Posts

Showing posts from 2014

The 2000 club

Image
Some of the examples used in this article have not been shot in Malaysia. The object is to show that the dramatic rise in ISO values in recent years is the major contributory factor in the advance of nature photography.............. and is universal. Most of us rejoiced when the first prosumer digital camera appeared on the market. There were a number of photographers who swore they would never abandon film but their ranks thinned markedly before 3 years elapsed. The instant gratification of viewing digital images and correcting errors during shooting sessions was indeed a major innovation. We did in fact go backwards for a while with some photographic parameters. Obtaining prints from even slightly cropped images from the early digital cameras was problematic especially since slide film could be scanned with very powerful digital scanners. There are three variables to consider when making exposures: aperture (f-stop), speed and media speed ISO value). The number of frames per se

Common Flameback Woodpecker nesting behaviour

Image
  The Common Flameback or Common Goldenback ( Dinopium Javanense ) is a medium-sized, golden-backed woodpecker with long and solid black irregular lines on the head and neck . Both sexes have black eye-stripes joined to a black rear neck stripe. The male has a red crown and the female a black crown. Each sex has black-scaled underparts and a red rump with a black tail. The bill is smallish and the bird has only three toes.  The male Common Flameback Woodpecker Female Common Flameback Woodpecke r The species ranges through Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Locally the natural habitats are subtropical to dry forests, lowland moist forests or tropical mangrove forests. The male Flameback at the Singapore nest in 2007 I first came across the species in Singapore and one male liked to look at himself in the mirror of our parked car. I photographed one nest in 2006 in broken forest territory near t