OM-1 Mark II Birds In Flight 150-600mm Sandhill Cranes.mp4

Hello, good morning. How you doing? It's Phil Thatch, and today I'm at the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge, and I'm using the OM system, OM1 Mark II, and their 150 to 600 millimeter lens. And this is the first time this winter, the sandhill crane season, where we've had the kind of light that I really like up here, and that is kind of a partly cloudy morning. Now it's kind of mostly cloudy, but for a little while this morning we had some scattered light, and we could get bright light on the birds with some shadows in the background, which is my favorite way to make these birds really pop. So let's take a look at what I got. Birds in flight with the OM system, OM1 Mark II, and their 150 to 600 millimeter telephoto zoom lens here at the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge. This morning started out completely overcast, as every morning I've been to the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge this year has started, and so I made this shot at 1 640th of a second, which is slower than I would like in the shutter speed department. I'm at 548 millimeters and f 7.1, and this is 3200 ISO. I like this shot because the bird is calling as it flies over this beautiful field with the wooded area in the background. It's a nice shot, but it doesn't have the light that I got later in the day. I cropped this one to 16 by 7. Here's another 16 by 7 shot, kind of a similar idea of bird flying by with the wooded area in the background and the beautiful field in the foreground. This one is also 548 millimeters, 1 640th of a second, f 7.1, and this is ISO 5000. Here's a much closer shot. This is a younger sandhill crane. It hasn't gotten the red right here that they get when they're fully mature. It's another shot at 1 640th of a second, and I'm shooting today at 548 millimeters instead of the full 600, and I'm stopped down to 7.1 instead of wide open at 6.3, trying to squeeze a little more sharpness out of this 150 to 600. I think it performs a little bit better with these settings, and this is 3200 ISO. Getting a little bit more light now. I'm still at 1 640th of a second, and I'm still at 548 millimeters and f 7.1, but now the ISO is only 1250. I love how almost always this time of year when you see a sandhill crane, it has mud all over its beak and mud all over its feet where they've been milling around in the shallow waters of the Tennessee River. Here's another cloudy shot. This sandhill crane is drifting in for a landing, and you can see probably at least 100 sandhill cranes there in the background. Thought this shot turned out nice. It's got the warm colors of the grasses and all sorts of interesting colors. I'm still at 1 640th of a second and ISO 3200 for this one, and unless I say otherwise, I'm at 548 millimeters and f 7.1 for every shot in this video. The sun has come out, and I've upped my shutter speed to 1 1600th of a second, and my ISO has fallen to 800. This bird had an interesting feather out of place here that looks like it may have gotten broken or something like that, but man, it's nice to have good light on the bird. The light is on my back and on the bird, and then in the background, this mountain is kind of in the shade, so that is my favorite combination of light and shade at the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge. Light on the bird and shade on the background. This one has mostly light on the bird and light on the foreground. This is 1 1600th of a second and ISO 1250, and again, unless I mention otherwise, I'm at 548 on the millimeters and 7.1 on the aperture. Here's an in-flight shot at 1 1600th of a second and ISO 1250. That's not blue sky in the background. That's clouds in the background, but it's not a thick cloud, so it's a blue cloud instead of a gray cloud, but lots of light on the bird. I like the wing and the feathers putting a shadow on this other wing. That's kind of a cool look. Here's another shot at 1 1600th of a second. This one's 640 ISO. All of these splotches down at the bottom of the frame are sandhill cranes in the water. I love the colors in the wings of these sandhill cranes. Another shot possibly in that same flyby, and as usual, we've got mud on the beak and mud on the feet, and lots of sandhill cranes in the background. Some golden grass here, and there is the water. Here's another shot at 1 1600th of a second and 800 ISO. I really love the way this shot looked, and then when I got done editing it, I noticed that the bird was blinking in this shot, and normally I don't really like that that much, but I said, you know what, my friend Johnny Pink likes to get shots of birds blinking, so I went ahead and left this one. It's not completely blinking. It's like three quarters of the way through a blink. Love the colors in it though, and here's another shot probably in that same flyby 1 1600th of a second and 800 ISO. Beautiful colors in this one as well, and no blinking. I prefer the shots with the wings straight up or as close to straight up as they go, so you'll see most of my shots in this video, I was shooting at 12 and a half frames per second, which is kind of slow for this camera, but it still allowed me to almost always be able to pick a wing position that was straight up. I can shoot up to 25 frames per second with this lens, and with some of the other lenses like the 150 to 400, I can shoot 50 frames per second, blackout free with metering and focus. This OM system OM1 Mark II is a pretty great camera. Here's another shot at 1 1600th of a second and 800 ISO. I love the shaded mountain in the background with the cloudy sky, but it still has a nice blue appearance to it. Just beautiful. Another shot in that same flyby. Look, the mud on its feet is still pretty wet, and this is 1 1600th of a second and 640 ISO. I like it when two of them fly close enough together to where I can get both of their eyes in focus, but there's no overlap between the birds. So often when they fly really close together, one bird is blocking the other bird, and I don't like that look, but this one is perfect. And this is 1 1600th of a second and 800 ISO, and I like the various textures in the clouds in the background. We've got dark blue. We've got lighter colors. Just beautiful. Here's another shot in that same flyby. Still at 1 1600th of a second, and this is 640 ISO. A lot of similar features between these two shots. And here's another one in that same flyby. Still at 1 1600th of a second and 640 ISO. Beautiful pair of birds flying by. Just perfect for me in the great light. And here's another in that same sequence. Still at 1 1600th of a second and 640 ISO. Now I picked the shots that had a great wing position. There were many other shots that I didn't choose because the wing position wasn't as good. This one has some mountains and the tops of some trees that are even closer than the mountains in the foreground. I've slowed my shutter speed down to 1 1000th of a second, and my ISO for this one is 500. Another shot with the tops of trees in the foreground and mountains in the background. This is 1 1000th of a second and 400 ISO. Look at all the colors on the top of this wing. Really beautiful. Now I've sped my shutter speed up to 1 1250th and I have the distant mountain in the background and the cloudy sky in the background as well. This is 500 ISO. And now the bird is calling as it's flying. I'm at 1 1250th and 400 ISO. Much lower flight here with the water in the foreground and the background. Over here this is some sandhill cranes that are out of focus and I love the golden color here. This is 1 1250th and 640 ISO. I like to get the wings straight out like this, except only when the bird is banking. If the bird was flying straight I prefer the wings up high instead of straight out. But during a banking shot I like this a lot. This is 1 1250th and 800 ISO. This is one of my favorite shots of the whole video. I had to crop it kind of to a 5 by 4 because the bird was way over to the left in the frame and because it's kind of banking to the left or to its right it looked funny with a lot of negative space to the right. So I ended up with it like this. This is 1 1250th and 800 ISO and I was fascinated by the bird flying right at me and the camera still catching its eyes perfectly in focus. Just really really cool how that one turned out. I'll probably share this one on social media. Here's a shot at 1 1250th and 400 ISO. I like the texture in the clouds in the background and the beautiful bird as it's banking. And now a very similar shot except going in the other direction. Usually they fly from my right to my left but this one flew from my left to my right. Lots of mud on the beak in this shot. Just beautiful 1 1250th and ISO 640. A little bit smaller in the frame on this 1 1250th shot. Still at ISO 640 and once again I like the texture of the clouds. It's not just a blue sky. Although I don't mind a blue sky shot but these cloud textures are interesting in the background in my opinion. And now we've lost some of the light. We've gotten back into a cloudy situation. This is 1 1250th and 1250 ISO with lots of trees in the background this time. There's one area where you can get a pretty close shot of the birds but the trees are really close and it really clutters up the background. But these trees are a pretty good distance away so the background's not so cluttered in this one. This shot is 1 1250th and 800 ISO. There's the water and some of the mud where water is in the summertime but they lower the water in the wintertime. And all these little splotches all over the place is sandhill cranes. And look at those muddy feet and muddy beak. Here's a pear flying across. This wing position is not my favorite. I enjoy this one or even higher up with the wings better but it's hard to get two birds with a perfect wing position. And this wing position is okay especially in this video because I don't have many shots with this wing position so it kind of changes things up for you. This is 1 1250th and ISO 640. And up at the top of the hill kind of even with where we were on the hill but a pretty good ways away. There was a few birds walking around and I was able to kind of isolate this one. This is 1 1250th of a second and 1250 ISO. And then a little bit later same bird but it's got more space so I could make it a 16 by 9 and I realized hey this bird's not flying I can slow my shutter speed down. So this is 1 400th of a second and 800 ISO. I'm still at 548 millimeters and I have my aperture stopped down just a third of a stop to 7.1. I left the Hiawassee Wildlife Refuge and ran over to Blythe Ferry to see if anything was going on and the only thing I saw over there was this brown thrasher. But I did enjoy getting this photograph and I'm pretty pleased with this photograph. This is handheld all the other shots were on a tripod. And this is 1 200th of a second at 548 millimeters f 7.1 and 640 ISO. Well that was a really good morning. I loved the light that I had for a little while. I mean it wasn't great light the whole time but it was pretty great for a little while. And hopefully I haven't seen the photos yet you've already seen them. Hopefully the photos came out really good. This was definitely the best light I've had this winter up here during Sandhill Crane season. And the OM1 Mark II and the 150-600 did really good I thought. I wasn't having any trouble keeping the bird in focus as it flew past. It really did great. No complaints whatsoever. So all in all a great morning. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did take a second reach down and hit thumbs up that helps me out a lot. And if you want to see some more stuff like this subscribe and hit the notification bell. As always I look forward to seeing you in my next video. Have a great day. Bye-bye.