Trogon Photo Tours

September 2018 - This month's newsletter is about photography of amphibians and replies, mostly macro from photography from Costa Rica.  While most of our photography focus on tours has been on birds and mammals, we will certainly photography frogs, toads, lizards and snakes if we find them out on our trips.  This has extended recently to dedicated macro photography sessions on our Costa Rica and Ecuador tours.  In this newsletter I will describe different techniques for photographing these animals. 

Red-eyed Tree Frog photographed January 2018 by Nate Chappell at Sarapiqui, Costa Rica.  Canon 5D3, 100-400 with 1.4x teleconverter, manual exposure 1/100 F11, iso 800, 580ex flash at 0.  This was shot with the flash on full power but using some ambient light as well so that the background was not black.  I added the teleconverter to get enough magnification to get the frog fairly big in the frame.  Depth of field is often a challenge when doing macro photography but using the flash I was able to get his front legs, face and eyes sharp.  At this location the biologists who run the station, collect the frogs, which are nocturnal, at night time and place them in terrariums where they are fed etc.  Then during the shoot we place them on attractive perches and the biologists release them back into the wild after the photo shoot. 

Red-webbed Rainforest Frog photographed January 2018 by Nate Chappell at Sarapiqui, Costa Rica.  Canon 5D3, 300F4 1.4x, manual exposure, 1/200 F16, iso 500, 580ex at 0.  For this image I took the image more like a night image with very little ambient light.  Considering these are nocturnal animals, I don't think it's a bad way to portray them.  One advantage of this is you are able to drop your iso which results in higher image quality.  I used my 300F4 which focuses down to 5 feet.  Both this and the 100-400 II are good lenses for photographing amphibians and reptiles. 

Black and Blue Poison Dart Frog photographed January 2018 by Nate Chappell at Sarapiqui, Costa Rica, Canon 5D3 300F4 1.4x, manual exposure 1/200 F20, iso 200.  On this shot I used all flash and no ambient light.  Part of the reason I was able to use those settings on this shot is that the background just consisted of the plant he was on, therefore it was very close and was lit up by the flash as well as the frog was (there was no background that I had to worry about going black on me).  As you can see using the flash also allows you to use much more depth of field to yield the whole animal sharp.

Black and Green Poison Dart Frog photographed March 2017 by Jeffrey Munoz at Sarapiqui, Costa Rica.  Canon 5D4, Sigma 100F2.8 lens, manual exposure, 1/250 F4, iso 2500.  Our local tour leader Jeffrey Munoz uses quite different techniques for his macro photography.  On most of his images he shoots without a flash and uses limited depth of field.  Partly this is because that lens is not image stabilized.  For this to work well most of the time the frog needs to be shown smaller in the frame because if you were very close to it you would need more depth of field.  Jeff works without a tripod on these and that together with the fact that he isn't using flash means he has to use a much higher iso.   Certainly some photographers would prefer the more natural look to this. 

Reticulated Glass Frog photographed November 2016 by Jeffrey Munoz at Sarapiqui, Costa Rica.  Canon 5D4, Sigma 100 F2.8 macro lens, manual exposure 1/125 F5, iso 2500.  In my opinion this is a spectacular image taken by Jeff due to the shapes of the out of focus leaves and the selective focus on the frogs face.  In this image shooting fairly wide open with no flash works out beautifully.  So on our Costa Rica tours we have 2 different photographers who can help you try out different macro techniques when working with these frogs.  

Western Rainfrog photographed July 2018 by Charles Gangas at Las Gralarias Lodge, Ecuador.  Nikon D500, 70-200 2.8 lens with 1.4x at 170mm, 20mm Kenko extension tube, 1/60 F14, iso 1250, Av mode -0.7 exposure compensation, matrix metering, Nikon SB-900 at -2.0 Flash exposure compensation Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  Extension tubes are useful when doing this type of work.  The settings for this shot are more of your typical fill flash shot with a bit of negative exposure compensation and the flash on fill settings.  The staff as Las Gralarias is very helpful with finding frogs for us to photograph.   The owner Jane Lyons, has published some books about the frogs of the area.  

Land Iguana photographed January 2015 by Nate Chappell at North Seymour Island, Galapagos.  Nikon D7000, Sigma 150-500 at 380mm, 1/400 F9, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  Of course we photograph a variety of reptiles on our Galapagos trips including this species and several subspecies of Marine Iguanas as well as Lava Lizards and Giant Tortoises.  Nothing remarkable about the techs on this shot, I stopped down enough to get the full head and eye in sharp focus.  A zoom lens is a necessity in the Galapagos as the subjects can be very close.

Common Butterfly Lizards photographed November 2011 at Huai Kha Kheang Wildlife Sanctuary, Thailand.  Canon 1D3 500F4 1.4x 1/1600 F8, iso 800, Av mode, handheld.  Sometimes when we are out searching for birds and mammals we come across interesting reptiles and this was the case here.  Our guide found these lizards and told us he thought they were going to start fighting, sure enough they did.  In this case I made sure I had enough shutter speed to stop the action, indeed the settings are more like what you would use for bird photography than for typical reptile photography.