Trogon Photo Tours

JANUARY 2014 NEWSLETTER - This month's newsletter contains information about photographing at Sani Lodge and at the Yasuni National Park clay licks near the Napo River in the Amazon region of Ecuador.  It includes some info on flash photography and photographing at low shutter speeds. 

Black-fronted Nunbird photographed January 2010, Sani Lodge, Ecuador.  Canon 1D Mark III, 500F4 1.4x 1/60 F8, iso 800, 580ex fill flash at -1.7.  This species usually hangs out right around the cabins so if you have some downtime between boat trips, it's a good species to work on.  The use of fill flash here helps darken the background, throw more light on the dark plumage of the bird, helps with sharpness at a low shutter speed and allows for use of a lower iso than would otherwise be possible.  Note that during daylight shooting hours I am almost always dialing in some negative compensation (at least -1.0) to the flash exposure compensation.  This keeps the image from looking overflashed. 

Dusky Jungle Frog photographed December 2013, Sani Lodge, Ecuador.  Canon 7D, 300F4, 1/250 F11, iso 200, 580ex flash at -0.3.  There are lots of macro photography opportunities at Sani Lodge.  I don't do a lot of macro photography but I couldn't resist this very large frog (as big as my hand with fingers) which was sitting right next to the dining room one evening.  As far as settings and equipment, I used my 300F4 because it is a close focusing lens which can be used as a substitute for a macro.  When photographing with flash at night I use the maximum synch speed for normal flash that my camera can use (with the 7D 1/250 of a second).  I was close so I used the depth of field that I thought would be necessary to get the frog sharp - I probably needed more like F16 or F22 to get the back legs sharp but F11 did a nice job on the front part of the frog.  When using flash at night I use an iso which I think will produce little or no noise.  Being very close here I used iso 200, if it had been a bird farther away I probably would have gone with iso 400.  Lastly the flash exposure compensation at night should be 0 or -0.3

Orange-winged Amazons photographed at Sani Lodge, Ecuador, December 2013.  Canon 7D, 500F4 1/1250 F5.6, iso 400, manual exposure.  The many parrot, parakeet and macaw species that can be photographed in the Napo Region are a major draw.  We photographed 9 species on our 5 day extension this year.  An excellent strategy for photographing these birds in flight near Sani is to have the guide park the boat near the entrance to the exit slough to the Napo River.  On many sunny days lots of parrots and macaws will fly over this area in the morning.  I prefer to use manual exposure for flight photography because of the potential of changing backgrounds ruining the exposure. 

Dusky-headed Parakeets - photographed December 2013, Napo River Parrot Clay Lick, Yasuni National Park.  Canon 5D Mark III, 500F4, 1/800 at F7.1, iso 2500.  The first of the 2 clay licks at Yasuni National Park is a clay bank on the Napo River.  Because the Napo is a large river and it's flowing fast here, it's impossible to anchor the boat we are shooting from.  So you have a choice of running the motor and idling in place in front of the river bank or moving upstream of the spot, turning off the motor and floating back past.  The second option of turning off the motor and floating past works quite a bit better, the vibration from the boat's motor being too much.  So we drive past it and then float back in front of it several times until everyone is happy with their photos.  I composed this as a vertical because I liked the composition much better than as a horizontal.  Note that you are going to need a fair amount of shutter speed because the boat is moving and you also need quite a bit of depth of field with all those birds, so you end up shooting at a pretty high iso unless you are going for a blur shot. 

Orange-eared Parrots and Cobalt-winged Parakeets photographed at Yasuni Forest Clay Lick, December 2013.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/40 F5.6, iso 800 evaluative metering -1.3, Gitzo tripod.  The other clay lick is about a half a mile walk into the forest.   I used a lot of negative exposure compensation because the background was very dark.  Being under the canopy there is very little light there.  That being the case I worked on shots where the birds on the ground were relatively sharp and the flying birds blurred.  The wings of the Orange-eared Parrots make a sort of rainbow when they fly and that was part of what I was trying to capture.  To execute this type of shot with the birds on the ground sharp you need to have your tripod fixed and not pan with the shot.  Earlier in this portion of the trip my Canon 5D Mark III took on too much water when I got rained on, I wasn't careful enough to use my pancho because I had never had water problems with any of my Canon cameras before.  That being the case I was stuck using my 7D in low lighting conditions where it doesn't perform very well at high isos.  I had heard that if you shoot in medium raw as opposed to large raw that the iso performance was much better, so when I was working with little light such as in this case I tried that.  I found it's true, there was no noise at iso 800 and very little at iso 1600.  Spreading 10 megapixels over that cropped sensor instead of 18 makes a huge difference.  So if you are faced with a situation where you have little light and you aren't going to have to crop much, it seems this is a good option with the 7D.  You are not allowed to use flash at this clay lick.

Scarlet Macaw photographed at the Yasuni Forest Parrot Clay Lick, Ecuador, December 2013.  Canon 7D, 500F4 1/125 F5.6, iso 800, evaluative metering -0.3, Gitzo tripod.  We had some nice moments with this species at the clay lick.  There were a few fights high overhead in the trees, at one point 3 were on the forest floor drinking and near the end of our time there, this one came in and had a close look at us.  It was a brief encounter and I didn't have time to rotate the camera to vertical to try and get the tail in.  But I am very happy with this image anyway and I love the detail of colors shown on it's back.  When working at these low shutter speeds, I press my face against the back of the camera and put my hand on top of the lens to help stabilize it.  I also use the image stabilization even when I am on the tripod if I am working at low shutter speeds.