Sunspots

A couple of days ago I attempted to shoot some video of the Sun. With the 70D 3x digital zoom and the 100-400mm lens it was possible to have the Sun fill the frame. I guess the equivalent focal length used would have been 900-1000mm. That bit worked out well. Unfortunately, in spite of the sturdy tripod, the gusty wind gave enough vibration to make the video unwatchable. On the other hand when I grabbed a still from the video it was clear enough to use:


This still shot showing a line of Sunspots is as grabbed from the video with no processing or cropping.


For anyone who hasn't seen the previous post on photographing the Sun please note that the only safe way to keep your eyesight and an unfried camera is to use a solar filter designed for that job.

Friday at the Flicks - Great Tit Still Roosting

I haven't mentioned it much but I have been keeping an eye on the camera nest box.  Every night I have looked it has been occupied:



She isn't very good at keeping the nest box clean. Previous roosters have normally cleared out any mess each day.

Windy

As forecast, yesterday was a very windy day with gusts of over 100mph being recorded in some areas of the UK. Fortunately, though very squally, we didn't suffer anything like that. These are snapshots taken at one minute intervals so some stronger gusts could have been missed:



The highest gusts my weather station recorded were around 43mph which was quite enough for me. At one stage I was looking out of the kitchen window when one particularly strong gust actually lifted the back of my summerhouse off the ground. For one heart stopping moment I thought it was going to end up falling on its front but fortunately it settled down again.

A Land Oyster?

On one of our regular routes stands the stump of a tree which was cut down a few years ago. From time to time there is a fungus growing on it.

The way it droops over the edge of the stump always reminds me of  Salvador Dali's Melting Clock:







I always find it difficult to identify fungi but I think this one is the Oyster Mushroom - Pleurotus ostreatus.

Sunny February Afternoon Walkies

Yesterday stayed Sunny all day with a high of 13C in the shade. Not bad for a February day here. Forecast is for the weather to return to being overcast, wet and windy so it was a case of making the most of a good day.  Taking the path behind the church I wanted to see if any horses were out in the paddock. Two of Stan's horses were outside soaking up the warmth:



Down the track opposite the church Penny took her time to investigate every scent and seemed to be contemplating the risks of getting any closer to the water filled ditch:



Lovely picturesque views across the local flat farmland to the Lincolnshire Wolds:



The above photo was taken with the Nikon at wide angle. On the horizon, about a third the way from the left, about 5Km away, is the spire of Louth's St. James Church towering above the town which is in a valley. Here it is as seen using the full zoom on the Nikon:



All the above were processed using various filters in SimplyHDR.

Winter Trees

An unpromising start to the day with the temperature around -1C and a ground frost. What a change by lunch time. 12C with lots of Sunshine and blue sky. That made for a pleasant walkies. With the lack of any wind we could actually feel some heat from the Sun. More February days like this please.

Not a lot to see nature wise except some deciduous trees standing out against the blue sky.

Not sure what these are. They are about a quarter of a mile from where we were standing and they have obviously been hard pruned some years ago:



Poplar:



Ash:



Could be Wintry showers tomorrow - oh well, can't have it my way all the time.

Make it More Interesting (Simply HDR Mac app)

Lots of things to experiment (play) with on the MacBook now. One such is the Mac app 'Simply HDR'. It is not what I would call an HDR program, more an arty manipulation app which works on a single photo but with many effects to choose from.

I started with a dull photo of the artificial bird of prey I had taken recently ......



...... cropped to remove the telephone cable and then adjusted by choosing HDR HDR-12 with adjustments to grain strength, smoothing and vignette:



To me this made a much more dramatic and interesting view from what was a photo I would probably have binned.