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Shell Wildlife photographer of the Year 2007

Well, I was close...... but not close enough.....
Good thing is there will be a 2008 and hopefully I'll be a better photographer that year.
Got the email today:
"Your Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year entry.

Dear Photographer,
Thank you so much for entering the Shell Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition 2007. We received over 32,000 pictures from 78 countries - a record breaking year.
Unfortunately, your digital entries were not successful in this years competition. To see if any of your images made it into the semi-final or final stages, login to our website. "

I found the following screen in wich I found out one image made the final and 6 the semi-finals. Guess I should be happy with these results out of 32.000 entries, but of course at the moment I would have liked a better result!It's interesting to see that 3 B&W images were among the semi-finalists.

Africa: Kenya and Tanzania

In October of 2006 I travelled Kenya and Tanzania on a 19 day safari through Bongo Asili Travel. Packed with me was a full set of Pentax lenses and (almost) all other equipment one could use on a safari trip like this.


My complete set consited of the following items:
- One *ist-DS body (my girlfriend carried a spare DS)
- The FA* 80-200/2.8
- The FA* 28-70/2.8
- The FA* 300/4.5
- The A* 200/4.0 macro
- The FA 50/1.4
- The F 1.7x converter
- A Tamron autofocus 1.4x converter
- 80GB backup drive
- Batteries, charger and sensor brushed

All in all quite a big set which topped at 11 kilo's, I'm glad they didn't weigh in my hand luggage at the airport ;-).

Now, what was usefull to me?
I did expected to use the 80-200 most of the time, but even though our driver got us to some of the best and closest spots, this range was even with the 1.5x crop factor of a digital body not enough. I ended up using the FA* 300/4.5 most of the time and this lens gave me in the end a lot of images that needed no further cropping.
The dust was horrendous on the camera and the sensor and I didn't swap lenses as much as I wanted to. Next time an investment in a two camera setup is well worth the money spend.

Sightings
We manged to see all "must" see species during the complete trip with the Leopard being the last and the hardest. Most impressive were the lions eating from a freshly killed zebra and the vultures feeding on a young zebra that died from exhaustion. Ample of birds were sighted but you definately can bring a 500 or 600mm lens to get the best shots of them. Kenya and expecially the Masai Mara gave us the best of the scenery and the wildlife. Should we return to Africa it will no doubt be a Kenya only safari to have more time to stay in one place to get the best images possible.

All in all a great trip with a big bag of photos that will decorate our walls for the coming years ;-)

Flying High Part 2

Tonight I did another macro trip through the neighbourhood and I spotted some hooverflies. In the last few weeks I'm slowly building a "bug in flight" database and these are a nice addition to my collection.
I was very pleased with the photos I got tonight and even more so with the succes rate. The first 4 images are from a series of 8 photos!That's a whopping 50% succes rate :-) Even for my standards I'm very happy with that number!


I used my Pentax *ist-DS with a side mounted AF400T flash again in combination with the FA* 200/4.0 macro lens as this lens has the best manual focus feel compared with the A* 200/4.0 macro. Aperture was set fixed at F16 and the distance to subject was about 60 to 70 centimeters. The flies would slightly overexpose with these settings, but nothing that wasn't within the RAW files limits so no real information was lost here in postprocessing.

I liked the series so much that I'm currently wondering what I need to do to improve these photos in the future. Perhaps two of them in the same frame facing each other?

Lowepro Nature trekker AW II vs Mini Trekker

After having spend almost 1,5 years with using the Lowepro Mini Trekker extensively, I found that it wasn't up to the task of carrying my normal travel lens kit anymore. The weight of the fast Pentax lenses pressed it out of shape and I had the feeling the padding wasn't up to absorbing the shocks well enough. So I went looking for a good replacement.
So far I'm very impressed with the build quality of the Nature Trekker AW II.



In the photos I've attached it's packed from topleft to the right and downwards with the following lenses:
- F 1.7X converter on top of the FA 50/1.4
- F 100/2.8 macro
- FA* 24/2.0
- Metz 40-MZ2 flash
- DS with FA* 28-70/2.8
- FA* 300/4.5
- FA* 80-200/2.8 - A* 85/1.4

In the 3 compartments in the flap: 3 times 4 AA batteries, some memory cards and an image tank. The compartment on the outside is still empty
The pockets are fairly deep so the smaller lenses can be placed in there in pairs if need be (like the converter with the 50mm), the 300mm is placed fairly spacy so with some adjustments over there, an additional lens can be fitted in. The waistband really gives good support so not all weight is carried on the shoulders, but is also transferred to the hips. The padding is a lot thicker than with the mini trekker so protection is much better also, the two main dividers on the inside have a plastic strip inside to help it keep it's shape.
The tripod holder on the side works like a charm with the monopod and I assume it will also with the normal tripod.

Flying High

Last weekend was a very good day to perform some macro shooting again. At the end of the day, temperatures had dropped to about 20 degrees Celsius so the various bugs came out of their hiding place to feed and bask in the afternoon sunshine.
I attached the Pentax AF400T to the side of my camera and mounted the FA* 200/4.0 macro for some shooting. Especially the various fly species were present in large numbers.

I did capture some bubble blowing flies before during a shoot, but that day I spotted a particular large one that gave some excellent close-up abilities at 1:1 setting. I have to remind myself to look into the phenomenon to see why they are blowing these liquid bubbles!

In a nearby forest there were large quantities of hooverflies flying in the afternoon sunbeams. The use of the flash enabled me to capture quite few of them in mid-air. Needless to say I was pleased with these photos, as I don't get the chance to shoot them like this. After cropping to about 50% of the original size, they make quite handsome enlargements.


The sample above was taken with the following specs:
Focal Length: 200 mm
Exposure Time: 1/180 sec
Aperture: f/16
ISO Equivalent: 200
Exposure Bias: -2/3

Pentax 645 bellows

Yesterday I found myself a secondhand (in NEW condition) 645 bellows. Now I finally can create some medium format images that will enable me to print some very large photos.

The bellows are quite heavy at almost 1.5 kilo in weight, but on the other hand nobody is buying into the medium format system to gain some size/weight advantages. It is barely doable to use this setup handheld, so it seems I need to finetune my tripod skills in the coming months.
I did some first test with the bellows mounted to the DS to get an idea about the feel and sharpness with a 645 FA 75mm lens attached.
It definately gives a very nice magnification on the sensor, which I presume will only be greater on 120 film.

Some results with an impression of the enlargement factor:

And one at maximum magnification: