Squirrel Nutkin

Last week I made a serious attempt to photograph wildlife at the Ken Dee Marshes nature reserve in SW Scotland. From a hide I had good views of various tits and nut hatches feeding at a hopper. Despite taking about 100 shots with a 300mm lens on my Canon 40D the results were terrible. Lack of depth of field was the main problem, but focussing, shutter speed and a high ISO leading to noise were also major contributors to ghastly images. However, I did manage some moderately reasonable shots of a hungry red squirrel.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3295/...69c83bb7_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3140/...691580d3_b.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3151/...326c6c22_b.jpg

I particularly like No. 2 as you can see the hide reflected in the squirrel's eye.

As usual comments are welcome.

David

Alright David,

I think you've done well as these creatures are very twitchy. You don't say exactly what lens you were using, as I've tried shots such as these with a 4.5-5.6 Nikkor 70-300mm and I had to raise the ISO to outrageous amounts to get a decent shutter.

Mark.

Thanks Mark - The lens was a Sigma APO 70-300mm 4-5.6 zoom, with the settings at 300mm and corresponding minimum aperture of 5.6. The ISO was 3200 or "H" on the Canon 40D. The initial images showed the inevitable noise, but I used the Canon Digital Photo Professional software to reduce luminance and chromatic noise. I don't know what others think, but the Canon software can be very good for working with RAW files, and the noise reduction feature seems very useful.


David