Though I’m more of a “mammal guy,” I usually get a bit owl-obsessed during my overseas trips, and end up spending more time looking up into the trees rather than down on the ground for larger game in a place like South Africa. During my most recent visit there in July/August, we were fortunate to have owl sightings every day of the trip, but I didn’t really geek out until I saw a new species, the Spotted Eagle-owl.
We found several of them in the Kalahari, but this was the most memorable encounter. We had just pulled in at the lodge following a night drive when we found this owl perched no more than a meter in front of the vehicle. I thought it was one of those decoy owls at first. It ended up just sitting there, so I grabbed a few shots with aid of a spotlight. At the very end I eschewed the close-ups and zoomed out… and ended up liking the resulting image of the owl isolated in the darkness.
Keith, I am so far behind on processing images from this trip (thanks to an awfully slow computer set-up, perhaps a troubleshooting topic for a separate post!), but I did manage to upload a bird collection from it to my photo archive. You can view it here.
The owls are at the beginning (no great surprise there).
I really love this image, Max! I looked at your other owl photos on the link and this is by far my favorite! It has a very realistic, the view most of us would get of an owl, feel to it, and at the same time being elevated to a fine art photo. Just my opinion, I think it’s beautiful!
Hi Max
This is a great photograph, the black and the use of a spotlight, created chilling look of a true predator.
Peter
Ps
How do you like the R6? I really love the images it created, when I was trying to pick out a new camera. I went with the R5, because of the weather proofing and higher pix. count. New England birds tend to be at a distance were a 50% crop is not uncommon.
I went to your web sight and love the Pearl-spotted Owlet #19.
Peter, thank you. I can assure you that with that Pearl-spotted, my group was rolling their eyes about having to stop for another “Max owl dot,” but of all our sightings of that species, that really was the best look (and representation of its size).
I’ve still got mixed feelings on the R5 and R6. The noise bothers me, and in many of my night shots with black surroundings, I appear to be getting a ton of white noise specks (not sure I can call them “hot pixels,” though I am seeing a couple of those in my viewfinder). Even at medium range ISOs like 2000, not just 4000-8000.
OTOH, I’m mostly liking the autofocus enough to stick with the bodies. I’m obviously still learning after almost a year. Even though I have regular and Animal Eye AF set up on them, I found myself blowing some shots on this trip. Meanwhile, my wife—armed with my old 1DXII—was nailing many of the ones I was missing (she literally takes wildlife photos once every five years). One instance in particular stands out, when we had a rim-lit lion family at sunrise, and many of my shots ended up soft, while hers were sharp. User error or camera performance? Not sure, but it reminds me that these bodies paired with this photographer are an occasionally imperfect combo at the moment.
It is a pity that you have a slow computer, otherwise Topaz Denoise AI would get rid of the noise for you (without resolution loss!) but I understand that developing your images in DXO Pure Raw will do an equally good job at preventing noise.
Equally Topaz Sharpen AI would sharpen up your soft lions amazingly, but probably would take ages to run on your computer. AI technology has revolutionized image editing.
Jaap, I do use Topaz products (I’m even an affiliate ;). The computer issues are stemming from problems with a Synology NAS system I installed earlier in the year… or maybe it’s the new Mac… or the…
Anyway, I can and do use Topaz—though I hate relying on it—and like the products. But they’re imperfect (Sharpen is still inconsistent and doesn’t fix all issues, including the ones I’ve faced with select shots from this trip). I’ve also found that Adobe’s NR tool has improved in CameraRaw. That’s been an occasional first step with some of these night shots.
Nonetheless, I would rather not go through some of these steps, and find it frustrating when I have digital dandruff showing up in images shot as low as 2000 ISO. The benefits of the camera continue to outweigh the issues, but it does mean the occasional extra step during processing.
Max, with me the Topaz AI products only started to work properly after I changed from my Macpro 64 GB ram to a Mac Mini 16GB M1 Silicon. Before that the results were as you describe. Sharpen AI is amazing, much better than the original Sharpen.
