Bald Eagle and the Moon - Tamron 50-400mm + Update

[JimFox]

Today I switched the Tamron 50-400mm to my Nikon Z8 camera, I wanted more resolution in case I had to do more serious cropping for any wildlife or birds I might encounter. As it was, the Z6III would have been fine.

My daughter is off for the weekend with my oldest granddaughter who is a dancer and had a competition over in Aurora Colorado, so they are spending the night there. I ended up having to pick up the 5 year old from Preschool, but I picked him up early as he likes it when I pick him up early so we can do things. Today, it was running to Costco to get more Cashews and their $1.50 Hotdog combo. Afterwards I had to pick up the other kids from the Middle School and High School, so being as I was at Costco I had to drive a totally different route then I normally do.

About halfway to the school, on a small back road I spotted 2 bald eagles just sitting up in the top of a tree. Next to the road. I did a u_turn to get in a better position. And I got out and took some photos of the Bald Eagles. I also spotted the moon in the sky. But from this angle, it was a long way away. I then noticed next to the tree was a biking/hiking trail, and it looked to me if I was over there, I should be able to get the moon behind the Bald Eagles. There was a parking lot for the trail just a few hundred feet away. I drove back to it, and with only about 10 minutes to spare so I wasn't late to pick up the other kids, the 5 year old ran with me back down the trail.

We got close to the tree, and sure enough, I was able to position myself so that the moon was close to the Bald Eagles. The tree was very busy with lot's of branches, so trying to get the right angle wasn't easy as I was trying to get clear shots of the bald eagles. In this image, the other bald eagle is cropped out, but it had maybe a dozen branches covering him from this angle.

I also had to do 2 shots, one for the image and one for the moon. So I focused on the moon, then moved the camera to how I wanted to frame the moon and birds, took the photo with the moon sharp, and then without moving the framing I let the camera focus on the birds and I took a 2nd image. I just blended in the sharp moon into the image with the sharp birds.

I had very little time, I took a half dozen of these images, changing the frame slightly, and then I move on the other side of the tree so that the birds were facing the camera, those I will have to post later.

I will say that I am so impressed with this 50-400mm, it is tack sharp at 400mm. What a lens!

This is also a pretty decent crop, but all of the details maintained really well.

All comments are welcome,

Jim

PS. Adding a brighter version

Original

Brighter

 

[AlanLichty]

Nicely composed - good expression on the eagle too. The eagle and the tree seems just a bit underexposed on my monitor. You missed your chance for a Lik Moon behind the eagle

From what I have seen so far playing around with mirrorless you can get very decent images using older lenses with an adapter but to really unlock the advantages of the system you need to use lenses that were designed for it. Older lenses always had to pay homage to the distance from the last element in the lens to the plane of the film in a SLR. With mirrorless the sensor location is no longer tethered to the legacy film camera design and can be closer to the front of the camera body so lenses can be designed to optimize the shorter distance to the sensor. The only downside is that the lenses designed for mirrorless platforms can never be used on a DSLR camera body. Its easy to add an adapter the extended the distance between the legacy lens and the sensor but you can't go the other direction for the mirrorless lens.

 

[Trent Watts]

Thanks Jim for your story of how you managed the shot. It reminds us of how much life, love, experience and effort are competing for attention to produce such a lovely shot. Your story also reminded me to slow down, look at the image with a new appreciation for how much can go into creating the final result. It is a beautiful shot Jim.

 

[JimFox]

Nicely composed - good expression on the eagle too. The eagle and the tree seems just a bit underexposed on my monitor. You missed your chance for a Lik Moon behind the eagle

From what I have seen so far playing around with mirrorless you can get very decent images using older lenses with an adapter but to really unlock the advantages of the system you need to use lenses that were designed for it. Older lenses always had to pay homage to the distance from the last element in the lens to the plane of the film in a SLR. With mirrorless the sensor location is no longer tethered to the legacy film camera design and can be closer to the front of the camera body so lenses can be designed to optimize the shorter distance to the sensor. The only downside is that the lenses designed for mirrorless platforms can never be used on a DSLR camera body. Its easy to add an adapter the extended the distance between the legacy lens and the sensor but you can't go the other direction for the mirrorless lens.

Thanks so much Alan! I am adding a brighter version, see if it looks better. My computer I think has stopped switching video modes, a brighter version for when I play Fortnite and other video games, and a norma version that is darker for Photoshop. I need to see what happened. In the meantime I used the histogram in Levels to increase the brightness.

The newer lenses for Mirrorless definitely seem to have upped the game. I think most of them are computer designed, so maybe that helps. In Nikons case, they almost doubled the width of the lens opening which allows for larger optics so the sensor now is much more in the middle of the glass. So that plays a part as well.

My only DSLR left is the D850, and it has the Sigma 14mm f1.8 permanently attached. I do have an adapter to use my older Nikon lens on my newer cameras, but for the most part that has been only with a 70-300 and the Tamron 150-600mm. But with the addition of the 50-400mm, that will be really limited now.

 

[AlanLichty]

The edit looks much better!

When I first read a White Paper written by Canon's optical engineers back when they first introduced the EOS R camera body it was clear that the optical group had a prime seat at the table for designing Canon's mirrorless camera body and had some demands for where the sensor would be located and why. No doubt Nikon was doing the same thing for theirs but Sony had a multi-year head start on just about everybody when it came to full frame mirrorless engineering. I have known for years that once I made the mirrorless leap I was ultimately going to want to replace all of my lenses if I wanted to take advantage of where things were headed. No regrets at all so far beyond the sharp pain in my wallet

 

[JimFox]

Thanks Jim for your story of how you managed the shot. It reminds us of how much life, love, experience and effort are competing for attention to produce such a lovely shot. Your story also reminded me to slow down, look at the image with a new appreciation for how much can go into creating the final result. It is a beautiful shot Jim.

Thanks so much Trent! I appreciate your kind words, finding these Bald Eagles was a highlight of my day.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Way to make most of the opportunities Jim. Nice shot and the brighter version is spot on.

 

[Alan Milnes]

Nice one Jim. I prefer your second image.

 

[Beth]

sweet! nice shot with the moon in the background. i like the brighter one.

 

[Joe Colozzo]

Very, very nice Jim. It's an amazing composition with the moon to boot.

 

[JimFox]

Way to make most of the opportunities Jim. Nice shot and the brighter version is spot on.

Thanks Jameel!

 

[JimFox]

Nice one Jim. I prefer your second image.

I appreciate that Alan, it was fun to get.

 

[JimFox]

sweet! nice shot with the moon in the background. i like the brighter one.

Thanks so much! It was pretty exciting at the thought of being able to line up the moon. Especially since it was just a random time I was passing this with no fore planning.