Enjoy some of nature's beauty

Good shots there Robin.I remembered my bird feeder and had to go fill it up


snuffy

One of the prettiest birds on the planet. I love bluebirds. I wish I could get them to come into the meadow behind my house but no luck yet.
Scott

Gorgeous pix Robin. I forwarded this to my mother-in-law. She LOVES bluebirds. Thanks for posting!

Nate

Great Shots !!

I don't use a shutter release cable, I generally use a 2 to 10 second timer instead. I find that using the cable still causes some minor shake. I do use film but mainly black and white, and usually it's for specific purposes only. My DSLR's are 'semi-retired', meaning I use them for studio shots only now. This Fuji is really something else. I love playing around with multiple settings to build HDR photos. Really produces some cool stuff. What I really like about it is that it's a perfect camera for this kind of situation - just saw the birds, grabbed the Fuji and snuck out to grab some shots. No messing around with lenses, none of the carp involved with both my film and DSLR's.

Add to it, it's got a fabulous 30x zoom on it, but also great macro functions. She runs 24mm out to 720mm, on Macro 4.2mm to 126mm. Really a fantastic camera. I've been using it so much that my poor DSLR's are all jealous, sitting in their cases just collecting dust. They are lucky that I'm setting up some glamour shots with a couple of young ladies so they'll see some use, but ironically, my HS20 will be on it's nice carbon fiber tripod taking secondary shots, just so I can see how it functions compared to my much more expensive cameras. Fun timing it with them, but we'll see how it turns out.

I still haven't had a chance to do a lot of macro photography with it yet, that's something I'll save for this summer. Going to go bug hunting with it.

Doggone dude, those are some nice pictures. Next month I will be buying the Nikon Coolpix P510. My wife has L120 and gets some really good shots with it. The P510 will zoom up to 1000mm. Let me pick your brain a little. I plan on going to Yellowstone soon and hope to take pics of the wildlife. What kind of advice (shutter speeds, focal length, auto???, etc) would you recommend for taking pics of bears, and wolves at a distance? I espcially would like to know how to get the very crisp, clear shot with the blurriness in the background.

Thanks,

Condor

The P510 is another nice bridge camera, and fits well into the 'super-zoom' category. That sucker's got a 41.7x zoom on it, which is remarkable. The sensor is a bit small in my opinion for the size of that camera, but I'm sure it's still a great camera.

What I like about the Fuji in comparison is that the zoom is manual, plus when you enter manual mode on the camera, it's FULL manual, including focus. Most super-zoom cameras will give you a lot of trouble at both ends of the focal length - so full zoom is rarely used as is full macro. The write-up on the P510 doesn't mention shutter speeds so I'm curious how fast it is. The one burning item that kept me away from the P510 is the lack of a hot shoe. Matter of fact, 95% of digital bridge cameras do not have a hot shoe. Since I do a lot of studio and portrait shots, I need the ability to run external flash, and to control the entire lighting via the hot shoe. Hard to do without one.

As to a setup for field photo shoots, first and foremost get you a good tripod. Especially one that you can 'weight' to stabilize it. I've tried at least a half dozen varieties of tripods and finally settled on one of those nice carbon fiber Slik's with the Sunpak pistol grip ball head. Love the thing, so easy to use and lightweight. I still keep my big old steel Manfrotto for studio shots, but it's just too heavy to carry in the field.

Here's an excellent combination: www.adorama.com/SUP523PX2.html

Once you set up, the next big issue is getting the right combination of shutter speed, focal length and ISO. Personally, I try to use the auto functions, especially when shooting in EXR mode, since the camera is pretty brainy. I do however do an awful lot of action photos that I have to set up manually. My daughter is a gymnast and taking action shots of her requires a bit of work in setting up the camera. Now my wife is using my old Oly, and I have set up some custom programs on it for her specific to motion shots.

In reading Nikon's technical specs I'm a bit surprised that it doesn't mention RAW format for that camera. But then, with all the auto functions and it being a bridge camera, like most bridge camera's it's not using RAW format. So, what you can do is use one of the Scene Modes to help you set up a custom program.

I didn't notice, does that P510 have custom program modes? I couldn't see any selection for that. What I did for my wife, and what I do with my Fuji, is start with the Sports or Action modes, then create my own custom program from there. In all the digitals I've experienced, the Sport mode is NEVER fast enough. So I increase the shutter speed to about 1/250th, sometimes faster, then for long zooms you need to open up the fstop to about 5.4-5.6, and really need to be on a tripod. Even the smallest vibration at those longer focal lengths will create tons of noise.

So, what I do is generally stay under around 600mm focal length, f5.6, ISO varies from 120 to 440 depending on the amount of light available, and shutter speed depends on what I'm shooting. If it's birds, usually pretty fast. If it's buffalo's, you can slow down the shutter speed a bit allowing you to tighten up your fstop and ISO, reducing the amount of blur and noise.

Again, it all depends on the ambient light, what you're shooting, and how fast you want to shoot it.

Thank you so, so very much for the advice. Hopefully I will get some good shots at yellowstone and post them here on this forum.

Condor

Wonderful Bluebirds photos. Years ago, my neighbor cut down the tree they used, so they didn't breed here again until this year, although of course they are frequently on the territory in winter. This year the irascible male has been in a constant battle with my Northern Mockingbirds. I would not normally back any bird against a Mockingbird, but I had a rather timid male this year, and the male Bluebird takes pride in knocking him off the high perch. Your photos really capture their spirit. Especially that last photo. By durn, he's going to kill something, even if it's only a lowly worm!