Trogon Photo Tours

October 2021 - In this month's newsletter article I discuss bird photography in Slovenia with photos taken from four different types of blinds.  Included are settings and thoughts I used to make the images.  

At our first stop on the Slovenia photo tour in the winelands near Ormoz, we photographed in a blind set up on a tree which Eurasian Hoopoes use to nest in.  I was able to capture this shot as the bird left its nest hole.  The techs for the shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 220mm, 1/2500 F6.3, iso 2500, handheld.  I had always wanted to photograph this species in flight, I didn't get the full wingspread I wanted but am still pretty happy with this image.  I had zoomed out quite a bit to have room as the bird was leaving the nest, this also gave me more depth of field.  This is just about 25 percent of the original.  I used a high iso to keep my shutter speed up as I was trying to get flight shots.  At almost all of the blinds in Europe there is glass over the windows.  The glass causes loss of a about one stop of light.  The reason for the glass is birds in general are more skittish in Europe, largely because there is unfortunately a lot of small bird hunting in Europe, particularly in the Mediterranean regions as the birds migrate to and from Africa.  This species as well as the European Bee-eater and many others migrate to Africa in the winter from Europe. 

Tower hides are fairly popular in this part of Europe.  That is a hide which is placed on top of a hillside or they have stairs to get up to a high level.  For this hide it was on top of a hillside so looking down from the blind you saw a vineyard quite a bit lower.  Branches are attached to the blind, radiating out in front and this is where you photograph the birds (or flying in or around the hide).  Birds like this European Bee-eater use the perches high up above the vineyard to hunt or sing.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 321mm, 1/400 F8, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at -0.3, handheld.  The area on the far right is quite dark as I was behind participants and the edge of the blind wall got into the shot a bit.  It was unseasonably warm, that is likely the reason the bird's beak was open, likely kind of panting.  These showy birds migrate to Africa for the winter as well.

There were often Eurasian Kestrels hanging around the tower blind.  We were hoping that one would land on our perches right in front of us, but they never did.  They had the annoying habit of landing on top of our blind where we couldn't see or photograph them.  But once in a while one would fly around the front of the blind.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 400mm, 1/4000 F8, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld.  The techs are not that relevant as I was photographing a shrike in the shade and had to quickly turn and just start firing at the kestrel as it zoomed by.  I should have increased the exposure from negative to positive but didn't have time to react.  As a result the shot was quite underexposed but I was able to recover it nicely by increasing the exposure and using some shadow/highlight adjustments so that it came out pretty well for web presentation. 

Our target the next afternoon was the Little Owl.  We set up pop up blinds in a known location for them, put down some meal worms and waited, and waited  ... and waited.  Finally, right at dusk when there was practically no light left we heard one calling.  Two birds came and landed in the tree above our set up perches on the ground.  We waited patiently and finally after a while more one bird came down and began to feed allowing us to photograph him for a good ten minutes or so.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 400mm, 1/100 F5.6, iso 6400, Av mode, evaluative metering at -0.3, Gitzo Tripod, Benro Head.  This shot which was processed without outside noise reduction and is cropped to about 50 perfect of the original shows the impressive iso performance of the R5.  With previous cameras, I would have been hesitant to go above 3200.  For this shoot I took images at between 2000 and 6400, starting out at 6400.  This was the best pose and background so it's the one I ended up posting.  Slovenia is excellent for owl photography but we were there about a month after peak time for owl and bird photography in general (we were there in late June and late May to early June is best).  Our trip was delayed from the optimal time due to Covid.  But we got nice images of this species as well as Pygmy Owl.  We saw and got some not very good images of the much larger Ural Owl. 

We also photographed at some songbird water drip type blinds.  Some of the blinds were set up so you could photograph them both morning and afternoon which meant that they were often side lit, which is not necessarily ideal.  I think European bird and wildlife photographers on average are more interested in backlit and side lit images than most American bird photographers who tend to prefer front lit subjects.  To deal with the harsh lighting when it was sunny in these situations I would usually dial in some negative exposure compensation.  Here's a Marsh Tit (same genus as our chickadees) photographed with the R5, Canon 100-400 at 400, 1/800 F6.3, iso 2000, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.7, handheld. 

Of course, photographing during overcast days alleviates the problems of harsh side lighting discussed in the previous shot.  On the other hand, there's not a lot of available light.  This is another shot taken at one of the small bird water drips.  This is the Hawfinch, which is a Grosbeak, and a bird I had always wanted to photograph.  It has some lovely subdued colors.  The techs on this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 400mm 1/250 F6.3, iso 2500, manual mode, handheld.  

This was my first overseas trip where I did not take my Canon 500F4 lens and instead brought the 100-400 as well as the 800RF11 I had purchased earlier in the year.  Oftentimes in the blinds I was too close to use the 800mm as the minimum focusing distance is about twenty feet and many of the setups are quite close.  The light was often low as well, so it would have been difficult to get enough light with a lens with the widest aperture at F11.  But we did some drive around photography on this trip as well.  At first, I was just using the 100-400 and had almost forgotten that I also had the 800 along leaving it in the bag at the hotel room.  I finally started bringing it out in the field with me also and put it to good use during these drives.  For this shot Jure called the Redstart in with his speaker and we photographed it out the van's windows.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 800RF11, 1/320 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +0.3, handheld out vehicle window.  I added a bit of light here with the dark bird against the light background.  

The Black Redstart was bringing various insects to its nest which was somewhere nearby.  We photographed this one on a fence line and I wanted to show the insect up close so I cropped this in close, it's less than 10% of the original image, but with the 45 megapixels of the R5 it still yielded a file of about 2200 by 1600 pixels.  The techs for this shot were Canon R5, 800RF11, 1/500 F11, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering +0.3, handheld from vehicle window. 

Another nice, accessible bird photo opportunity is the White Storks which nest atop houses.  Jure knew of a nest that we could get above and have the forest as the background in the morning.  After some time photographing the juveniles spreading their wings on the nest, mother stork came in with breakfast and it made for some nice interaction shots.  The techs on this shot were Canon R5, 100-400 at 400mm 1/4000 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -1.0, handheld. I dialed in a full stop of negative exposure compensation to keep from blowing out the whites against that dark forest background.  In conclusion, Slovenia was a great country to visit, wonderful people, good food, lodging and infrastructure.  We did pretty well on the birds despite being a month late for peak season, we did great with bears and landscapes.  I am looking forward to going back next year during the peak bird photography season.