Wildlife and the K-S1

**clackers** · 11-23-2014, 09:28 PM - **2 Likes**

Peregrine Falcon at its nest in the face of a cliff in 'the Organ Pipes', Sunbury, Victoria.

We'd just seen the previous day some fratricide - one child throwing another tumbling out of the nest a la Game of Thrones. Hard to tell how the final family situation panned out.

Pentax K-S1, Sigma 150-500mm at 400mm, f8, 1/800s, ISO1600, cropping and some post-processing, original OoC JPEG below.

LensBeginner · 11-24-2014, 03:27 AM

Originally posted by clackers

Peregrine Falcon at its nest in the face of a cliff in 'the Organ Pipes', Sunbury, Victoria.

We'd just seen the previous day some fratricide - one child throwing another tumbling out of the nest a la Game of Thrones. Hard to tell how the final family situation panned out.

Pentax K-S1, Sigma 150-500mm at 400mm, f8, 1/800s, ISO1600, cropping and some post-processing, original OoC JPEG below.

Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know?

Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot!

)
Nice job!

**gaweidert** · 11-24-2014, 05:39 PM

Originally posted by LensBeginner

Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know?

Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot!

)
Nice job!

Fratricide is pretty common among eagles in North America. There ware usually two eggs laid and one always hatches a few days are the other. If food is tight, the older one will get all the food and the younger one will starve or be thrown out of the nest.. The parents do nothing to prevent this. At a nation wildlife refuge near to where I live there was a bald eagle nest that had 3 adults tending it for several years. Because of this both of the young usually survived as there was plenty of food. This seems to be an isolated case and nobody ever determined if the one eagle was offspring of the mated pair or not.

This camera continues to impress me, but the K3 has dropped to under $800 in the US and it is getting harder and harder not to grab one.

**crewl1** · 11-24-2014, 05:42 PM

Excellent capture. Do you have a photo of the s-1 on the zoom? Must get dwarfed.

**mtngal** · 11-24-2014, 06:49 PM - **1 Like**

Excellent picture. The S1 does leave you quite a bit of room for cropping.

**clackers** · 11-24-2014, 09:22 PM

Originally posted by LensBeginner

Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know?

Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot!

)
Nice job!

Thanks, LB. Still learning what works, what doesn't. This was with a monopod, rather than a tripod, from a long way away, autofocus rather than manual, sacrificing ISO for aperture. I don't doubt that I did a lot of things wrong.

This Sigma is known to be not sharp at the longer end, maybe the SMC 300mm f4 I've just got on eBay will be better, cropped! Some of the experienced wildlifers on this forum seem to go for a 300 and 1.4 TC combo over other options.

I think doing much in the way of sharpening this fairly soft image in PP was going to make the textures of the subject look very, very unnatural. I wasn't brave enough to even try!

**clackers** · 11-24-2014, 09:27 PM

Originally posted by gaweidert

Fratricide is pretty common among eagles in North America ...

Thanks for the interesting info, Gaweidert!

One web page suggests peregrines don't do fratricide, and my wife now thinks it's possible that the bird tumbling off the ledge, wings flapping until it hit the bushes at the base of the cliff, followed by the chick that stood lording over the scene, may have been (still live) prey. They get pigeons and cockatoos (type of local parrot).

Originally posted by gaweidert

This camera continues to impress me, but the K3 has dropped to under $800 in the US and it is getting harder and harder not to grab one.

Oh, they're entirely different products.

If you're after a main DSLR, you'd seize the K-3, surely!

I already have a 24Mp APSC camera (a NEX-7) and a K-30.

Last edited by clackers; 11-24-2014 at 09:34 PM.

**clackers** · 11-24-2014, 09:30 PM

Originally posted by crewl1

Excellent capture. Do you have a photo of the s-1 on the zoom? Must get dwarfed.

Didn't think to take a pic - I should have.

Tripod collars are wonderful things!

**clackers** · 11-24-2014, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by mtngal

Excellent picture. The S1 does leave you quite a bit of room for cropping.

Yeah, it's what I was hoping for, Mtngal.

My wife read that there are perhaps just 250 nesting pairs of these things in the whole state.

There are some, oddly, that have chosen tall buildings in downtown Melbourne as their lairs. There are certainly plenty of pigeons and gulls for them to take out of mid-air.

**gaweidert** · 11-25-2014, 12:23 PM

For years there was a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on the Kodak Tower HQ in downtown Rochester, NY. They even set up a webcam and it had quite a following. Kodak gave permission to have a nesting box installed on the building and a web cam was added.

**TER-OR** · 11-25-2014, 02:14 PM - **1 Like**

A lot of cities here in North America have established peregrine populations as some means of pressuring the pigeon and starling populations. How effective these are, I don't know. Tall buildings are certainly acceptable nesting sites. Bigger raptors are also pretty common here, with red-tailed hawks nesting in New York opposite Central Park, for instance.

Out here in the suburbs we have lots of hawks and some owls, though I rarely get to see them. I do hear them occasionally.
The bats are fun to watch, too.

**clackers** · 11-25-2014, 08:14 PM

Very interesting, Ter-or. I heard they tried to do something similar here to drive birds away from our Arts Centre and one of our sports grounds.

Here's an item about a Melbourne nest:

Falcons - not your average CBD residents

It must be said, if anyone knows a lot about the subject, I'd love to know what appears to be a chick or remains in the RHS of the pic above.

**TER-OR** · 11-26-2014, 07:03 AM

So, compared with the K30 is the KS-1 a significantly different experience on the long zoom? I think we're all interested in this new smallish camera.

Generally I use TAv mode with the K5, giving a good deal of flexibility even with heavy gloves on.

**clackers** · 11-26-2014, 05:14 PM

TAv mode is very Pentax, Ter-ror, so of course the K-S1 has it.

It's small enough too so that out in the field you can go with two bodies - you could have the S1 with the wildlife/sports lens, your K5 with say the DA21 for opportunistic landscapes/shots of your companions.

11-23-2014, 09:28 PM - 2 Likes	#1
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397	Wildlife and the K-S1 Peregrine Falcon at its nest in the face of a cliff in 'the Organ Pipes', Sunbury, Victoria. We'd just seen the previous day some fratricide - one child throwing another tumbling out of the nest a la Game of Thrones. Hard to tell how the final family situation panned out. Pentax K-S1, Sigma 150-500mm at 400mm, f8, 1/800s, ISO1600, cropping and some post-processing, original OoC JPEG below.

11-24-2014, 09:22 PM	#6
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	Originally posted by LensBeginner Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know? Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot! ) Nice job! Thanks, LB. Still learning what works, what doesn't. This was with a monopod, rather than a tripod, from a long way away, autofocus rather than manual, sacrificing ISO for aperture. I don't doubt that I did a lot of things wrong. This Sigma is known to be not sharp at the longer end, maybe the SMC 300mm f4 I've just got on eBay will be better, cropped! Some of the experienced wildlifers on this forum seem to go for a 300 and 1.4 TC combo over other options. I think doing much in the way of sharpening this fairly soft image in PP was going to make the textures of the subject look very, very unnatural. I wasn't brave enough to even try! Last edited by clackers; 11-24-2014 at 09:33 PM.

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11-24-2014, 03:27 AM	#2
LensBeginner Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2014 Photos: Albums Posts: 4,696	Originally posted by clackers Peregrine Falcon at its nest in the face of a cliff in 'the Organ Pipes', Sunbury, Victoria. We'd just seen the previous day some fratricide - one child throwing another tumbling out of the nest a la Game of Thrones. Hard to tell how the final family situation panned out. Pentax K-S1, Sigma 150-500mm at 400mm, f8, 1/800s, ISO1600, cropping and some post-processing, original OoC JPEG below. Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know? Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot! ) Nice job!

11-24-2014, 05:39 PM	#3
gaweidert Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Rochester, NY Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,327	Originally posted by LensBeginner Wow, pretty raw stuff... are these occurrences common in the animal world, as far as you know? Crop is a bit soft, but very intense (and you can't ask for much more from a 400mm ISO 1600 shot! ) Nice job! Fratricide is pretty common among eagles in North America. There ware usually two eggs laid and one always hatches a few days are the other. If food is tight, the older one will get all the food and the younger one will starve or be thrown out of the nest.. The parents do nothing to prevent this. At a nation wildlife refuge near to where I live there was a bald eagle nest that had 3 adults tending it for several years. Because of this both of the young usually survived as there was plenty of food. This seems to be an isolated case and nobody ever determined if the one eagle was offspring of the mated pair or not. This camera continues to impress me, but the K3 has dropped to under $800 in the US and it is getting harder and harder not to grab one.

11-24-2014, 05:42 PM	#4
crewl1 Site Supporter Join Date: Jul 2010 Location: Los Angeles, CA Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 9,807	Excellent capture. Do you have a photo of the s-1 on the zoom? Must get dwarfed.

11-24-2014, 06:49 PM - 1 Like	#5
mtngal Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Wherever I’m Parked Photos: Gallery Posts: 1,003	Excellent picture. The S1 does leave you quite a bit of room for cropping.

11-24-2014, 09:27 PM	#7
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	Originally posted by gaweidert Fratricide is pretty common among eagles in North America ... Thanks for the interesting info, Gaweidert! One web page suggests peregrines don't do fratricide, and my wife now thinks it's possible that the bird tumbling off the ledge, wings flapping until it hit the bushes at the base of the cliff, followed by the chick that stood lording over the scene, may have been (still live) prey. They get pigeons and cockatoos (type of local parrot). Originally posted by gaweidert This camera continues to impress me, but the K3 has dropped to under $800 in the US and it is getting harder and harder not to grab one. Oh, they're entirely different products. If you're after a main DSLR, you'd seize the K-3, surely! I already have a 24Mp APSC camera (a NEX-7) and a K-30. Last edited by clackers; 11-24-2014 at 09:34 PM.

11-24-2014, 09:30 PM	#8
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	Originally posted by crewl1 Excellent capture. Do you have a photo of the s-1 on the zoom? Must get dwarfed. Didn't think to take a pic - I should have. Tripod collars are wonderful things!

11-24-2014, 09:36 PM	#9
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	Originally posted by mtngal Excellent picture. The S1 does leave you quite a bit of room for cropping. Yeah, it's what I was hoping for, Mtngal. My wife read that there are perhaps just 250 nesting pairs of these things in the whole state. There are some, oddly, that have chosen tall buildings in downtown Melbourne as their lairs. There are certainly plenty of pigeons and gulls for them to take out of mid-air.

11-25-2014, 12:23 PM	#10
gaweidert Loyal Site Supporter Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: Rochester, NY Photos: Gallery Posts: 5,327	For years there was a pair of peregrine falcons nesting on the Kodak Tower HQ in downtown Rochester, NY. They even set up a webcam and it had quite a following. Kodak gave permission to have a nesting box installed on the building and a web cam was added.

11-25-2014, 02:14 PM - 1 Like	#11
TER-OR Site Supporter Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Dundee, IL Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 6,699	A lot of cities here in North America have established peregrine populations as some means of pressuring the pigeon and starling populations. How effective these are, I don't know. Tall buildings are certainly acceptable nesting sites. Bigger raptors are also pretty common here, with red-tailed hawks nesting in New York opposite Central Park, for instance. Out here in the suburbs we have lots of hawks and some owls, though I rarely get to see them. I do hear them occasionally. The bats are fun to watch, too.

11-25-2014, 08:14 PM	#12
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	Very interesting, Ter-or. I heard they tried to do something similar here to drive birds away from our Arts Centre and one of our sports grounds. Here's an item about a Melbourne nest: Falcons - not your average CBD residents It must be said, if anyone knows a lot about the subject, I'd love to know what appears to be a chick or remains in the RHS of the pic above.

11-26-2014, 07:03 AM	#13
TER-OR Site Supporter Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: Dundee, IL Photos: Gallery \| Albums Posts: 6,699	So, compared with the K30 is the KS-1 a significantly different experience on the long zoom? I think we're all interested in this new smallish camera. Generally I use TAv mode with the K5, giving a good deal of flexibility even with heavy gloves on.

11-26-2014, 05:14 PM	#14
clackers Otis Memorial Pentaxian Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: Melbourne Photos: Albums Posts: 16,397 Original Poster	TAv mode is very Pentax, Ter-ror, so of course the K-S1 has it. It's small enough too so that out in the field you can go with two bodies - you could have the S1 with the wildlife/sports lens, your K5 with say the DA21 for opportunistic landscapes/shots of your companions.