Ryananthony said:
unfocused said:
I am far more interested in where and how people manage to find owls willing to pose. We have at least one barred owl in the neighborhood, but only know that from she/he asking who is cooking for you, plus the very rare sighting of a blur of wings and feathers in the dark.
Where do people live that they manage to find these birds perching away on a branch in any kind of light?
For myself, about 35 minutes outside of Vancouver, BC. I live about an hour away from a popular local spot. I don't alway get lucky, but I go out every other weekend. Locals are a lot more lucky. I would say I catch an Owl maybe 10 percent of the time. Eagles and Osprey just shy of 100 percent of the time.
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I am assuming based upon the trees you're somewhere
in Coquitlam or Maple Ridge which has LOTS of owls,
eagles, cougars, black bears, lynx, cranes, etc.
With the mountains so close by you can find
almost any type of creature if you're willing
to wake up at 5:00 am for a sit-down session
in a near swamp (i.e. by Pitt Lake in British Columbia)
In terms of printability, I have taken a 6 megapixel
aerial shot of a cruise ship (i.e. Star Princess using
Canon Powershot G3) and printed it at 24 x 16 with
only minor noise. The KEY ISSUE if you shoot JPEG
is find some decent DE-MACROBLOCKING software
plugins and then add some contrast (10%) and
FINALLY add just a 1.5 pixel wide UnSharp Mask.
From normal 30 inch or more viewing distances,
it really won't look that bad even at 6 megapixels
for the original shot!
It's CONTENT not megapixels in my opinion,
I've seen INCREDIBLE WILDLIFE SHOTS done
on a Sony Xperia Cell Phone (20 megapixel)
and printed UTTERLY SHARP at 24 x 16.
The content (a shot of a bald eagle with
spread out wings on top of a telephone pole)
was so good that seeing that photo at 24x16
made my mind forget any TECHNICAL aspects
of the image!
So look for good light, great content and then
focus sharp and crop hard to get your perfect
shots for large format printing!