PC in Minnesota

[LeeKen]

My grandfather told me that I would never see one of these, because he and others wiped them out. I was lucky enough to hunt them in Minnesota, I met a few hunters who had Grampa stories. Hopefully we will all have "Grampa stories"

I have never seen chickens in snow. I thought I received a great gift this morning.

[ROOKSTER69]

LeeKen,

Great Pics. I've only seen a couple of chickens in my life, but I've shot tons of sharpies. My G-PA till the day he died always called the sharptailed grouse "chickens". Kinda like the Ruffed Grouse, he called them patridge. Never did pronounce the first "r".

[Steve Foss]

LeeKen, thanks for sharing the pics with us! Neat story, neat pictures.

[LeeKen]

Rookster, one of the guys I met met chicken hunting brought Grampas shotgun. It hadn't been used since the 30's. Gramps only shot chickens with it. The guy didn't care if he got a chicken, just wanted to use Gramps gun.

Hey, I have an XTi and was using a Canon 70-300 IS. Anybody, any comments on why I might have had so much trouble getting sharp focus on these (and the 99 I tossed). Started at sunrise , facing SW, light always changing, birds, new snow and some grass.

I'm confused.

[Steve Foss]

LeeKen, because there's no exif data attached to these it's hard to make anything but a guess, but it's most likely that, in a low-light situation like this your shutter speed was slow enough that hand shake softened the images. That's even more likely when you consider that no portion of any of these images is as sharp as that lens can produce.

Among a few other possibilities is that these are heavily cropped, which can also make them look soft.

Can you post an original jpeg of the first one with no cropping and post processing? That way we can look at exif data and make a better judgment.

Were you using a tripod or were these handheld?

[MN Shutterbug]

The second one shows 1/125 sec. shutter speed and the third one is just 1/40 second. A shutter speed of 1/125 is do-able handheld at 300mm using IS, but 1/40 second would really be tough. I can't obtain any exif from the first one. My guess would be camera shake, or maybe shot from the car with the engine running.

Neat shots. I'd love to see one of these in the wild.

[Steve Foss]

Durn, I can't see exif from any of them. Maybe time for me to get a new exif reader. XT, what was iso and aperture for the second two?

1/125 at 300mm with IS is doable for sure. Depends a lot on whether there's a good steadying technique. At 1/40, unless it's off a tripod with a very still subject, it's not likely to turn out.

[Steve Foss]

Ahh, there I got them to work. Dunno what I was doing wrong.

The only way to bump shutter speed on the 1/40 sec shot, which already was shot at wide open aperture, would have been to bump iso. Bumping to iso800 would have delivered 1/80 sec and iso1600 1/160 sec. So the iso1600 would have perhaps given enough shutter speed for a sharp image, but also would have shown a lot of grain and noise.

The one at 1/125 was also shot at iso400 but aperture was stopped way down to f10. Leaving aperture wide open at f5.6 would have produced a shutter speed of about 1/400, which should have been plenty for a sharp shot.

So iso as high as needed and aperture as wide open as possible would have been the recipe here for the best possibles shutter speed and sharp images, I think. Ultimately, the lowest light shots were simply too much for the lens, which only opens to f5.6 at 300mm.

If I had to guess, I'd guess you had your camera on the "P" or "green box" automated settings, LeeKen. The best way to ensure your aperture is as wide as it'll go is to switch to AV mode and spin the top dial until the readout shows your widest aperture value. It'll retain that value until you change the setting or select a different operating mode. That way you'll always know you've got the fastest possible shutter speed at that iso, and if you find it's not fast enough, you can bump up iso to compensate.

And if these images were cropped hard, again that would produce more of an appearance of softness.

[LeeKen]

Thanks XT, Steve,

I did start on "Green Box" when the light was low. Between my bad eyes and the condensation from breathing on the camera and the low light, I wasn't happy with the results. I thought the depth of field was the problem so I switched to Av. Didn't help. Probably because like you point out there wasn't enough light for the situation. So then I started switching everything. That includes adding kenko 2X (serious no help).

Yes the pictures are cropped hard. What is a fair disatnce to get an uncropped shot for something like these chickens?

One more from today.

All pics were shot handheld from the blind at Hamden Slough.

[Steve Foss]

LeeKen, how much you can crop and still make it look good varies depending on the light and the quality of the lens. Best lens in best light will yield good crops even up to 60 percent or more cropped away.

And, of course, the larger your sensor and more pixels it has, the more you can give away on the crop and still get something nice.

[finnbay]

LeeKen,

Great shots, even if a little soft. Would love to see a chicken some day!

[LeeKen]

So now in addition to lens envy, I'm now going to have sensor envy?

Seriously, do different dslr's have various sensor sizes? Is that what difference is between, say an 8MP camera vs. a 10MP camera?

[yakfisher]

Stick with the lens envy an F2.8 lens may have given you enough speed to make the shot, especially for the shots that you had the kneko on. I have a Kenko that I use with my Nikon 70-300 5-5.6 VR and it has to be quite bright out for my auto focus to work well and it really seems to struggle when taking BIFs with nothing but sky behind them. Great to see the Chickens making a come back though.

[Steve Foss]

LeeKen, there's little meaningful difference between an 8 and a 10 Mp sensor of the same size.

While it seems like you should be able to make a print significantly larger with a 10 over an 8 Mp sensor of the same size, the math is not as straightforward as it seems. There is a small bit of help with the 10 because you can crop a slight bit more out and still come up with a usable image, but it's not very much of a difference.

The XTi is a very good DSLR with an excellent sensor and state of the art processor.

All but a few of the Canon DSLR use a sensor smaller than a frame of film. Those are called crop sensors. The Rebel series and the 10/20/30/40D use the same sized crop sensor. It is the smallest digital sensor put in a Canon DSLR. It is capable of truly excellent image quality.

Yakfisher is right in your case, better to get the lens that will do the job in low light. The sensor was not your limiting factor in these images.

In the case of the 1/125 sec image, the aperture was set too small and that cost you shutter speed. In the case of the 1/40 sec image, it was the lens. A lens that would have opened to f2.8 would have given you a shutter speed of 1/160 with all other settings remaining equal.

To get a lens out to 300mm that opens to f2.8 is big money, though.

[DeeDee]

That is the craziest chicken I have ever seen.

[LeeKen]

DeeDee,

Crazy starts in a week or two. The boys will get very agressive. They will fight like alley cats.

Here is a shot of the preliminary sparring.