{"id":32326,"date":"2023-07-05T09:03:01","date_gmt":"2023-07-05T14:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/?p=32326"},"modified":"2023-07-05T10:39:48","modified_gmt":"2023-07-05T15:39:48","slug":"mama-killdeer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/?p=32326","title":{"rendered":"Mama Killdeer"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Killdeer Portrait, church parking lot in rural Iowa. This is cropped from the original image.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I captured this image in a church parking lot in rural southern Iowa. Two years ago she laid her eggs in the same parking lot and successfully hatched her eggs a few weeks later. This summer she did it again.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Nest location with traffic cones.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

When I saw Mama Killdeer back in the parking lot, I kept an eye on here from a distance to figure out the nest location. I put two large rocks on either side of the nest (she had a fit) and marked the area with three traffic cones. When I was done and backed away, she went back to the nest. Everyone stayed away from the nest area until the eggs hatched a few days ago. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I posted this killdeer portrait on Facebook and a friend asked me what lens I used. I told him I was using an inexpensive Canon telephoto lens. He said, “I suppose ‘inexpensive’ is a relative term.” When I told him then lens was less than $200 he was genuinely surprised. He asked if the lens was sharp at that price, and I said yes, it is reasonably sharp.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Killdeer at 100% actual pixels magnification.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

To give you an idea of the image quality, this is the Killdeer’s head at 100%, “actual pixels”, magnification. I zoomed in on the image until one pixel of the image file was one pixel on my computer monitor. As you can see the lens did a good job.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Killdeer, Bloomington Community of Christ parking lot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This is the original, uncropped image. This killdeer was very active so I autofocused on her head using the camera’s central autofocus sensor (the most sensitive) and planned to crop the image later. Autofocus was set to “AI Servo” which is Canon’s phrase for predictive autofocus.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Canon 7D Mark II with Canon EF 100-400mm. Canon SL3 with Canon EFS 55-250mm.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

I have written about this camera and lens combination before and compared it to more expensive gear. For this killdeer image I used a Canon SL3 camera body (on the right) with a Canon EFS 55-250mm lens. This is my “travel light” combination. If I need a longer focal length lens and a camera with a faster frame rate and faster predictive autofocus, I use a Canon 7D Mark II and a 100-400mm lens (on the left). My light weight gear was just fine for this parking lot photo, and indeed, for most everyday photos when I want something more capable than my iPhone. I take a camera backpack with me almost everywhere I go and this light weight combination makes that more convenient.<\/p>\n\n\n

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My “travel light” camera backpack.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The camera body, the 18-55mm lens, and the 55-250mm travel light gear were purchased from the “refurbished” section of the Canon web site. Buying “refurbs” is a great way to save money on camera gear. More about that in my next article<\/a>. I have had the super wide angle 10-22mm lens for a long time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Quality Camera and Two Lenses for $300 – $500<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I captured this image in a church parking lot in rural southern Iowa. Two years ago she laid her eggs in the same parking lot and successfully hatched her eggs a few weeks later. This summer she did it again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,7,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cameras","category-lenses","category-photographs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32326"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32352,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32326\/revisions\/32352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.jimdoty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}