Strix Varia

[Ryan Farnes]

Originally Posted by Per Johan Naesje

Ryan, congrats as the second runner up for this round in the competition! Very well deserved!

Owls has amazed me for some time and watching your video told me that the Strix varia, which I haven´t seen before), had a behaviour almost the same as Strix nebulosa (my uwol9 challenge).
If you know where they are, they are quite easy to approach. As you tell in your film, they are most active at dawn and dusk and even night here in Scandinavia during the summertime. In the film it seems that most of your footage are taken during the day. Did you try to do some footage at late night or early morning?

It´s nice to hear that you shoot this with a 7D as this is exact the same camera as I got and will start to use when I got a decent viewfinder. Watching the slow motion of the owl was nice, wish I had this kind equipment 2 years ago!

The footage and ambient sound was very good, good exposure, colors seem naturally. Was you recording sound into the camera or did you use any sound recorder?
Your editing phase was good, the sequences was nice fit together. Could have hope for even some more close-up of the owl!
Your VO is very good and professional executed.

All over a very deserved second runner up place.

I have filmed some footage of the owl in the evening, the same day the footage for this submission was shot. However, the 100-400mm lens has a maximum aperture of 5.6 @ 400mm and then with a 2X teleconverter, I lose 2 more stops of light. Without the teleconverter, I'm still hard pressed at 5.6 to get enough sensitivity before the image breaks down from noise in the waning light...obviously the faster the glass, the cost is almost exponential. The 100-400mm is a costly, but effective compromise lens for me right now.

The slow motion from the 7D is quite tricky. Easy to use, but if you've read about aliasing and moire from this camera, it is most severe in the 720p60 mode. In an organic shot, its not too bad...but sometimes it is almost unusable. Certainly not as smooth as the 720p60 from the Panasonic HVX200.

I recorded the sound with a Zoom H4n separately and laid it over the footage. I live outside Washington DC, not a humongous city, but there are 3 different airports, 2 of which at least have airplane paths over my city and so every 3-5 minutes, there is the distant drone of jet engines from 5,000-10,000ft. Typically not something you're conscious of until you're recording nature audio. :-) One of the costs of amazing travel I suppose.

Thanks for your comments.

[Ryan Farnes]

Originally Posted by Mat Thompson

Hi Ryan

Firstly excuse the delay in revewing your film I have been away for the last 10 days.

I really liked your footage. I'm certainly a sucker for Owls and this had lovely views of the Barred owl. I am really surprised how it sat tight with you below. I am assuming from your VO that you weren't using a hide? I liked the loose format you used with it feeling a very personal fly on the wall experience. I also liked your relaxed VO although I did find it a little monotone in places. I'm quite impressed with the quality of the footage considering the use of a 2x conv on your 100-400. In my experience these usually throttles zoom lenses. I also would have liked a little more story in the piece, just something stronger on which to hang what you have.

All in all a nice look at this species. Many thanks
Mat

I was quite pleased and a little surprised with the Owl as well. While I often first spot them taking flight when I approach, I was able to get relatively close to this one without it flying off again.

Yes. I am monotone. I recorded the narration several times before I just decided to put one of the last takes in because they all sounded the same just about. Haha. I'm definitely not a "host" personality but need to work on it a little at least if I'm going to make more of these. :-)

I wonder if the teleconverter works out on the Canon DSLR setup because of how it is a larger sensor and so the image degredation isn't as accentuated by a small 1/4"-1/2" sensor size?

Thanks for the comments.