In 2004 my wife and I started a rather large (160 hectar) deer park with european red deer. In order to document this park and the deer I took up photographying again. I was very interested in photography during my youth, but after beginning my work as a radiologist I only shot photos of family and on vaccations.In 2004 I decided to "go digital" and after a lot of thinking, reading reviews and so on, I decided to go with Canon EOS system and my first camera was a EOS 10D (6.3 Mpx) with a 24-135 mm and a 100-400 mm/L. Since then I have got better cameras, today using a EOS 1D C and EOS 5D MkIII. Alongside the lenses have been better ones, and since last year my absolute favorite is the 200-400 mm/4 L with 1.4X extender. I soon found an interest in the behavior of the deer. Since we have a rather big population of wild red deer, outside of our park, there were soon an lot of meetings between our deer and the wild ones. Many of these meetings are documented with photos and videos during these 10 years. The major problem in shooting these photos is that light almost all the time is low (early mornings and after sunset in the evenings). The combination of low light and long tele lenses doesn't always result in crisp, sharp images to serve the "pixel peeper" in us. But please remember that these photos primarily were meant for documentation rather than "artistic" photos. The vast majority of my deer photos are shot in or in the vicinity of our deer park, and the exeptions are marked "wild". Soon after 2004 I became ill with the well known, but devastating illness GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). During these 10 years I have bought better cameras and invested in a number of Canon lenses, mainly L-lenses. In 2009 (with EOS 5D MkII) I started video filming, and today I probably film more than I take photos. I have learned that it takes a lot of time to go over to video. Today I film and shoot stills mainly with a Canon EOS 1D C and since last summer the EF 200-400mm/4L with built in 1.4x extender has become my favorite lens. I plan to write another blog about this lens later. The 1DC is a very fast camera (12-14 f/s), but it is very noisy. Having wild animals close the sound of the shutter end mirror tends to scare them away. In a blog (Philip Bloom et al) I learned about the possibility to take frame grabs from video produced with this camera. These "stills" is about 8.2 Mpx (was good enough in 2005!!!), and if filmed with short enough shutter speed they present good enough print up to A3 format. Perhaps not good enough for "pixel peepers"! Since filming is totally silent it doesn't scare the animals. I have added an album with 2 frame grabs in the Canon group and on my own page. Setting a short shutter speed ( e.g. 1/500 s) can give you excellent "stills" 24/25 f/s, but the video will be bad with a lot of stutter. Not at all pleasant to watch! But it is an alternative to 12 noisy f/s. The jay bird in album Birds is a frame grab from a 4K video and it´s shot at 1/50 s.
Apr 28, 2015Apr 28, 2015TheOldMan
Photo shot just after the sun reached these deer and the morning mist rapidly went away.
Apr 28, 2015Apr 28, 2015TheOldMan
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Morning mist lifting
Upload Date: Sep 4, 2014 10:34 AM
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VictorTarkovskyMar 11, 2015 08:41 AM
It's really interesting to read. I'd love to see more photos that illustrate the problems you're describing in this post - perhaps even a bit noisy ones.
TheOldManMar 13, 2015 12:31 PM
I have uploaded some frame grabs in my Album.
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