Month: January 2018

Shoot for the Moon

Executive summary for moonshots with an SLR and a telephoto lens

Pick a cold, clear night, when the moon is in the sky.

Set up your camera and lens on a sturdy tripod outside. Let the kit acclimatise before shooting.

Use the longest focal length lens you have available to fill the frame with mostly moon.

Use the camera’s shutter timer or a remote shutter control.

Use LiveView or the equivalent to reduce vibration from the moving mirror.

Use a fast shutter speed, at least 1/180s.

Find your lens’ optimal small aperture, commonly sharper photos are at about f/8, but it does vary. This is about quality rather than depth of field.

Set the ISO as low as possible to reduce image noise but to allow a decent exposure. I’d say ISO 640 is the upper limit.

Shoot RAW to give you all the data to allow you to get the best image in post-processing.

Use a photo editor to crop to taste, adjust levels, boost contrast, and sharpen your photo.

If you’re sharing it on social media, make a copy of the final processed photo as a JPEG (85-90% quality) and resize it to 1024 pixelwidth, apply a touch more sharpening to that, add your logo/watermark, save, and share.

TL:DR

Use as long a zoom lens as you have access to. A sturdy and stable tripod and a remote shutter control. If you don’t have a shutter control, use timer mode and set it to 10 seconds to give the camera time to settle after your press the shutter. You need to choose a fairly still and clear night (cold and low humidity will give the best “seeing” as astronomers say. Unless you really want a full moon, go for a waxing or waning gibbous or a crescent and you’ll get those terminator craters and mountains. Also, full moon is brighter and harder to control exposure, although it definitely can be done.

I shoot with a Sigma 15-600mm zoom on a Canon 6D (later a 7Dii). Set your ISO to around 1000 (I try to go for about 640 on the 7Dii), opt for shutter priority 1/1000s, aperture left to its own devices but f/6.3, and EV it up a few notches +0.7, say but check your exposure with each shot and adjust accordingly (I’ve not found EV was any use on the 7Dii). Opt for single-point autofocus on the craters towards the dark edge but where there is still sunlight or use Live View mode instead of your viewfinder and manually focus. I’d recommend Live View mode or the equivalen on your brand regardless.

I generally crop in quite tight and enhance contrast using curves or levels ever so slightly to make sure the black sky is black but without losing too much detail at the edge of the moon. Also a little bit of unsharp masking on luminance only doesn’t go amiss, but don’t overdo it or your moon shot will look faked. There are many more sharpening tools, such as Topaz Sharpen AI that have appeared since I wrote this article, they can give your photo a boost. Also Topaz Denoise AI.

Peregrine in the neighbourhood

Just when you imagine you’ve exhausted the supply of local birds, something new turns up in the neighbourhood. Spotted this juvenile female Peregrine (Falco peregrinus) perched in a tree at the edge of Rampton Spinney on the Cottenham Lode side. It startled and headed across fields North Eastwards…sat on a mound of earth about half a mile away and out of range of cameras and even Mrs Sciencebase’s snazzy new bins.

Anyway, I got a few snaps of the Peregrine in the tree. Brings my photographed total since buying this big zoom this time last year to 130 different species. Even if you’re not a birder, you can’t fail to be impressed by this species, surely? It can stoop on its prey at speeds well in excess of 350 kilometres per hour! The record is 389 km/h.

Just cribbing a bit about this bird of prey from Wiki:

The peregrine's breeding range includes land regions from the Arctic Tundra to the Tropics. It can be found nearly everywhere on Earth, except extreme polar regions, very high mountains, and most tropical rainforests; the only major ice-free landmass from which it is entirely absent is New Zealand. Nevertheless, it is the world's most widespread raptor.

Find your selfie gallery doppelganger

To find your doppelgänger in an art gallery, download the Google iPhone or Android app Arts & Culture. If you’re not in the US, you might have to use a VPN to pretend you are. Scroll down to the “Search with your selfie” section, tap “Get Started”…take the requisite selfie and let the app do its work. It will pull back several portraits from the world’s art galleries and museums that it thinks you resemble in your selfie.

Apparently, my selfie resembles portraits of Jan Bart, Sir Wyndham Natchbull-Whyndham, Karel Stuart, Jacobus Frans Eduard, Lodewijk XVI, and William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford…and not Russ Abbott, Jasper Carrott, nor Sir Bruce Forsyth, thank you very much Mick Snell. To be honest, I can’t understand why the app didn’t bring up portraits of Bruce Willis, Woody Harrelson, Mark Strong, or even Jason Statham…yeah, I know what it is…eye colour…nothing else…haha.

Stiffkey Marshes

There are two schools of thought and how to pronounce the name of the North Norfolk village Stiffkey, some people pronounce it almost phonetically, “stiff-kee”, but others (older locals often) pronounce it “stoo-kee”. The origins of the name lie in a form of clay known as Norfolk “stew” and this is village was the site of a quay for transporting that product, so Stew Quay…anyway, wildlife in and around?

On a recent visit (20th January 2018), several hares (Lepus europaeus), active and boxing, which seems far too early as it’s only January and they don’t usually go “mad” for courtship until March.

Lots of Brent Geese (Branta bernicla) on the Stiffkey Marshes

Lots of Curlew (Numenius arquata), Redshank, Little Egret, occasional Skylark, possibly Meadow Pipit, Blue and Long-tailed Tit, Linnet, Wigeon, Chaffinch, Mallard, Teal, Black-tailed Godwit (on floodwater further inland).

Reed Bunting (Emberiza schoeniclus) in winter plumage

Blackbird (Turdus merulea)

You will have to trust me on this one as my camera lens barely stretches this far, but these are grey seals (Halichoerus grypus) and their pups on Blakeney Point. Incidentally, their scientific name means “hook-nosed sea pig”.

 

Flying visit to RSPB Titchwell

Waded into Alan Partridge Country this week, North Norfolk (specifically RSPB Titchwell and on to Stiffkey Marshes). Here are a few of the bird snaps from Titchwell showing the various waders and waterfowl sighted there in their winter plumage.

Black-tailed Godwit (Limosa limosa)

Bar-tailed Godwit (Limosa lapponica)

Lapwing also known as a green plover, peewit etc (Vanellus vanellus)
Grey Plover (Pluvialis squatarola)
Dunlin (Calidris alpina)
Ringed Plover (Charadrius hiaticula)
Common Redshank (Tringa totanus)

Oystercatcher (Haematopus ostralegus)

Little Grebe (Tachybaptus ruficollis)

Knot (Calidris canutus)

Teal (Anas crecca)

Golden Eye (Bucephala clangula)

Black-headed Gull (Chroicocephalus ridibundus)

 

Shoveler (Anas clypeata) [Background: Avocet (Recurvirostra avosetta)]

Merlin, female (Falco columbarius)

There were others, including my first sighting of a Merlin (above) perched on a post on the dunes and Common Scoter, out at sea and discernible only as black specks with my camera. There were also long-tailed duck out there too, apparently. Turnstone and various other wading seabirds visible but not clear on the shoreline. There was a big flock of linnet on the marshes and chaffinch, robin, dunnock, greenfinch, blue, great, longtailed, and coal tit, blackbird, wood pigeon, moorhen, wren on and around the feeders near the visitor centre. No waxwings were seen anywhere and no bramblings either.

Argumentative goldfinches

At one time, garden feeders would be swamped by Greenfinches (as well as the usual House Sparrows and Starlings). You might see a few Blue Tits and Great Tits too, and Nuthatches, and more besides. Next weekend (27-29th January 2018) it’s the RSPB Big Garden Birdwatch, a national survey of our feathered friends. Recent stats suggest that Goldfinches have become the more common sight on feeders in recent years and I’d agree with that in our garden, at least. It will be interesting to see how they add up this year.

Meanwhile, I’ve photographed and now videoed a flock of Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) that spend their mornings on our nijer seed feeder, arguing about who gets to sit on one of the four perches on the feeder. There are probably 8 or 9 Goldfinches in the garden at any one time, so obviously not enough perches. Their aggression and arguments are quite amusing, take a look at this short video clip I recorded on the morning of 17th Jan 2018.

There’s a Youtube version of Argumentative Goldfinches here if you prefer.

Coal tit photos – there’s an app for that

I’ve been hearing and catching occasional glimpses of a coal tit (Periparus ater) in our garden for several months. I have managed to get some awful snatched photos of it, but usually with its face turned away from the camera or flitting into the shrubage. Anyway, on a whim, I decided to put my camera on a tripod in the middle of the garden and point it out that mixed seed feed dangling from our beech tree, resplendent in its bronze winter plumage foliage.

I’d enabled Wi-Fi on the camera and went back indoors to a comfortable chair and fired up the EOS app on my phone, luckily the camera’s Wi-Fi signal was strong enough to cope with the distance between chilly tripod and comfortable armchair. No sooner had I sat down than the coal tit appeared by pure chance. So tapping away on the app, I grabbed a few before it darted back into the aforemention shrubage and did not re-emerge.

The coal tit eats insects, seeds, and nuts and will cache food to eat later. They’re well known as flocking with blue tits and great tits in winter woodland and gardens. We do have blue tits and great tits that visit our feeders but I’ve not seen any evidence of any of them flocking as such.

Long-eared owl in a box

I took a photo of an owl box from about 60 metres away standing on the dirt track on the dry side of the higher embankment of the Hundred Foot Drain about a kilometre from the bridge into Earith.

I was not imagining that I’d be able to see anything in the owl box. I just wanted to know what the label said “Sutton and Mepal I.D.B…”

However, when I opened the photo and zoomed in a bit…I could see there was a face staring back at me…presumably (given the tufts above the eyes, this is a long-eared owl (Asio otus) although Mrs Sciencebase is not convinced.

Science left unquestioned on BBC Radio 4 Today (again)

Whenever there’s something “sciencey” on BBC Radio4 Today program, the interviewers never seem to ask any of the obvious “sciencey” questions about the subject. Today was no exception…

A Professor from Liverpool was suggesting could reduce Caesarean section rates by giving the expectant mothers, whose labour was not progressing, a drink of bicarbonate of soda. Apparently, blood around the uterus (or womb) was too acidic in these women.

I looked at this research which seems to have been published in June 2017 [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28587493], not entirely sure why it’s suddenly on Radio 4 in January 2018. The paper does not talk about uterine blood acidity it talks about lactic acid (or rather lactate ion) levels in the amniotic fluid and that this is reduced by a tiny amount by ingestion of bicarbonate. Lactic acid is the product of anaerobic respiration that temporarily accumulates in body tissues and is the usual cause of a “stitch”. “Lactic” as sports therapists are wont to call it actually as a very short half-life and does not persist. The R4 interviewer should have known all that and could have probed that point!

She also said it was properly “blinded” and that the normal procedure is to give oxytocin to promote delivery. The women and the midwives would know that they were not prescribing oxytocin to those women given the bicarb. So, how was it blinded? She said the trial was small, 200 women (100 bicarb, 100 oxytocin), and that meant they could control for BMI. The obvious question is what was the statistical significance of such a small trial?

The Professor also pointed out that the effect was about 17%, so one in five fewer women in the group had to have a Caesarean than would normally be expected. That is potentially significant if it held up for a larger group but may well be a simple statistical blip and if they repeat with another 100 tomorrow they might find that one in five more has to have a C-section despite the bicarb.

Were the women being given any other drugs by mouth, the bicarbonate may have affected absorption from the stomach of those, we don’t know, the question wasn’t asked.

She said the hypothesis was based on the fact that they’d found uterine blood acidity to be high in women who had to have a Caesarean (but that’s not what the paper talks about and yet that’s how she framed it), and so the bicarb was meant to neutralize that. BUT and this is the big BUT. If you drink bicarb it neutralizes the acid in your stomach to some degree and forms bubbles of carbon dioxide which you belch away, basically. You cannot neutralize blood by drinking bicarb. Moreover, if you injected bicarb even into “acidic” blood, the body would respond by raising the acidity to compensate.

Blood is usually slightly alkaline, its pH lies between 7.35 and 7.45 and is tightly controlled by your body through homeostasis mechanisms. The contents of your stomach are rather acidic, pH is 3.5 or lower (this helps you digest food). Nothing you eat or drink can substantially alter the pH of your stomach (without causing serious harm, even antacids, like bicarb have a marginal effect). So, nothing leaving your stomach and entering the intestine or being absorbed directly into the blood will affect the pH of blood (this, by the way, is why all that alkali health diet stuff is nonsense [https://chriskresser.com/the-ph-myth-part-1/]). Indeed, although it is known that the level of carbon dioxide in the blood falls in pregnancy, the woman’s body compensates by buffering the blood to prevent it becoming less alkaline (more acidic) [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3952302/].

However, Mrs Sciencebase flippantly suggested that perhaps the bubbles produced by the bicarb were enough to propel the baby out!

These are just the obvious points that occurred to me on waking to hear this interview. Does nobody on R4 Today staff have any science training at all to be able to think of such points? Of course, they had far more important things to get on to, such as the sports results and the racing tips and Thought for the Day, so the interview was, as ever, woefully short and given a “Hmm” by Humphrys when it concluded.

Of course, Mrs Sciencebase may have stumbled on an interesting point, perhaps drinking the bicarb solution was sufficient to cause agitation and activity in the stomach that generated gas and that it was the increased movement here that indirectly led to increased uterine activity. Of course, it may just have been the expectant woman having to sit up to take the drink that was enough…who knows? Certainly not the R4 interviewer, because he didn’t ask any of the right questions!

Hunting and hovering, common kestrel

The common kestrel (Falco tinnunculus) is the native raptor (bird of prey) you’re most likely to see hovering over countryside in the British Isles. Other raptors like the buzzard (Buteo buteo) can also hover, but they’re usually hanging on the wind or thermals rather than pitching their wings and tails to actively stay in single position for a prolonged period above the ground where prey might be moving around.

It was a gloomy day today so not great, bright shots, but I did catch a male kestrel diving on a vole or mouse and taking it up high on a telegraph post and then a tree to devour it before flying off with the remains of the kill in its talons.