F55: The Birds in my Backyard - with F55 and Canon 200-400

Doug Jensen

Doug Jensen

Carbonite Member
All of the footage in this video was shot within about a mile of my home in central Florida during the months of November and December 2018. Actually, about 90% was shot on one Friday evening and the next morning when there was an unexpectedly large number of birds on a nearby pond. Most of it was shot with my PMW-F55, except for the Night Heron which was shot with my Sony PXW-Z280. I have chosen to linger on each shot longer than I normally would so that more of the behavior of the birds can be seen. To some people it might move too slow, but if I was to edit over again I'd actually make the shots even longer now.

Cameras: Sony PMW-F55 w/ R7 RAW recorder; Sony PXW-Z280
Codec: XOCN-ST RAW 4K @ 120 fps; XAVC-I 4K @ 30 fps
Lens: Canon 200-400 f/4
Tripods: O'Connor 1030D and 35L; Sachtler FSB-10 and Flowtech 100
Grading: DaVinci Resolve
Editing: Adobe Premiere CC

 
Nice shots. Florida seems like a nice place to me. I only knew it from miami vice and Carl Hiaasen.
The pond looks like the pond behind my house, only the birds in Florida are American sized (bigger).
Sometimes it is full of birds and a few days later they are gone.
How do you keep focus on the flying birds with F4?
 
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Doug,

The pace is nice. Bald Eagle landing, very cool, I know how hard that is to get.

White Pelican landing is a great shot, always in a big group. Great Blue flying away using it legs to help flight, nice.

Birds I have never even hear of, which is no surprise for me. And all in your back yard, which looks like a great food source. Gold mine for a guy who loves to film birds.

The squirrel at the end, makes it look like he has been watching the whole show.

Very relaxing to watch.


Funny on DVinfo I clicked on the video and it wanted flash on, which it is, then gave me a 403. Weird, here is just works.
 
Wow. Seriously good stuff. But where are the closeups of the most famous Florida State Bird of all--the Psorophora ciliata or "Gallinipper mosquito?"

While enjoying this video it struck me that, as a bait fish in Florida, probably no need to obsess over your retirement plan.
 
Agree with what's been said - nice work, Doug. Thanks for posting. And eye-opening also to see how well the Z280 cuts with it's bigger cousin. Any specific reason you grabbed the Z280 for those night time shots over staying with the F55?
 
Spectacular, watched all 16 minutes and 21 seconds of it, definitely did not linger too long on any of the shots, all were captivating, gives full understanding to the food chain, and also the soundtrack sounded really great on my system. It did not play for me in 4k for some reason, but the 1080p looked great anyway. The camera work was truly professional, everything about it was, right down to the duration of the fades and blends between scenes, and scoring of the music, the colors were very special. One scene in slow motion was tracking a bird in flight, when another more interesting comes into the frame, now two birds in parallel, was hoping Doug could refocus on the 2nd bird, did without so much as a wiggle, maintaining a perfect pan and framing, really stellar and extremely hard to pull off, looked like so much time to pull focus in slow motion but in real time just one shot to get it right without a miss, so I loved it all. Bravo! May I ask what shutter angle was used for the birds in flight?
 
markfpv said:
Any specific reason you grabbed the Z280 for those night time shots over staying with the F55?
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I needed to move fast and light. When I first saw the bird at night I didn't even have a camera so I had to move pretty quick to grab the Z280, tripod, an ASTRA, and get back to the water before we flew away. Plus the the flexibility of having a 17x is fantastic.
 
Donny 123 said:
So has the short pan bar made a lot of difference for you operating wise..
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Not on this footage because 99% was shot with my O'Connor 1030D and F55. But on other shoots with the Z280 and Sachtler FSB-10 the pan handle is working out great!! I love it. I should have taken the time a couple of years ago to solve this issue. What a difference it has had.
 
Tom, thanks for the detailed feedback. I like hearing specifically what you liked and your comments on certain scenes. Right on. Thanks for taking the time.
Shutter speed was 1/250th for the 120 fps clips and 1/80 for anything that isn't slow-mo.
Frequency setting for both the shooting and editing is 29.97.
 
Doug Jensen said:
Tom, thanks for the detailed feedback. I like hearing specifically what you liked and your comments on certain scenes. Right on. Thanks for taking the time.
Shutter speed was 1/250th for the 120 fps clips and 1/80 for anything that isn't slow-mo.
Frequency setting for both the shooting and editing is 29.97.
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It's the details; the four coordinated movements with a high power lens and tripod, to keep framed while smoothly tracking the path of multiple subjects and manually focusing among them in real time, not bouncing off the handle or legs, the high percentage of movement of subject and camera that kept the action moving and the viewer's attention, perfect exposure that captured the golden rays of twilight, preservation of color with highlight and shadow detail with movement in high contrast, changing light, the timing to be in position for the abundance of opportunity nature presented and the stars of wildlife itself. Before chalking it up to good fortune though, we remember Ben Hogan's quote, "It's funny, the more I practice, the luckier I get!"

Thanks for sharing the shot settings. :thumbsup:
 
What a diversity of nature so close to you! My favorite shots were:
1: The Tricolored Heron...what's not to like, looks beautiful, color, lighting, grading, composition.
2. Red-Shouldered Hawk..same as above.
3. Great Blue Heron..same as above.
4. White Pelican solo landing...very smooth camera work, good composition.
5. Roseate Spoonbill @ 14:30 flying. Very iconic shot in my mind.


I took a course in writing and one of the students turned in a paper and his starting sentence was something like "I stopped at the side of the road and stared out at the desert but nothing was there." And the professor asked: "What's wrong with this sentence?" And nobody said anything. And then he said: "It's not true. There's ton of things in the desert if you take the time to look." And the student said that he came from the city and to him there was nothing there. And the professor said, "But that's not what you said. "

He was kind of a hard nose guy but I took it to mean there's a lot to see everywhere; it just depends on your perspective.
 
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Gizmosgadget said:
Was there any particular reason you chose 29.97 over 24p? Is there more of a market for that frame rate?
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Almost everything I shoot for myself gets submitted as stock footage and, although I have no statistics to prove it, it is my belief that 29.97 is a more desirable frame-rate for experienced editors/producers who know it is better to down-convert 29.97 to 23.98 or 25P (throwing away frames) than to up-convert 23.98 to 29.97 or 25P (creating new frames out of thin air). So 29.97 covers more basis, and that is what I almost always shoot when I have the choice.

Thanks for the comments, guys.
 
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