Last night was one of those ideal winter days in Florida, a pleasant 72ยบ with clear, dry skies. I decided to head over to one of my favorite wildlife sites, the Green Cay Wetlands in Boyton Beach, Florida to photograph some of the birds that are more abundant this time of year. This was to be more of a relaxing walk than a full-out photo shoot so I took only one camera and lens with me, the Fuji X-H1 camera with 100-400mm zoom lens. Just in case I needed something longer, I stuffed a Fuji 1.4X telextender in my pocket, but I never did need it.
It was late in the day, just before sunset, and I decided to rely on auto-ISO to vary the exposure to make my life a little easier as I swung the camera from dark to light areas and back again to capture the active birds. My auto-ISO bracket was set from 200 to 1600. I don't really like going over that with an APS sensor, especially considering the fine details of the birds' feathers. I worked my aperture wide open to further keep the ISO down, and also allow for high shutter speeds to stop any action.
My ISO ranged from 200-1250 for all the photos shown here. I do almost all of my noise correction now in Adobe Bridge. The Fuji X-cameras are often compared to full frame for their image quality. Even with the higher ISO's it would be hard to tell these shots from what I achieve with my full frame Nikons under these same conditions. A great deal of that image quality comes from the Fuji optics, which, for their higher end lenses is exceptional.
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| Few birds are as majestic as the Great Blue Heron |
