Photographing Waterfowl With The New Tragopan V7 Blind

[@GerritVyn]

So you have a favorite place for waterfowl migration near where you live?

[@JessFindlayPhoto]

That new window looks to be a great improvement!

[@daveconlin669]

Hi Gerrit, I am a little north of you in Alberta where we have much the same going on at this time of year. I love the sights of those huge flocks landing and taking off. By now we are usually frozen up and the geese and swans are starting to move on, this year however (as at Nov 9th) it has been unusually mild and our local lake (near Edmonton) where the birds roost overnight is still completely unfrozen. I like to photograph the migrating flocks landscape/environmental style with them coming into the roost just after sunset and leaving again just before and just after sunrise. It will be interesting to see if the birds move on before freeze up or not. For birds feeding in fields it's normally shots from a car that work the best though at the distances you were working at in this video I am not sure a blind would be entirely necessary (I realize you were hoping the birds would come closer). For shooting wildlife I use manual / auto iso and apply exposure compensation based on what the histogram shows, with direct sun on white birds I switch to highlight weighted metering. I like the look of the Tragopan blind but finding a place to set up and leave it overnight without risking interference is an issue!

[@crabbymcnutt]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and strategies to capture the photo you’re envisioning.

[@GerritVyn]

Thanks for watching!

[@wildwondersmitali]

Excellent

[@GerritVyn]

Thanks!

[@cgan2013]

Great to be surrounded by all of those geese!! Why not opt for auto ISO, as opposed to fiddling around with it? The light looked good enough so as to not worry about higher ISO readings. The V7 looks nice - I own the V6. I’m curious how it compares to the V6. Will you be doing a compare video? Thanks!!

[@GerritVyn]

Hi, auto ISO is still relying on the camera to make an auto determination of the correct exposure which will be incorrect some of the time. The bright sky in the background vs. ground or trees in background will cause that camera to expose differently even though the light is the same. Same goes for the white geese vs. the dark geese and I also want to expose for the geese differently (ie. underexpose the white snow goose so I don’t blow it out). What I am doing is determining the correct exposure for the middle toned subject (cackling goose) using my desired shutter speed and aperture and setting that manually. That exposure will remain correct no matter what the background is. Based on that I am simply using the ISO dial to quickly change the manual setting to one that will underexpose the bright white geese by a stop. Then they will be properly exposed no matter the background as well. No auto setting can handle all of those variables quickly and consistently. Hope that makes sense!