Kicking off this year's odds and sods with Starlings in a rainbow on that extreme rarity: sunshine.
It was early morning, with the sun barely cresting the tree line. We were able to get out for our morning walk as it wasn't raining. This photo is my trusty Canon 80D and Sigma 18-300mm lens zoomed in at 300mm.
Pulling back a bit.
And finally all the way back.
Oh, 2024 got off to a good start with this.
So far my cat, perhaps two neighbouring cats visiting our garden, a local fox and Tawny owl, and this trap have accounted for at least five of the beasties. Sightings of rats in our garden are getting rarer, so I think I'm winning. Two rather timid and wary rats, that I know of, are proving more elusive to catch. I've resorted to buying a lethal trap. The trap was triggered, yesterday, but no rat, sadly. Though a mouse might have triggered it, and was small enough to be within the kill bar.
90% luck, 5% field craft, 5% camera skills.
Good paronomasia.
My neighbours already think I'm 'batty'. They'll look out to see me lying flat on my back in garden and think nothing of it.
Though they do have a fast dial hotline to our local loony bin.
Yer actual sun (funny yellow thing in the sky, seen rarely this year) made an appearance, and with it some dragonflies. I actually had the time to grab my camera to try and photograph the things. They like to sit on top of bamboo canes.
I noticed that they would fly off said canes, have a brief flit, before returning to their perch. I reckon they are catching insects.
This did, however, give me the opportunity to try out CRAW burst on my R7. Results were mixed, partly due to me selecting Program mode initially, then Av (aperture priority) mode by mistake, and partly due to not using a tripod. I started off hand held (big mistake), then monopod (better) before fishing out and dusting down my tripod (best).
Some of the better ones. The dragonflies are incredibly fast on take off, appearing in three or four frames.
TThe next two photos display rolling shutter artifact with electronic shutter on the R7
Some super shots there Angus. I forget, with all these new fangled things, does the R7 have precapture? (not sure if that's what Canon call it) I've got it on my Nikon, but not tried it
It does have Precapture PB. Canon call it Pre-shooting. It is OK, but it is a faff to use. The files can't be opened in Photoshop and have to be opened in PP4, then viewing and saving is not an easy process either. I tried it once, then couldn't be bothered.
Well captured Angus. Yes the are damned quick little blighters! I noticed what you say about them returniong to the same place a few years back. I was staying in the Lakes and was watching a Beautiful Demoiselle on a flat stone by a river. Each time I got anywhere near it flew off, but then I found if I kept my position and stayed quite still it kept returning ...
Wotcha, PB.
Pre-capture (I assume where camera captures last '1/2 second' of photos whilst shutter release is depressed halfway down) is called either RAW burst mode or CRAW (Compressed RAW) burst mode.
In reality, the R7 will capture a minimum of 1/2 seconds worth of photos at 60 frames per second; though some other sources say 30 fps. If photos are complex (lots of different colours, shades, hues and edges, etc) then fewer photos will be kept as the image sizes are large. If photos are less complex (plain, almost single colour background, simple plainish subject) then more photos will be kept as image sizes are smaller.
I tend to get between 25 and 60 photos retained in the R7's memory buffer, depending on how complex each image is.
As BD said, getting images out of the resulting image file is an absolute pain. I tried using Canon's free image processing software (DPP 4), but for some strange reason the stupid thing extracts images at some low resolution e.g. something like 1024x890 pixels.
The only way I can extract images with the correct RAW size of 6960x4640 pixels is to use the in-camera editing/extraction tool. Doable, but tedious as I have to extract each image one at a time - requiring over 6 'clicks' of a button.
I have a thread on CRAW burst mode in one of the forums - probably the camera one.
Wotcha, BD.
A question, if I may. When you used DPP 4 to extract an image out of a canon raw burst file did it retain the original size of the photo?
Everytime I use DPP-4 the stupid thing reduces RAW burst image sizes by 25%. I've got the latest version of DPP-4, and checked all sorts of settings, but can't find anything that tells the daft thing to retain the original image size.
DPP-4 can extract many images at once. I have to use the in camera extraction facility, which extracts one image at a time.
Ahh, I didn't realise CRAW was pre capture... Nikon only does it in Jpeg
Not sure Angus. I will give it a go in a bit and let you know ...
Hiya Angus, I have just been out in the garden and had a go. I took a burst of 22 pictures - total file size 382MB. I tried to open in in Photoshop, but as I know happens. a message comes up saying 'Photoshop cannot open this file', so I opened with Canon's free DPP4. I selected my burst, then clicked on 'Tools' 'Start RAW Burst Imaging Tool'. After scrolling around to find a half decent pic I selected the 'Save Current Image Separately' tab which saved that image back to the original file location. The size of that file was 6960 x 4640px, 300ppi, 18.9MB. I opened it in Adobe RAW, then in Photoshop. I then saved it as a JPG. The size was still 6969 x 4640, but the ppi had dropped to 70 and the overall file size was 20.6MB. So it didn't seem to save the image as a small file. Hope that helps you.
This is one from the pre-burst bit. Before I completely pressed the shutter.