Playing with my camera

 I have been browsing elements of the 812 page manual that covers my Canon EOS R50 camera.  It has 2 lenses: a wide angle jobbie at 18-45mm; and a mild telephoto at 55-210mm.  

On the usual learning process of "press the button and pray" I have found that in many situations the camera gives a much better result than my previous Lumix despite having much less zoom. However I have found a function that offers a digital zoom of 2x or 4x in P mode.  The manual warns that the quality of images will reduce if using these settings so I thought I would explore the results.  (Note that in all cases I have resized the  images to 1000 x 666 pixcels to save downloads and storage.)

The first subject was a Common Bronzewing sitting on our back fence, about 20m from our deck.  The first image is the full scene as taken at 210mm.

Here is a cropped image of the bird.

Full image using 4X digital zoom.

Cropped digital zoom image.

Now move to Captain Stevenson's Point where a few Bar-tailed Godwits were hanging around on a sandbar, about 300m from where I was standing (thanks Google Earth).  Trust me, they are in the centre of this image.

Here is a crop from the previous image. Enlarging this makes it obvious what they are!

This is the full 4X digital zoom.  At least the birds can be seen!

A crop of the previous image.  Shows the birds more clearly than the previous crop.

On getting home a female Australian King Parrot was grazing on the lawn across the road.  Again about 20m away.  Again a simple shot at 210mm.

4x digital zoom on a 210mm lens.

Crop from above.

I need to think a little about this, but my working answer is that if the birds are fairly close I get the best result by cropping from an image with no digital zoom.  However from more distant birds the 4x digital zoom does a better job.

A ripper of a Sunset

 On 23 May there was a lot of light cirrus cloud approaching sunset.  As hoped for it gave rise to a brilliantly coloured sunset.  In the images that follow I played around with exposure settings a little (but not in an organised way so I can't remember which image had which settings - dohh!)

The first 2 were around 1654 hrs.

The next lot are around 1702 hrs when I noticed the sky to the NNE was showing great colour and texture.

Around 1708 the crescent moon could be fitted into the image

This is 1710: I like the swirling cloud!

Skies, birds and beaches: a miscellany

 This covers a wide range of subjects seen from 19-21 May.  The sunsets recently have been quite colourful.

We have seen a Brown Stingray feeding in the shallows beside the Lagoon boardwalk a couple of times recently.  The fish is about 50cm across the 'wings' and the sting is about 60 cm long.

On my way to check the Osprey a flock of 16 Spoonbills were feeding in the Lagoon.

First glance at the Osprey (white lump on horizontal branch).

After a small amount of bush bashing to get to water level I got a rather better image.

Heading back home (on my bike) a Great Egret posed nicely.

In the afternoon we went to Pebbly Beach and were greeted by a White-faced Heron,

A large bank of black cloud looked threatening and gave a colourful setting.  Nothing came of it (at least not where we were).

The recent stormy seas have dislodged a lot of kelp.

A very good collection of pebble pagodas.  (Probably annoys Parks but (a) they aren't in the Park, so tough; and (b) Parks are too precious anyway.)

We devoted a little time to trying to work out why the rocks towards the see are jagged, brown sedimentary rock while the pebbles are (mainly) smooth, grey fine-grained specimens.  The smoothness is no doubt due to wave action but where have they come from?

Spot the Gannet!

Does this help?

On the 21st the weather was ungood.  Cold and blowing a gale for our morning walk and rain starting just as we got home.  After 1015 it seemed it stop so I went for a drive round the Airfield.  I scored a few birds, with Tree Martins the most exciting until I got out to the yellow phallic object.  There I found 2 Tawny-crowned Honeyeaters.  Here is one of them.

The Epacris was beginning to hit its stride!

I left by the woodland road in to the Gun Club.  Possibly a problemo?

To quote the Wee Nac MacFeegles "Nae problemo."

At the base of Mount Angophora a bunch of King Parrots were finding something to their liking.

Fotos of Phungus

 This starts with a set of images of fungi beginning with those seen on a walk up the Narrows on 19 May.  I have put the images on iNaturalist in the hope of getting some IDs: the AI on that site couldn't get past "Kingdom Fungi".

The first two images are of a large cluster on a stump beside the water.  They have been identified on iNaturalist as Omphalotus nidiformis - the phosphorescent Ghost Fungus.

The stipe for this one had failed.  Genus Oudemansiella

Genus Gymnopilus

This is to show the pattern of the gills in the lower broken-off part.

Family Mycenaceae

Genus Parasola

A bracket fungus, well endowed with algae appearing green.

The lump on the ground shows the original colour of the fungus to be orange.  iNaturalist has named this as Trametes coccinea Southern Cinnabar Polypore.

The next image is from the side of Lakeside Drive near Fisheries Jetty on 20 May.  This is Coprinus comatus (Shaggy Mane).

The next is from the start of the path down to Pebbly Beach.  Clearly a puffball but quite small.