Remembering Rain

Tucked inside a warm house with a blizzard raging outside is a good time to look back at some of last year's footage and try something new.  I did my first Instagram story, nothing fancy, and also found this wet cheetah from Kenya. Hope you are enjoying a real winter storm, the real fun begins tomorrow after I get the snowblower started.

April Shower

What does an intelligent, rational nature photographer do with a new camera? He goes out in the rain to test it. I have been waiting for an opportunity to test the slow motion video features on my Sony RX10ii and this was a perfect opportunity. I have previously tried filming frogs jumping, it worked but I didn't get enough material for a story.

Technical: The camera had some problems in the rain. The LCD would display an error message but the electronic viewfinder continued to work. After thoroughly drying it all is back to normal. An eye dropper will also be used to place the water drops within the frame. The four raindrops in this piece took half an hour to capture.

Clematis in the Rain

An early evening shower gave me the opportunity to explore the slow motion capabilities of the iPhone6. It shoots at 120 and 240 frames per second which when played back at 30 frames per second gives video at 1/4 or 1/8 normal speed. For me slow motion works best when it is not obvious and the brain believes what it sees as normal. Watching a rain drop land is always a slow motion event is my mind so this was a perfect opportunity.

Another pleasant surprise shooting video with the phone is the excellent audio quality. For this video I looped the best audio of a clip for the entire sequence and put a Youtube soundtrack over it. Editing is done in Final Cut Pro X. 

Technical: Most of the slow motion shots were at 240 fps. I don't know which clips were shot at 120 or 240 fps.

April Showers

These woodland leaves pop up with the more showy hepatica and bloodroots. They are either wild onions or garlic, I didn't do a sniff test. 

Technical: These are a depth of field challenge. I usually shoot at f22 or f29 and manually focus at different points on the leaf.

Robins and Rain

January 10, 2013. 39 degrees for a high, currently (5 pm) raining.  The average high is 23 degrees.  Is it any wonder these robins are confused?  This short clip also demonstrates a basic problem with global warming.  The robins are frantically burning energy in search of non existent food.  This energy/nutrition mismatch is more serious than any icebergs melting, flooding a few thousand homes.