Thursday, July 02, 2009

Return to the Redstarts

I recently decided to have one more session with redstarts. As usual the male quickly put in an appearance. He really is a beautiful bird in prime condition.
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He was closely followed by the female.
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On this particular session I decided to play around with a 25mm extension tube which has been rattling around neglected in the bottom of my camera bag. The extension tube gives some magnification effect to the lens. The longer the lens the less the magnifying effect but it is still noticeable on the 500mm. This effectively leads to the bird appearing larger within the fame and so the bird occupies a greater number of pixels and as such detail should be improved. The real benefit of the extension tube is that unlike a teleconvertor they contain no glass so there is nothing to reduce image quality, although you do lose a little light with their use.
The real joy of the session was the appearance of three recently fledged young which I have not really had opportunity to photograph properly before and it was great to see the adults had a successful brood. The young redstarts are virtually identical to a young robin except they have a red tail.
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They were certainly looking healthy and very active
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So I suppose its time to bring the redstart story to close for another year and I will finish off with one last photo of each of the adults.
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They all have a long journey ahead of them soon with their trip back to Africa for the winter so here's to wishing them good luck on their voyage.

7 comments:

holdingmoments said...

Superb images Richard.
Fantastic feather detail.
Good tip re the extension tubes; that wouldn't have occured to me.
Let's hope they all have a safe journey back to Africa. Quite a trip for a little bird.

FAB said...

Rich, I'm astounded at the detail on the youngsters. Definitely worth you digging deep into the bag for the extension tube. FAB

Unknown said...

Mindblowing images Rich. This is as good as it gets, technically perfect and visually stunning compositions...Thomas

Emma Anderson said...

Magnificent Redstart pictures. Many congratulations.

Lee Harrison said...

Amazing pic as always, I'm a big fan...I am fairly new to the photography seen and I am learning all the time, this extension tub that you are talking about, please could someone help my to understand what this is and what it is used for?

Thank again for the amazing pictues Rich..

If you would like to see my work please see my website at http://leeharrisonsnaturephotography.blogspot.com/

I'm looking for all possible help to improve my pics. so i you have any ideas feel free to comment...

Lee Harrison said...

Amazing pic as always, I'm a big fan...I am fairly new to the photography seen and I am learning all the time, this extension tub that you are talking about, please could someone help my to understand what this is and what it is used for?

Thank again for the amazing pictues Rich..

If you would like to see my work please see my website at http://leeharrisonsnaturephotography.blogspot.com/

I'm looking for all possible help to improve my pics. so i you have any ideas feel free to comment...

Rich Steel said...

Many thanks for your comments :)

Lee an extension tube is a tube that fitting that goes between the camera and lens. This has two effects. Firstly it increases the magnification of the lens (the shorter the focal length of the lens the greater the magnification), secondly it reduces the minimum focusing distance of the lens. The draw backs are small in the you lose a little light and the camera will not focus at distance. However, because there is no extra glass between lens and camera body it does not impact upon image quality as a teleconvertor can do.

Cheers

Rich

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