BWCA Ruffed Grouse

[mcary]

I haven't posted anything in a while, so I figured it's time to contribute something. I was in the BWCA for a couple of days this past week and happened upon a Ruffed Grouse proudly displaying on a little trail. The bird was extremely compliant as I was able to get within a few feet of him. He never did flush; just continued to display and strutted off into the wilderness.

[Ely Lake Expert]

Interesting pictures. I am suprised it didn't fly.

[jonny_redhorse]

Excellent captures,mcary!....don't see many grouse with the ruff all fluffed up!...great pics!...jonny

[WifeKidsandDog]

Wow, great pics!

[Dbl]

Great shots Michael, way to get up close and personal. Not often you get to see them "puff" like that, let alone get a photo.

[Jim Almquist]

Very nice shots.You must pay your models alot in order to get them to pose so elegantly I have only seen the fluff with the little dance twice and never with a camera.

[Steve Foss]

Looks like this is a momma with leftover brood defense instincts. The most common time to see the neck ruff (other than in a drumming male in spring) is when an adult is distracting a predator from the young. I had an incident this summer, from which I posted a few photos, where an adult acutally charged a photo excursion client and I, coming to within three feet and fanning the tail and extending the neck ruff. Two chicks ran off into the brush as this was happening.

What's really unusual about this series is that Mike was able to keep the presence of mind at such close range to shoot tightly and capture portraits instead of full-figures shots. I know that, shooting the 100-400L he now has, he could have backed off on the zoom from 10 feet away and gotten the whole bird. But these are better than that.

Good work, Mike. I especially like the really tight one from slightly behind and over the bird's shoulder.

Mike, can you post your iso/shutter speed/focal length/aperature techs and whether it was all handheld? I have a suspicion I'd like to confirm. I have a LOT of experience with the ins and outs of that lens.

[Deitz Dittrich]

Im with you STF... that last shot is hot!

[mcary]

As requested, I will post the information for each of the shots. All the shots were taken in RAW mode with a Canon Rebel XT (350D) and the Canon 100-400 mm L series lens. The originals are darker than the post processed final images, which was necessary in order to maintain a shutter speed that would result in a crisp image (even with the IS). So without further ado, here are the original shot settings and the post processed settings from Canon's Zoom Browser RAW utility.

Shot 1: 400mm at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/60s at ISO 400 and an exposure compensation of -1. Later post processed with a dig. exp. compensation of +0.4, color temp - 5000, and the contrast, saturation and sharpness all set at mid high.

Shot 2: 400mm at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/160s at ISO 800 and an exposure compensation of -1. Post processed with a dig. exp. comp. of +0.4, color temp - 5000, contrast - high, saturation and sharpness mid high.

Shot 3: 190mm at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/160s at ISO 800 and an exposure compensation of -1. Post processed with a dig. exp. comp. of +0.2, color temp - 5000, and the contrast, saturation and sharpness all set at mid high.

Shot 4: 400mm at f/5.6 with a shutter speed of 1/200s at ISO 800 and an exposure compensation of -1. Post processed with a dig. exp. comp. of +0.5, color temp - 4800, and the contrast, saturation and sharpness all set at mid high.

All the shots were also taken using the IS set to mode 1 with the autofocus in the near focusing 1.8 meter mode and all were handheld.

On a side note, two years ago my wife and I were honeymooning in Glacier NP and had decided to do an overnight backpacking loop into a little mountain lake. Having never camped in grizzly territory we were both a bit apprehensive, even though we had been on many prior backpacking trips. Our first day in my wife was ahead of me when I heard a blood curdling scream and a sudden rush from the bushes. I sprinted forward with bear mace in hand expecting a rather unpleasant confrontation and almost fell over laughing while I watched a bold mother grouse fly repeatedly at my wife attempting to peck her into submission. We waited while her young made a hasty escape and she moved along before we continued down the trail. Oddly enough, the very next day on a different trail we had a repeat occurence. Another angry mother grouse took offense to my wife and tried to show her who was boss.

[Steve Foss]

Thanks Mike. Those techs look really good.

What I suspected was that you shot 1,2 and 4 wide open at 400mm, and 3 either with the lens stopped down a bit or at a shorter focal length. That turned out to be the case. Reason I thought that is the 100-400L, as is well publicized and is a frequent complaint about all zooms, is a little soft wide open at max focal length. Nos. 1,2 and 4 are a bit soft, with 3 somewhat sharper.

That's not criticism, mind you. Given the low light and the other factors, you did what you had to do, and did it well. You just ran into the limitation of a zoom lens that won't open beyond f5.6 at max focal length, which drops your shutter speed capability, which forces you to shoot it wide open, where it is at its weakest for sharpness. At f7.1, heck, even 6.3, it's noticeable sharper than wide open.

When my images are a little soft for that same reason, I'm left with a fair amount of sharpening and then, sometimes, noise reduction with Noise Ninja. One thing I've also learned to do in those cases is apply selective sharpening, where I'll lasso a subject's head and sometimes only the eye and give it a little extra sharpening. It's the eye/head that most brings us into a wildlife image, and that's where it generally needs to be sharpest, unless a different affect is being tried.