice and rich color. Living in PAL-country I set the shutter to 1/50 or 1/100 depending on the light conditions and adjusting the aperture for the right exposure.
A sturdy tripod is strongly recommended beeing at the highest telephoto end. The 300mm gives me 2340mm in 16:9. (300 x 7.8).

Footage 1: http://video-film.no/snutter/staer2.html - A Common Starling putting its nest in an old tree, feeding its youngster.

Footage 2: http://video-film.no/snutter/vaar.html - Some of the species at the bird sanctuary.

Enjoy!

- Per Johan

what a treat to get eyeball-to-eyeball with these fabulous creatures....

Meryem, thanks for your nice comment.

Today I was in the same sanctuary, shooting some footage of the Common coot, this is a bird with a strange look, and the youngster are even worse ;-)

The youngster are no more than 24 hours old, but they are already swimming in the lake.
http://www.video-film.no/snutter/sothoene.html

- Per Johan

Per Johan

Well done enjoyed the video clips, just shows how bloody good the XL2 is
in the right hands

Keep the good work up
Ian

I have not seen better video images of birds, Per Johan. I hope you keep at it and pan them in flight too. Your use of equipment is very interesting. I wonder what distance you were from the grebes and starlings and what approximate magnification you were using for the clips of the grebes and starlings? However you did it, the plumage detail is remarkable.

Per Johan,
I can't access your video. All I get is an empty box with a red X in the corner. Any tricks?

Brendan:
as you might have seen on my website, I use the ef-adapter with Sigma 300mm mostly. This gives me a focal lenght of 2340mm (300 x 7.8), in 16:9.
Both footage of the grebes and starling was shoot with this lense.
I always shoot in interlaced mode with shutter at 1/50 or 1/100 depending of the light. Adjusting the aperture for the right exposure. And I always use a pola-filter even in overcast weather. I found the details and colors to be very rich with this filter attached.
The distance from the grebes was approximately 30-40 meter (27-36 yards), weather was not optimal with heavy and dark cloudes and rain showers. So I'm not so pleased with this footage regarding details in the plumage.
The starling footage was better. The distance approximately 8-10 meter (9 yards), some wind but my heavy tripod did a remarkable nice job.
The footage you see on the web is very compressed compared to the original footage, which gives me a nice and sharp picture even on a huge 37" LCD-TV.

Birds in flight: I have done some footage, but its very hard to follow the birds in flight with a focal lenght of 2340mm! I found that beeing on a distance from the action helps. Large birds like swans and goose is easier than ducs and smaller birds. Keeping everything in sharp focus is also hard especially when the birds moves away from or towards the camera. I'm still practice and practice and I know that one day a got what requires to take good footage of birds in flight.

Steve:
Sorry to hear that you was not able to view the footage. This is a flash-movie, so you need a flash-player to view. This link might help you out:
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/downl...ShockwaveFlash

To all:
I am very pleased with all the positive comments I got.

- Per Johan

Per johan,

I shoot a lot of wildlife. I have hours of footage shot this year. I very much enjoyed your flicks, particularly the waterfowl.
I have been debating on what lens to buy for an ef adapter and I must say I am very impressed with the sigma. Just exactly which one is it?

I have some cool footage of coots. I think it is great to get the footage when they are riding on the hens back!!
We are just now starting to see some ducklings and goslings in our area.

keep up the great work.

I shoot birds in flight a lot through the winter months. the difficulty is mostly keeping things in focus, or just getting them in focus when you find them!!!

Keep up the fine work!!

Dale,
here is som data about my Sigma 300 lense:
http://www.sigma-photo.co.jp/english...oom/300_28.htm

B&H also have this in stock:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

I think this is a superb lense for the XL-2. It's heavy so you should consider to use a rail. Ron Armstrong has made a rail which I use on my system:
http://ronsrail.com/


BTW, the Great Crested Grebe have their youngsters these days. I'm out every day trying to get a footage with the mother swimming with the youngster on her back, hopefully I get some this weekend :-) I post some footage when I got it!

- Per Johan

Per Johan,

Very nice work. I know from experience how hard ti can be to keep a smooth follow on moving birds at that zoom range.

What microphone were you using? I notice in particularly the starling series that the birds are callling though the volume is low. I think this can be a problem with a super telephoto, is finding a mic to match. I was looking at some parabolic mics, but may try to make one.

Keep up the great work!

Ken

Ken, I'm using 2 Senneheiser ME67 shotgun mics. Regarding the starling-footage the wind was very high so I had to reduce the input-level.

Ok, I promised to put some footage online of the Great Crested Grebe. Tonight I was very lucky shooting a couple with 3 youngsters on the mothers back in the water. Take at look at the footage here:
http://video-film.no/snutter/toppdykker.html

The footage might look a little smearing in the colour, but the reason is that it is a lot of movements in the footage wich alter the compressed file. The original avi-file is very sharp and nice looking :-)

Enjoy

Delightful, Per Johan;

May or may not be a new line in Family Albums but must surely be a potential contribution to the study of Natural History. It's not only the younger generations who would be glad and informed to see this subject-matter and standard of footage.

I have organized a downloadable wmv-file for some of the footage at my website.
You find it below the flash-window; named "Nedlastbar wmv-fil" - in english: download wmv-file. Right-click and select Save as...

Hopefully some of you who could't view the flash-movie now are able to view the footage.

Per Johan,

Exquisite footage of the greb. We have horned grebs here, now I am stimulated to try to get some footage like that!!

I would be really interested in what your presets are on you camera! The color is awesome!!

I will try to find a source to post some footage. in a couple weeks I have two months holidays and will be filming most every day.

Oh yea, very interesting that the mother who is molting at this time of year is feeding the down to her babies. Other species like raptors make castings of this stuff (they eat their own down when preening) and it works as roughage to keep the digestive system, mainly the crop, clean all the time. Intriguing!!!

Dale,

Here are the presets:
Gamma: Cine
Knee: Low
Black: Stretch
Color matrix: Cine
Everything else is factory default.

I also got the Fu-1000 viewfinder some weeks ago, this helps me alot maintaining good focus at this extreme telephotoend. As you might see in the greb-footage, half the bird is out of the focal-range cause of the narrow dept of field.

Hope you manage to get some footage on the web Dale. A picture tells you more than 1000 words, a footage tells you.... :-)