Readers’ wildlife photographs, including a “spot-the-pelicans” quiz

April 27, 2014 • 4:54 am

From reader Stephen Barnard, two sets of photos. First, an American avocet (Recurvirostra americana ):

American avocet

And the quiz: spot the American white pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos;hint: look downstream to the right):

RT9A0639-RT9A0641

Here they are!

RT9A0650

25 thoughts on “Readers’ wildlife photographs, including a “spot-the-pelicans” quiz”

  1. I fail at this. I can’t even spot the island, never mind the pelicans.

    Beautiful pictures though.

  4. Nice work, as usual. The land in the West really is beautiful…I’m reminded of one of my favorite parts of the globe: Paradise, Nevada, which isn’t all that far away.

    Care to share how you did the panorama, Stephen?

    b&

    1. I just three overlapping photos at 24mm and used the free application Hugin. It’s very easy. The UI of Hugin isn’t great, but what to want for free?

      2. Hugin gets the job done. I haven’t done enough panorama work to need more than the built-in action in Photoshop, but Hugin is likely the way I’d go if I did.

        …which 24…?

        b&

        1. 24-105 — the kit lens with the 5D3. I don’t do much landscape photography so this is the only wide angle lens I own. It’s quite versatile, but I seldom have it on the camera. When I go to New Zealand next winter I’ll have to get something more suitable.

          I’m really liking the results i’m getting with the 100-400mm zoom with a 1.4x extender. At 560mm it has good reach, the results are sharp, and it’s much more comfortable to use than the 500mm, especially when panning small, fast flying birds. (The “closeup” of the pelicans was with the 500mm + 1.4x extender.)

          1. I got the 5DIII with the 24-105 kit, too. I wasn’t sure I’d use it much since I already had the Tamron 28-70 f/2.8 and I didn’t use that one too terribly much, either…but the bare 5DIII wasn’t in stock at the time and I figured I could always sell the 24-105.

            Turns out it’s an awesome lens. If I don’t know what I’m going to be doing with the camera and I don’t want to haul around a lot of stuff, it’s the lens I grab. It’s really the perfect kit lens for the camera. There’re better options for almost any specific use, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a better general-purpose lens.

            My absolute favorite lens would have to be the 24 TS-E II, for so many reasons. If that’s not on your short list for a wide lens, it really should be.

            But if it’s single-row panoramas you’re looking for, you might want to give some serious consideration to the Shorty McForty. It’s optically the equal of the 24-70 II, and its nodal point is so close in that you can generally get away with just rotating the camera about a leveled tripod without need for any fancy nodal point gimbals. Shoot in portrait orientation and you’ve got about the same vertical angle of view as a 24 in landscape, and you wind up with an insane amount of resolution to work with. And the whole lens is barely bigger than the camera’s body cap — and, indeed, it makes an excellent body cap, for that matter. And it’s damned cheap….

            Cheers,

            b&

          3. The 16-35 is an awesome event photography lens and a not-bad landscape lens. Optically, the 24 TS-E puts it to shame — and that’s before you take advantage of the movements.

            16mm gets really wide, and it can be hard to know what to do with it. Your 24-105 is going to perform similarly in the 24-35 range, especially stopped down for landscapes, so the main reason to get the 16-35 is if you want wider than 24…and that 16-24 range is a difficult one to work with. You either need to get really close to your subject and deal with the perspective distortion, or you need to print really really big…and the 16-35 doesn’t have the resolution of the more modern lenses, and it especially doesn’t have the resolution of a stitched panorama.

            If it’s primarily for landscapes, I’d probably even go for the 17-40 over the 16-35…but I’d go for the 24 TS-E over either in an heartbeat, and I’d next go for the 17 TS-E if I really wanted that wide (and, believe me, that’s insanely wide) and probably even the 14 over the 16-35.

            It’d also be worth looking at some of the third-party lenses, including manual focus ones. Some have great optics at really cheap prices, and autofocus is nearly worthless in wide-angle landscape photography.

            b&

          4. IIRC sigma has a worthy competitor to the 17-40. I researched this all obsessively for two weeks straight I decided on the prime because I never use a anything below 24mm. I looked at my photos when I used the wide angle zoom on my crops and factoring the crop factor I was usually at 24mm.

            Also I am biased toward primes. I think it makes me think better about composition.

          5. Sigma is doing some scary things with lenses. Canon and Nikon executives should be shitting their pants.

            Their new 50, by all reviews, absolutely demolishes every other lens on the market save one which is its equal…and that one costs over four grand while the Sigma has a triple-digit price tag. Their new 35 is much the same story, though not quite so dramatic.

            If I were in the market for a 50, I wouldn’t even think twice; I’d get the Sigma.

            b&

          7. I’m loving my 24mm prime. You can find the non USM one which is even cheaper but I’m a sucker for cheap lenses that work well. I took some photos at f/2.8 with a subject in a landscape and it was really lovely. Since most of my shots are outside landscapes for wide angles, I’ll rarely use the f/2.8 so anything below that was waste really for my uses.

      3. Oooo and there is a pre-compiled OSX version. I hate compiling my own stuff.

  6. I wonder if “Can’t see the white pelican” might be a better phrase around here than the one with the nightjar. Pelican’s are obvious (except when Stephen is up to something), but some readers are not convinced that nightjars even exist.

  7. Stunning as always, Stephen! You have a way of making me really miss the west. 😉

    I love avocets! Yours, of course is in breeding plumage. This one I caught last September in New Buffalo, MI, is in basic (non-breeding) plumage, for those who are interested:

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/82741306@N03/10012278945/

    (Actually, it’s in basic plumage whether you’re interested or not. 😀 )

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