It’s been a busy week but I am slowly going through the images from our trip to Costa Rica earlier this month. So many birds! C&C is always appreciated.
Excellent photos, and even more so when the tough light in rain forest is considered! Yellow-eared Toucanet is the one I have not seen yet. Any chance you could share locations you have visited; I will visit Costa Rica next July.
I am desperately trying to find something to critique but I am temporarily blown away by these pictures. Beautiful captures. Detail, color, poses. An added bonus is the uniqueness of the birds. Your devotion to this enterprise is to be commended.
xelas wrote:
Excellent photos, and even more so when the tough light in rain forest is considered! Yellow-eared Toucanet is the one I have not seen yet. Any chance you could share locations you have visited; I will visit Costa Rica next July.
A few questions, if you don't mind me asking:
1. did you use tripod?
2. what was average ISO?
Thanks for the feedback and questions. The basic itinerary was that we birded our way from the Liberia airport to our lodge near Tenorio National Park where we spent a couple of days then we visited Cano Negro Wildlife Refuge for a few days then Arenal/La Fortuna area for a couple of days then home. In the Arenal area we spent time at Arenal Observatory Lodge and birded a few of the roads around the national park there as well as the national park itself.
I brought a tripod but I think I only got it out one time, pretty much everything was hand-held. Average ISO was 800 but I never went above 1600 and even 1600 was pretty rare. I just find the noise from the 7D mk2 and 80D to be just a bit too much for my taste above 1600 and 1600 is marginal in my opinion. We experienced some bad weather from Tropical Storm Nate during the trip so the lighting was far from ideal for much of our visit so almost all of the shots I took were at ISO 800 and my lenses were almost always shot at max aperture.
Thanks everyone for the kind words, for every one of these shots here there are tons that didn't work out. I think I am finally getting better at paring down all but the best ones.
Thanks, Greg, and glad to read your reply as those will also be the places where I am going to stay. If only I could come home with just a couple of photos like yours!
Thanks again everyone who looked and commented. xelas, these are all wonderful places, I have never been disappointed with any of them. Costa Rica is a really fantastic place, pretty much anywhere I have visited. If you take the time and look carefully it seems like you can find birds and neat wildlife anywhere you go there.
