Mark David | Local service

Mark David

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24.01.2022 At my website I describe image stacking. Image stacking combines multiple exposures into one shot to get a technically superior image. Well, now photographer Levon Biss has taken that to a whole new level. Using a microscope lens and 8,000 - 10,000 shots per image, he's producing spectacularly detailed, high-resolution images. The PetaPixel photography site shows some examples and has a great little video about it. http://petapixel.com//macro-photos-made-10k-images-captur/

23.01.2022 It's this kind of shot that explains why I still prefer using an SLR camera to take photos. Although the camera in my mobile phone has the advantage of being with me all the time, it would struggle to lock focus on a fast-moving distant object like this Osprey carrying a fish. And the wide angle lens on a mobile phone camera would make the bird appear as a tiny dot in the distance. SLR cameras allow you to attach telescopic lenses and come with super-speedy continuous autofoc...us. So sport and wildlife photography becomes a joy instead of an exercise in frustration. This shot was taken using a 100-400mm lens (at 400mm), shutter speed priority at 800th second, f/13, ISO 400. By using fast-burst mode I could fire off a sequence of shots to get the one I preferred.

22.01.2022 You might be surprised what cameras can pick up during long exposures. This tree frog was on a glass window in near darkness on an especially dark (cloudy) night. A hint of light leaking out of an adjacent room gave me just enough illumination to see the little guy and manually focus on it. With the camera mounted on a tripod, I used a 40 second exposure, with ISO at 320 and the aperture set at f/4.5.... The resulting image needed a little bit of correction to the colour temperature - the glow from the adjacent room was tinged with too much yellow for my liking, so I just dragged the colour temperature slider in Lightroom a little bit towards the blue end. Now I suppose I could have used a flash, but I just don't like using flash on frogs because of their sensitive eyes. And the glare from the flash would most likely have just bounced right back off the glass into the lens. Far better in these circumstances to simply use a long exposure. It's easy figuring out how long the exposure should be. Just take a few test shots trying different amounts of time until you get something you're happy with.

12.01.2022 Some of the seriously colourful birds in South East Queensland are especially active right now. I'm talking about the Rainbow Bee-eaters, which are busy digging their nesting burrows in dunes along the coast. I tend to hear these birds long before I see them - they make a distinctive chirping "prrrt, prrrt" trill sound. I've been trying to get pictures of them flying but it's mighty difficult - they fly fast and turn erratically, making it tricky keeping them framed in a long lens.

05.01.2022 Where is the best place to photograph wildlife? How about your own back yard? 9 years ago I started planting lots of native flowering plants, in between the established exotics, hoping to make the place more attractive to wild birds. The system totally worked. These Scarlet Honeyeaters were so excited by the Grevilleas that they even allowed me to get right up close with my macro (close-up) lens.

04.01.2022 This picture shows an adult Welcome Swallow zooming in to feed its young. This kind of action happens in the blink of an eye, but digital SLR cameras actually make capturing this kind of shot easy. You don't even need good timing. Yes, seriously! I talk about how I took this shot and others just like it, in a new article on my website. http://www.mdavid.com.au/photography/youngbirdsfeeding.shtml

03.01.2022 Just when you think you've seen "little", nature goes and shows you something littler. These ants were just over one millimetre long from end to end. In fact, until I'd taken these shots I wasn't even sure I was dealing with ants. They were so small I had to use a sneaky trick just to locate one in the viewfinder. You see, photographing very small, moving critters is difficult. It's similar to trying to centre a very distant bird in a long telescopic lens - if your aim is just a tiny bit out you'll never find your subject. Thankfully there's a trick I use that helps a lot with the smaller moving ants: Just use your finger to draw a small circle with water on the clean surface of a dinner plate. Put the ant on the dry patch inside the circle and then you've got it walled in by a sort of moat where you can locate it in the viewfinder.