What an evening.
 

Just had to share the following!!

After a lng day slaving to the yard sheila and I decided to go for a short drive.
Our first encounter was a melanistic male swainsons hawk, gorgeous. in the next two miles we had opportunities on four other normal swainsons.
then we stumbled into my favorite of ducks, Drake canvasbacks, best opportunity this spring. when we got to the lake 3 miles from home, what a surprise, the 225 square mile pond had thousands of swans on it. I have never, ever seen so many swans in one location!!! To far out to shoot I thought but sheila said shoot anyway and I not only got some of the swans but a female Marsh hawk hunting the shore line too! Kind of distant but identifiable and it will tell the story of survivial.
As we drove along the lake the light became fantastic. I got out and spent some time shooting prairie flowers, no chrocus yet, my personal favorite, but some splindid footage of a couple I can't name.

Taking the 8 mile back road drive home I especially wanted a white tailed jack rabbit, none visible, but wildlife abounded the entire way.

Our short drive took 2.5 hours.

Days like today are the reward for having a camera they stimulates to get out there.

All shot on the gl2 with the century 2x (wished the xl was back!!!). some will definitely make it onto the uwol challenge.

The Camera as a Personal Motivator
 

Like you describe, I get out to more places, more often, just because I have a camera or camcorder with me. I hike over hills and wade through swamps, when I might just lay around watching TV, without the urge for more pictures gnawing at me.

The swan lake you visited would be a real treat. If you got out there before daybreak, you might catch them taking off for the next leg of their journey.

Speaking of Canada, did you see the story about the new Mega-Looney they've made? It's a million-dollar gold piece (actually worth 2.7 million in gold) and weighs 220 lbs. It would be good exercise carrying it to the bank. They should have a contest------whoever can pack one the farthest without dropping it, gets to keep it. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18508338/?GT1=9951

OK lads, enough of the ones that got away, let's see some clips.

Here's a bee-eater to taunt you ...

Brendan is pulling out the big guns. I'm really jealous because I just love bee-eaters. After spending the past few days trying to film wildflowers and trail scences this makes me want to get back to birds again!. Looking forward to seeing some of Dales's raptor footage as well. There have to be more than three or four people out there who could post a few short clips for us to enjoy. We want to see it all. Fine work, Brendan.

Rick

Brendan,

Using your gl2?? Great shot of a lovely bird i have never seen before.

What settings are you using to export for your clip??

I am having huge issues with compression at this time!!! I need help big time. I use sorenson 3. need a new tripod before I get sorenson 4.1!!

xl is back and running finally. the tripod is toast. when they welded it it warped the head.

Rick,
I'd enjoy more clips of your Red-winged Blackbirds and goldfinches etc etc anytime you like.

Dale,
I'm trying to persuade Sorenson to devise and publish a chart showing the comparative effects (on, say, a 100Mb file of video+audio) of using each of the settings in each of the 8 formats they offer but so far they claim it's not practical. So I've suggested to them that they're choosing to be sophisticated (& mysterious) about their products rather than helpful. They only suggest that I have to experiment with the settings (& that it's like driving a car). I must say it's a long time since I discovered that first gear is not an end in itself but then I did have a coherent teacher at the time and I find their Squeeze 4 DVD to be poorly designed and incoherently presented without any hint of being user friendly.

Build No.4.3.302.4 is the version of Squeeze I'm using and though I get better images by squeezing in Windows (.wmv)format I see that most people seem to prefer Quicktime (.mov)so for this clip I used Qt's Lg Prog setting. I don't know what Lg Prog means but once I see that it has the effect of reducing my .avi file of 51Mbs to below 2Mbs I'm happy to accept that setting and upload the resulting .mov file through the Manage Attachments facility at bottom of thread reply. I don't know whether your version of Sorenson includes settings like Lg Prog which have defaults but now that you have enquired I checked them out and they read like this:-

Lg_Prog Non-streaming (Not-hinted)
Audio:
Codec: MPEG-4Audio
Data Rate: NA Kbps
Sample size: 16
Sample Rate: 48000
Channels: Stereo

Video:
Codec: Sorenson Video 3 Pro
Method: Sorenson 2-Pass VBR
Data Rate: 896 Kbps
Frame size: 480w 360h
Maintain Aspect Ratio: (ticked)
Frame Rate: 1:1

90% of these settings I do not understand.

I can just about appreciate that if I wanted to I could have reduced my final 2Mbs a little bit more by
-reducing the Audio: Sample Rate
-using Mono rather than stereo channels
-limiting the frame size (as required for UWOL Challenges etc)

I'd be glad to learn what can be done with Sample Size (Audio) and Data Rate(Video)