Black-bellied Whistling Duck Family
At a place like Green Cay Wetlands in Palm County FL, when you see a group of photographers gathered in one spot, you are well advised to join them. They are working something. On this day the draw was this family of Black-bellied Whistling Ducks. It was hard to count, since they were actively feeding and never still, but it looked to be 9 or 10 chicks, clearly of a single hatching, since they were identical in size.
The Zeiss PhotoScope I am testing has a zoom range that provides the same field of view as a 600mm-1800mm zoom on a full frame DSLR. For this shot I was at the wide end of the range.
Zeiss PhotoScope 85FL at 600mm equivalent. 1/180th @ ISO 100. Effectively metered at f4.5. (f2.4 physical at the true 93mm focal length).
Cropped from the bottom in Lightroom to improve composition. Added Clarity and just at tiny amount of Vibrance. Sharpen landscape preset.
For comparison here is an image of a single chick taken at the 1800mm end of the zoom on the PhotoScope. I attempted a lot of these…but most were blurred by the rapid motion of the chicks.
Black-bellied Whistling Duck Chick
1/130th at ISO 100. Effective metered f-stop f6.0 (f3.4 physical at the 293mm true focal length of the PhotoScope).
wow what an amazing shot
These birds are quite interesting to see. Mother nature at work is a great topic. jbuca@aol.com
Good gracious, that’s a Daffy Duck bill on that baby if I’ve ever seen one!
Great pictures, what a wonderful find for you. 