Friday at the Flicks - Birds at the Feeders

The ground feeder is near the bottom of the garden and is visited by Sparrows, Greenfinches and Chaffinches amongst others.



A rare sight here is a Blue Tit staying in one place long enough to be filmed. Normally they dash in, grab something and rush off to the nearest branch.



A real nip in the air first thing this morning as it was 7.7C when we went for our early morning constitutional. We suddenly seem to be racing towards winter.

Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.

CombineZP - Updated

Another test of CombineZP

Set up the 350D with bellows to get a close look at a strawberry flower.
Lighting from a bright LED lamp.



Took 12 photos varying the focus a little between each.
One of the shots showing how shallow the depth of field was.



Let CombineZP align and then  Stack the photos



A better lens, better lighting and operating the camera with a cable release would make for a crisper result but this certainly shows the possibilities of the program.

Later.
It was later that I noticed some aberration at the bottom of the stacked photo and the next try I carried out with a different lens taking 16 shots had distortions on all edges. Possibly a result of the shots differing in subject size as the focus is altered. The centre part of the picture is fine and it is possibly better to make sure the subject doesn't fill the frame.



This is a crop of the main part of my final session for now.
The lens used was an old Super Takumar 55mm f1.2 manually set to f4 as wider apertures gave poor results. The 350D was set to ISO 400 and 1/200sec

For Adrian - CombineZP

Yesterday Adrian was experimenting with a commercial program which combines a set of photos of the same subject but with different focus points. The idea being to make a resultant photo where everything is in focus. Very useful for macro shots where the depth of field is very shallow. See his post HERE. Without Adrian's blog I would never have know that such programs existed.

That caught my imagination so I decided to see what could be done for free! After a hour searching and looking at various options I eventually found a great free (released under the GNU Public License) program - CombineZP - and tried it out. My simple test involved placing five batteries at different distances from the camera and taking five shots each with one of the cells in sharp focus. Point CombineZP at a folder on the PC which contains the five shots, tell it to Align and Balance them and then tell the program to 'Do Stack' - result, all in focus on one photo.



From top to bottom, the first and last of the five individual photos and finally the result of stacking / piling them with CombineZP.  Looks a handy utility to have for still subjects where it is hard or impossible to get everything in focus with one shot.  CombineZP site is HERE.

Something Old, Something New

I was looking through a pile of old family photos when I came across this photograph of a German V2 rocket taken by my father probably sometime in the late 1940's at an air show. It may have been at Farnborough or Biggin Hill. I was there but I don't remember it at all. I know it was fairly soon after the 2nd World War when captured military atifacts were put on show to the general public. It was taken on roll film using a folding Kodak camera.



Something I have been trying to capture for a while is a photo showing Belmont TV tower and the spire of St. James church in Louth on the same view. This is the nearest I have got so far with Belmont on the left and the spire on the right. From where I live only the spire and tower of the church can be seen rising above the valley in which Louth sits.



Needless to say this is an HDR processed mix of three photos which was re-processed in Paintshop Pro to bring out the subjects I wanted as they are easy to spot with the human eye but very difficult for the camera to resolve.

Sunflowers

I have a small clump of Sunflowers growing near the Birdy Bistro. They are all self set from the seeds scattered by the birds. I tend to think that all Sunflowers are much the same but here there are four different varieties with vastly different flower sizes ranging from 7 to 26cm in diameter measured across the petals.



Slideshow made using Wondershare DVD Slideshow Builder which was a GiveAway of the Day a few days ago. It is always worth keeping an eye on that site as you never know what will be coming up next. They have legitimate free fully working copies of programs, a different program each day, which have to be installed and registered on the day it is available. Don't expect any really expensive spectaculars but some smaller utilities like this one are well worth trying out. I always wait a while and see what others who have downloaded and tried out the software have to say.

I Really Enjoy the Rain

No. Not me personally. Every time it rains I can guarantee that some of the local Wood Pigeons will be sat out in the open having a free shower.

Friday at the Flicks - Bathing

First a rather fast slideshow of 100 consecutive photos taken the last time I had the IR sensor monitoring the pond waterfall. It gives a good impression of what the activity can be like,



One morning this week I was just able to watch the waterfall from the corner of the kitchen window so I put the camcorder on a short tripod on the work surface.



Also spotted was a shy juvenile Goldfinch trying to work out when it was safe to get in the water.



The soundtrack is one of the sound files that comes with  Corel Video Studio X3 which I was trying out on that video. Though I have looked from time to time every day since those video clips were taken I have rarely spotted any birds there. As usual - they know when they are being watched.

Have a great weekend observing the behaviour of the wildlife around you.