Black Skimmer FlyBys & Skimming @ Brigantine Division

A series of images of Black Skimmers flying and skimming from previous trips to the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR in Oceanville, NJ. The Featured image was taken with a Canon 1D mkIV with a 400mm DO lens & 1.4x Teleconverter

Black Skimmer FlyBy, Canon 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV
Black Skimmer FlyBy, Canon 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV
Black Skimmer FlyBy, Canon 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, 1D mkIV
Black Skimmer FlyBy, Canon 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV

Osprey FlyBy At Brigantine

A series of images of a close Osprey flyby taken at the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR near Oceanville, NJ. Images taken with a Canon 400mm DO lens with a 1.4X Canon Teleconverter on a Canon 1D mkIV.

Osprey In Flight, Canon 1D mkIV, 400mm DO lens, Canon 1.4x Teleconverter
Osprey In Flight, squawking as it flew by, Canon 1D mkIV, 400mm DO lens, Canon 1.4x Teleconverter

Willet FlyBy At Brigantine

As I was photographing birds out in the water at the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe Wildlife Refuge this Willet flew close by me. I managed to get a few images as it went by.

Willet FlyBy, 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV
Willet FlyBy, 400mm DO lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV

Red-tailed Hawk Images From Brigantine

A series of Red-Tailed Hawk images from a previous trip to the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville, NJ. I got quite a few images of this hawk which seemed very content to pose for me. Usually they fly off, but I was quite a distance away so it did not fly off. I was using a Canon 400mm DO lens with a 1.4x Teleconverter on a Canon 1DmkIV.

Uprezzing Raw Images In Adobe Camera Raw

When we are at National Wildlife Refuges you often see interesting subjects way off in the distance, but too far away to get good images. Adobe has an “Enhance” feature now that you can “enhance” to Double the size of the image but it only works for certain “Raw”types. But many times I want more enlargement than “Enhance” gives you. I almost always shoot “Raw” images because I can get more detail & adjust them somewhat before opening them in Photoshop. Using Camera Raw I can also “UpRez” my images when using Adobe Camera Raw Data. This way of super uprezzing seems to work quite well most of the time. All you have to do is enter larger amounts in the Image sizing window in the Camera Raw Size Panel. Give it a try! You can also add a “High Pass” Sharpening Technique layer over the final image to enhance the sharpness more. Just adjust the opacity of the sharpness layer to what you like. I have found that when you adjust this lessen the amount a little more for better results. There are other ways to upRez but this is what I use quite often plus it is in your Adobe Photoshop already. So it easily works in my Image Workflow. Also the images here are downsized to 1200 pixel size for WordPress posting so the Full image has much more detail.

Black-Crowned Night-Heron, 400mm Canon DO Lens, Canon 1.4x Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV
Screen Grab Showing Up Rezzing image settings by entering higher width number
Full As Shot Great Egret in Trees Image. 400mm DO Lens, 1.4X Teleconverter, 1D mk IV
Great Egret, Image Uprezzed & Cropped Showing Detail

Another Cormorant Panorama From Brigantine

When photographing at the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in NJ, you often see large groups of Cormorants swim by in the channels along the Wildlife Drive. This group had about 92+ Cormorants in the Group. It is hard to get an actual count because some are under water as you are counting the group. I counted 92 Cormorants in the image, but some more were not visible as I was counting.

Small Group of Cormorants swimming by the shoreline. 400mm DO Lens, 1.4x Teleconverter, Canon 1D mkIV

Osprey Fly-By At Brigantine

I was going through images from a previous trip to the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge near Oceanville, NJ. This is a series of images of an Osprey that flew fairly close by me with nesting material. I was out of the car & on the Wildlife Drive which enabled me to follow the Osprey as it flew by. All images were taken with a Canon 400mm DO lens with a 1.4x teleconverter on a Canon 1D mkIV.

Osprey FlyBy, 400mm Canon DO lens, Canon 1DmkIV
Osprey FlyBy, 400mm Canon DO lens, Canon 1DmkIV

Making Panoramas With Fisheye Lenses

One of my favorite lenses for shooting images for panoramas is the 7 Artisans 7.5mm Fisheye lens for m43 cameras. It is supposed to have a 190 degree Field of View on a m43 camera but I believe it is a little less than that. But for shooting panoramas it really does not matter and is wide enough for my needs. But using a Fisheye lens for multi-image panoramas you have to de-fish the fisheye lens images before you blend the images for the final panorama. I do this in Photoshop using the Adaptive Wide Angle (Filter > Adaptive>Wide Angle.) All Images here were taken at the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe NWR in Oceanville NJ.

Image Taken with 7.5mm Fisheye Lens on an Olympus OMD-1D showing the “Fisheye” bowing look on horizon before Correcting Distortion with the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter
Screen Grab Showing Adaptive Wide Angle Filter Correction on Horizon line.

It might take a few tries before you get the “Feel” for using the Adaptive Wide Angle Filter for correcting the distortion in Fisheye lenses. Also it is pretty much setup for Full Frame Cameras so on m43 cameras (or any other format besides Full Frame you have to experiment on entering Focal length, etc. You would think Adobe would have a setting for Camera Format.

Screen Grab Showing my settings for Correcting Fisheye Look for my 7.5mm FE lens
One of the Fisheye Images Corrected for the series of images for my final Featured Image Panorama

Atlantic City Early AM Panorama

An early morning panorama of Atlantic City from the Wildlife Drive at the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge in Oceanville NJ. This is a 3 image panorama shot with a 7.5mm Fisheye lens on an Olympus OMD-1. Before I could make the panorama I had to de-fish the Fisheye images in Photoshop using the Adaptive Wide Angle Feature under the “Filter” Selections along the top right selections. Once they were de-fished I loaded the 3 images into a layered Photoshop File and selected all 3 layers and used “Edit – Align Layers” for the 3 images, then once they were aligned I used “Edit Blend Layers” for the Final Panorama.

Center Section Of Panorama to Show Detail

Extreme Brigantine Snow Geese Panorama

On our trip to the Brigantine Division of the Edwin B. Forsythe National Wildlife Refuge I had a lot of opportunities to shoot a lot of Handheld Panoramas. One of my Panoramas was the most extreme panorama I have ever tried do. For the Featured Image I had to make it fit the 1200 pixel width which I exceeded x 4 times to try to hold some of the detail in the Featured Panorama. So I also cropped the full image down to 7 sections to show the detail below. Too bad it was a rather Gray day when I was photographing this group of Snow Geese because it brightened up a little later in the day. The Featured Full Panorama Image was 56 images for an image 525 inches long x ~30+ inches high @300 ppi. The Layered file was huge and the final Flattened file was 4 Gigs. I was shooting with a Canon R with a Tamron 150-600mm lens @ 483mm , f/16. Below are 7 cropped images to show the Detail in the above Featured image.

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