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I have enjoyed birdwatching, and photography for more than 25 years. Today I most often combine the two interests into bird photography. I created this site to aid in bird identification, and to share information on this great hobby.
My photo gear today (May 2011):
Canon EOS 7D + a Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM. This is my only lens for bird photography. For family and fun I use Canon PowerShot S95 or for more demanding situations I use the long zoom lens or a kit lens; Canon EFS 17-85 f/4-5-6 L USM.
I have had a very good Canon 500mm f/4.0 L IS USM, but the weight and bulkiness got tiresome. I also had a 400mm f/5.6 L USM which was great for its fast autofocus and sharp images. I sold that one to buy a 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM. This because I sometimes needed IS, and a shorter focal length. But I found the 300mm + Extender to be tedious with the on-off again with the Extender.
In the future there are a few interesting options I will evaluate; the new 500mm together with the soon to be announced, revamped 100-400mm replacement. The new 300mm f/2.8 + 2x Extender, and finally the new 200-400/1.4x built in Extender lens. It is a matter of weight and bulkiness for me. Right now I lean towards the 500mm + the new 100-400mm zoom, but we'll see when Canon can rebound from the devastating tsunami and of course I need to win the lottery first!
I have a Canon 580EX II flash though I prefer to use morning and evening light in my photos. But try to live without a flash in the jungle, a dark forest, or in the grey November mist:-)
Sound recordings were made with the Røde VideoMic + Dead Cat Wind Muff and
Olympus VN-4100PC
or directly into the 7D.
There is now an even smaller video mic from Røde.
I primarily use a Sandisk 32GB Extreme (60 MB/s, UDMA) Compact Flash card. Backup cards are two 8GB Sandisk Extreme III and two 2GB Sandisk Extreme III.
For support I have since March 2011 been using BlackRapid's RS-7 on the telephote lens at all times. I have a BushHawk
shoulder stock with remote release. A Benro C-257 tripod with a Manfrotto 701RC2 Fluid Video Head. I also have a Velbon CF-7 monopod.
I use a Wolverine ESP 80GB to offload the cards when in the field. The screen sucks for RAW previews, but it works fine otherwise. I always carry a backup battery. Lens cloth, Lens paper and lens cleaning solution is also in the bag.
For travel I put my gear in a Lowepro Mini Trekker AW. It has been with me for the last 7 years and is still in perfect shape! For airtravel I put it in an aircraft carry-on with wheels.
At home I use a laptop computer with Windows 7. I use a SanDisk USB reader to import the pictures and I prefix and sort them with the date of capture using adobe Bridge which is included in Adobe Photoshop CS4. I have maximized the icons in Windows Explorer so that I can easily spot bad ones that I can delete or find good ones to open in Bridge. I use Bridge for final inspection and try to delete as much as I dare. I also use it to open the best ones in PS CS4 for editing. Annually I export all pictures from previous year to a 1TB external Western Digital HD.
My birding gear today (May 2011):
I have had many binoculars in my day. But I still love my old Leitz Trinovid 8x40 B and have no other. But if I wasn't concerned of the weight I would definitely buy the ZEISS Victory 10x42 T* FL. I am still contemplating the Zeiss for special occasions and a Leica Trinovid 8x20 for daily use.
I use the tiny Opticron Mighty Midget Travelscope. I use the 40862M HDF T eyepiece with the MM2 V2 ED which gives me a 12-36x magnification. It is a great little scope for us who already carry a lot of gear in form of photographic equipment.
The website:
The site is designed for IE, and Firefox/Netscape on a Windows OS. But it does also work well in Google Chrome, and in Safari on a Mac OS. It is optimized for a screen resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels, though I still keep the width at 1000 pixels.
The design had influences from many sites though just about every site in 2003 seemed to have the grey theme. But I also used a lot of input from my past work site which had the same image setup and menu to the right.
It was hand coded in html, and makes extensive use of CSS. I also use an html editor to speed up editing, checking links, and for making sweeping changes across all pages before the annual re-publishing of the entire site.
I have used four different hosting services. This is mainly because they have gone down in price. I now use One.com (12 SEK/month).
Best Regards,
Martin Lofgren
Malmö,
Sweden
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