I saw this girl with her kitten at the Moline Airport. She told me that she had just gotten this kitten and that it didn’t have a name yet. She was traveling to California to visit a friend.
I took this photo, below, on the way to Denver.
Category: Cats (page 5 of 8)
Marie noticed Tiger lying on his back earlier tonight:
He was so relaxed that he allowed his belly to be rubbed by both Marie…
…and Joe:
Meanwhile, Tiger’s sister, Freckles, was perched by the fireplace looking inscrutable.
I was playing around with the Sigma 50-500mm lens last night at 500mm in manual focus mode. I was unhappy with the focus that I had gotten yesterday on the kitten, so I decided that I had better learn how to focus more accurately. In the photo of McGonagall, below, I focused on her right eye (the one that’s more open). Exposure parameters were ISO 1600, f/6.3, 1/20 sec, in aperture priority mode.
It probably would’ve been a more pleasing photo had I not done an in-camera crop of her ears, but I wanted to use the lens all the way out at 500mm since that is what I’ll need to do to get photos of outdoor wildlife. That said, using a somewhat shorter focal length would have provided a somewhat wider depth of field. Perhaps it would have been enough for McGonagall’s nose to be in better focus. Note that her eye is tack sharp though.
Below is one of Minstrel’s kittens, from her most recent litter. This was shot from inside the house, through the (not very clean) glass of the patio window at 500mm, f/6.3, ISO 3200, 1/640 sec. I went with a higher ISO to try to get the shutter speed up. For this particular shot, I could’ve probably dropped it down to ISO 800, but I was shooting a mix of kittens on the patio and some out in the yard or on the wall. I needed ISO 3200 for the patio shots.
I got a new piece of gear today, an Orbis Ring Flash Diffuser. It’s a round plastic gizmo into which you insert a speedlight. The Orbis channels the light out a circular diffusing panel with a hole in it through which you can insert the lens. Thus, for close-ups, you get a large light source which creates very few shadows.
These are some shots I got while playing around with the Orbis earlier tonight. I used a 50mm lens on my NEX-7 with ISO set to 400.
Marie and Tiger:
Marie without Tiger:
Tiger is a big kitty!
Marilyn let Tiger spend a few minutes in the back yard today…
A little less grouchy here…
The reason he was grouchy was because Big Tom came and challenged him for his favorite sleeping spot on the wall.
I shot these with the Sigma 50-500mm lens. I’m liking this lens better now.
Freckles likes to go out on the balcony and then onto the roof. We let her do this because, unlike our other cats, if given enough time, she’ll come back on her own. Tiger and Callisto are not content with staying on the roof; they like to find ways to get down to the ground.
We lost sight of her when she went over the roof peak. I walked around to the front of the house to check on her; she saw me and walked down to the edge of the roof to see me, meowing all the while.
She found a comfy shaded spot next to the skylight.
It was a perfect vantage point from which to watch this bird:
When it was time to come back inside, her mom scolded her for being away for so long.
I took this shot earlier tonight while testing out a new memory card. We have a four foot (or so) long tube that the cats can crawl through. There’s a hole in the middle at which Molly likes to stop and look out.
It looks better than I expected for ISO 6400. If you look closely, you can see some noise on the left hand side towards the bottom. At 1:1, there’s even more noise almost everywhere. But I purposely held back on the noise reduction because it tends to make the image too soft.
I just realized that I could’ve used a lower ISO or perhaps a smaller aperture had I taken off the polarizing filter… ah well.
