This is the Southern Boobook (Ninox bobook), Australia's smallest Hawk Owl at no more than 14" tall. A real cutie. We were not far from my house yesterday with a friend looking for owls specifically. We found this little one in an enormous hollow not even 8 feet off the ground and spent until night fall in its company. What a joyous subject, didn't mind the flash, didn't mind us being relatively close and even as it flew off on dark, I was able to follow it into its first tree standing very close, snapping a few portraits off. Strangely, the dreaded red eye was not always there, but with these Owls it is a norm. I also had to work with manual focus mostly as we never even had a torch to begin with as we didn't plan to stay into the dark of night. In this, I only really touched up the pupil a little, so almost SOC as is.
Full frame, 30D, 300/4L, 1.4x, tripod, manual mode, MF, f/7.1, 1/125th, tripod, 430EX at -1 1/3, beamer.
He wins the prize for best eyes, love the eye-lash detail. Great shot, sharp and up-close, what was the subject distance (<15 feet?). The focus point must have been on the eye. I noticed you stepped down the aperture to 7.1 and the neck area is still slightly OOF.
A couple of questions please:
I have read the 300/L has slow and noisy auto focus, whay say you?
How did you use manual focus with little or no light? How did you get the reference point?
We rarely see owl shots at night this good.
Nice sharp eyes, great job on them.
A bit more DOF would be great
but excellent as presented too.
Congratulations!
Thanks I was soooo excited, I am still on a high 18 hours later! I do have one with more DOF but it is looking down past me. Will post that too. BTW, it was looking over its back towards me. I was unsure whether I could have gone around the tree quick and silently enough for it not to get spooked. In hindsight I should have closed the aperture down more. I am a dope after all! :D Distance was barely 8 feet. These guys are very small.
The 300mm f/4L IS USM lens is NOT noisy. Don't now about the non-IS version though Jeff. My 30D IS BLOODY NOISY!
Manual focus was sort of OK with the 1.4x (420mm) until almost the time it flew off as I was getting the little beep as Al said. I can only focus with this beep when I have the 2x on (f/8 wide open) as AF is totally disabled thanks to Canon-son's wonderful manufacturing specs. :( In fact I even managed a few relatively acceptable shots with a stacked 2x and 1.4x! I could then BARELY see. Click here to see a stacked converter example at full frame. Also, in this image I burnt the edge of the hollow for it was a little light.
Last edited by Ákos Lumnitzer; 04-10-2009 at 09:08 PM.
Ákos, very nice and technically challenging shot. You must be feeling very good about this one! Love the sharpness of the eyes, agree that DOF could be a little better. That's the only nit I could think of... :cool:
Hmmm... thinking about it, I realized I have no idea how would you estimate exposure in total dark.
Obviously your exposure is dead on with -1 1/3 flash...
Can you say few words about it?
Aussie Hawk Owl
