Canon 1DX Mark II in 2026: Red-Tailed Hawk & Winter Nature Photography

Well, today I have the Canon 1DX Mark II, and we've come to a nature center along the Fox River in Wisconsin, and it is mid-January. And oddly enough for mid-January, it's like a summer day. It's 40 degrees, although it's extremely windy. We don't have really any color to speak of. Everything is kind of gray-toned. We have really large trees, some of which are dead and falling down, but there's a lot of texture here. So I think with the 1DX Mark II today, I've got the 70 to 200 f2.8. I think what we're going to focus on is trying to bring out that texture, some of the drama in the blacks and the darks and the highlights, and turn these all into some really interesting, hopefully really interesting, black and white shots. So come along with us as we use the 1DX Mark II and see if we can't get some black and white imagery today along the Fox River in Wisconsin. Well, as the water pours over the small little dam over here and runs through the rapids, it's pretty loud, so hopefully you can hear me okay. But right over here, there's a dead tree. All the bark is completely stripped off of it, and I thought that might make an interesting shot, and I'll see if I can't frame that up with the 70 to 200 and get an interesting shot there. And just like that, there's another dead tree across the way. It's probably not as dramatic as the first one, but there's also a smokestack and an industrial facility behind it, and that's a little harder to see, but that might be an interesting shot. So we'll see what we can pull off with that image. So I don't usually use aperture priority or any of the other automatic modes when I'm shooting, but I thought today would be an interesting day just to put it on aperture priority and set the ISO for what I'd like. In this case, I set it for ISO 640, and this camera handles high ISO extremely well. So we'll leave it on 640, and we'll continue taking some shots here and there in aperture priority mode and see how the camera produces good quality images in that mode. Oh, I see something. Denise would want me to get a photo of those grasses. So windy. I almost blew off the trail. It's windy out. I was going to take a photo of a wood duck out, so I didn't. Oh, look at that. Got lunch. That tree over there now. Over in here somewhere. All right. Okay, where did you go? Right there, yes. Right up in the tree. Maybe a little further? So there's a lot of raptors along the Fox River in Wisconsin, and particularly this time of year, because the rapids doesn't really freeze no matter how cold it gets. The water's too fast over there. So hundreds, if not thousands, of bald eagles come here in the wintertime, and regular residents include the red-tailed hawk, which is right there up on that tree. We got some photos, hopefully they turned out, of that red-tailed hawk that we'll show you hopefully in this video. So yeah, always nice to see the red tails around, unless you're a rabbit or a squirrel, then it's probably not so nice. So we've got the Fox River running through the valley right here, and we've got a couple trees to frame this shot up. So I thought, what the heck, I don't really have the landscape lens I'd normally use for this. I'd use probably a 16-35mm or maybe the Sigma 20mm, but I think this will be an interesting shot anyway, even with 70-200mm. So we'll see what we can get and take the shot. We'll see how that turns out. It might have promise. Possibly something. I don't know. So here's using the two crossed trees that fell down, I thought we could point out into the distance, and we've got the smokestack from the industrial place over there as well. So a little contrast between nature and industry, I guess. Probably took kind of a vista of the river as it goes down the channel here, and the boardwalk along the river path. So yeah, it might be interesting. Honey, look at that stupid squirrel. Can you see that stupid squirrel way up on the top of the tree there? No. Really on the very tippy top of the tree, tree up there. I don't even know. I don't see a squirrel. Across, almost across the road, on the very top of it, right over there. Oh, hanging out up there? It's gonna get it, it's gonna get it, but by a hawk. Yeah. Don't you think? Okay. A little picture of the boardwalk there. Oh, look at all the trees down, huh? Yeah, all the ash and dike. Out that way? There really is a big devastation here. Yeah, I know, isn't it awful? Should come back with a wide-angle lens and get a better documentation of this. Oh, we could do that. But we've been photographing this nature center for, I guess, 25 years, and all these trees were alive even 10 years ago, and now the emerald ash borer has come right through here, and all these trees have died and fallen down. And it's a completely different experience here now than it was 20 years ago, or even 10 years ago. And that, I guess, is one of the things about photography. If you photograph, even in your own backyard, so to speak, you can document the changes that are taking place in the environment all around you. And those are things that, as they take place over a period of decades, people forget about, they lose track of. But with your photography, you can make a record of it, even if it's just for yourself or your family, of the changes that have taken place right in your own backyard sometimes. And this has been in our own backyard for nearly 30 years, so it's really something to see the changes that a simple insect can make to the entire area where you live. And that's definitely something here. You can probably see on the video camera all of this. This was a thick, lush, hardwood forest at one point 10 years ago, and now it's just devastated. So, well, we came out intending to mainly do black and white because the circumstances with the lack of color at this time of year. But since we ran into the red-tailed hawk and a few white-tailed deer, there might be a few photos in color sprinkled into this video, too. But it's getting really dark now, so I guess we're probably going to have to call it a day unless we're going to do some night photography out here. But the temperature is really dropping, it's getting dark, so I think we'll just hang up the camera for this afternoon and we'll head in. So thanks for watching, and hope you like and subscribe, and we'll be back with more in the future. Thanks, bye!