Little Owl with Swift Moth

[John Robinson]

Little Owl with swift moth.
Another from the depths of the archives! This is a 64 ASA Ecktachrome slide copied on a D7100 with a 40mm Nikor macro and home made spacer. Camera flash onto white paper.
Otiginal with single flash bought from Boots the chemist. Hide on scaffold and nest in old barn roof. Nested there 4 years in succession.
Again pot luck with the shot, going by sound of the bird landing. The worst bit was having to wait a couple of weeks to get the film back
Taken on a pentax S1a with a 135 Soligor.
Taken in 1968 .I can recall very vividly every minute I spent in that hide,and I never for onesecond imagined that I would be photographing the same species with the same food item some 47 years later ¬¬
Slightly different gear now too !!

It won't stand too close a scrutiny !!
Thanks for looking
JohnR

[Stu Bowie]

Hi John, a great result from a slide. Love the eye contact here, and with a beak full of moth. Great view of the feet/talons too.

[John Robinson]

Thanks Stu. Yes IQ -wise a lot to be desired but sometimes its the moment more than the picture maybe. I drove past the site lat year and it was wierd to see the smallbarn still there.
Cheers
John

[dennis greenwood]

Fantastic John, true wildlife photography.....

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

IQ looks great to me John. Really fantastic shot made with love and effort.
I think I am seeing a slight magenta cast here.
Glad to see you pulling out the older images made before digital kind of made film obsolete.
TFS

[John Robinson]

Thanks
Yes Akos- there is. I can see it now I amlooking with daylight in the room !! Easily sorted when I return from my travels !
Cheers
John

[John Robinson]

Heres a quickstab at it.
JohnR

[David Cowling]

Nice one John. You photographers had it hard in those days but you made some great images all the same and you only had one stab at getting it right most of the time.

[John Robinson]

Yes David/Akos . The other thingwas that film was pretty expensive and some times you would only get one or two shots on a 36 exposure film. It was sometimes weeks before you found another subject to finish the film on and then get it off for processing. If the shots were no good you often didn't have the chance for "another go "
Cheers
John

[Bill Dix]

Terrific shot using the old Pentax, with great field technique, and the image held up well in the conversion. And a great story. You're tempting me to go back and look at old images, but I doubt mine would hold up as well. 50-some years ago I hitchhiked around the world with my old Pentax, and couldn't see my images until I got home, six months later. No going back to fix the underexposures.