duncang wrote:
A few swallows (@840mm) - definitely recommend the 200-600 or 100-400 though, super tough capturing swallows with this lens! The biggest issue is that they fly through the focus plan so quickly because the DOF is very shallow and then it is impossible to find them again!
No problem tracking them though and eye af seems to pick up the eyes pretty frequently, IF you can keep them in the frame though.
Does a nicer job on the background though but I think it will be next to impossible to really fill the frame and get the same detail as the zooms.
You need to be Arnie Schwazenegger to handhold this lens chasing swallows in flight though.
I got to the site yesterday morning early shortly after daybreak. So, I thought at least. But there were close to 20 photographers taking pictures of the fox. I set the camera to shoot at 1/2000 sec and I didn’t have the chance to change to a more decent shutter speed to get a lower ISO setting until minutes later. The animal eye-AF works even when the lighting conditions were still low. At any rate, I ran Topaz Denoise AI and the file looks quite decent even at ISO 25600.
Only the last frame of the mating ritual shortly before the dismount is posted here and 3-4 frames after the separation are not included as well. BTW, these are significant crops although the files hold up okay and the conditions are on the contrasty side. Oh, well, that’s wildlife, it happens whenever and wherever…
The local red fox family is thriving; mom just gave birth to 4 kits. This is a young male fox though. Although not a part of the family in a strict sense but he hangs out with them…
mogul wrote:
Lovely shot Joshua...I was wondering if these SoCal foxes are Euro invasives or one of our native Red Foxes?
Thank you very much! They are not native to Southern California, for sure. They were imported back then from the eastern half of the county in the early 1900’s. At one time, they were used as hunting targets… . Then when fox fur became popular, they were farmed and bred for that purpose here locally in some coastal area of SoCal. Either they escaped during captivity or were let loose after the industry declined. They adapted well to their new surrounding and their descendent now roams around in the same area.
Their main enemies are coyotes, which are endemic to SoCal but people are scared for coyotes and either hunt them or scare them away but they would leave red foxes alone. So, this particular area is free of coyotes and the foxes rule there. It is a semi-urban area and from time to time you hear fox that was hit by a car, etc. But their food supply is limited. They have been seen rummaging through trash bins. Out of the 4 kits born this year, maybe only one would survive to adulthood. The population is somehow kept about the same for whatever reasons. I believe there are 3 adults, the parents of the kits and a fairly young male at this point.
The only reason I was asking about native vs. invasive is that our local foxes are Sierra Nevada foxes (a high alpine species) almost extinct in the Sierra Nevada but found to be in the Central Oregon Cascades. I learned a bit about North American Red Foxes and that they have been isolated from the Eur-Asian population for at least 250,000 years. There are a number of subspecies identified with the Sierra variety very rare now.
AGeoJO wrote:
Thank you very much! They are not native to Southern California, for sure. They were imported back then from the eastern half of the county in the early 1900’s. At one time, they were used as hunting targets… . Then when fox fur became popular, they were farmed and bred for that purpose here locally in some coastal area of SoCal. Either they escaped during captivity or were let loose after the industry declined. They adapted well to their new surrounding and their descendent now roams around in the same area.
Their main enemies are coyotes, which are endemic to SoCal but people are scared for coyotes and either hunt them or scare them away but they would leave red foxes alone. So, this particular area is free of coyotes and the foxes rule there. It is a semi-urban area and from time to time you hear fox that was hit by a car, etc. But their food supply is limited. They have been seen rummaging through trash bins. Out of the 4 kits born this year, maybe only one would survive to adulthood. The population is somehow kept about the same for whatever reasons. I believe there are 3 adults, the parents of the kits and a fairly young male at this point.
Thank you very much, Chris! I For your information, there was a rusty chain link fence between the fox and my position. And that fence robbed quite a bit of the contrast, rendering the image a little bit “softer” with a tad of “rusty” tonality. When I moved in closer, very close to the fence and I did obliterate the appearance of the fence. But I ended up liking that look from about 5 feet or so from the fence. Oh, well…
I shouldn't have any limits - everything is hosted at my server in a colocation in Plano, TX (https://gipnetworks.com). If something is broken - it's either something happened to the server or I screwed up somewhere in my own application (https://photostream.us/).
docusync wrote:
Thank you so much for letting me know! Are you talking about the links or the images aren't loading as well?
Can you see my images here https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1802516/4 ?
Same. I shouldn't have any limits - everything is hosted at my server in a colocation in Plano, TX (https://gipnetworks.com). If something is broken - it's either something happened to the server or I screwed up somewhere in my own application (https://photostream.us/).
I had a closer look and it appears that my browser (Firefox) considers the links suspect for some reason. A different browser shows them just fine. No idea what triggers Firefox, all the other images show just fine, including the cross site links. Weird.
PS: maybe it just doesn't like webp, the others seem all to be jpg.
I had a closer look and it appears that my browser (Firefox) considers the links suspect for some reason. A different browser shows them just fine. No idea what triggers Firefox, all the other images show just fine, including the cross site links. Weird.
PS: maybe it just doesn't like webp, the others seem all to be jpg.
Hm... weird indeed. I don't use anything but Firefox myself. I checked the certificate - it looks fine. WebP shouldn't be an issue - the server is checking browser's capabilities before returning webp (the "Accept" header). It would be a jpeg if webp is not supported. I'm wondering if you have any security extension installed in your Firefox?
docusync wrote:
Hm... weird indeed. I don't use anything but Firefox myself. I checked the certificate - it looks fine. WebP shouldn't be an issue - the server is checking browser's capabilities before returning webp (the "Accept" header). It would be a jpeg if webp is not supported. I'm wondering if you have any security extension installed in your Firefox?
That was it. I have image.webp.enabled disabled, as the provided image quality often suffers noticeably. With enabled webp your images show fine.
PS: if you want or need more info, feel free to ask, but we should probably stop hogging this thread and move to PM.
. Then when fox fur became popular, they were farmed and bred for that purpose here locally in some coastal area of SoCal. Either they escaped during captivity or were let loose after the industry declined. They adapted well to their new surrounding and their descendent now roams around in the same area. 
