Cambridge Half Marathon

I agreed to take images of some runners in the Cambridge Half Marathon representing the Sports Connections Foundation Charity so we found a good spot to watch the runners with the aim of identifying and photographing their 11 runners out of the 15000 runners. All we know was they were wearing red T-shirts with their charity logo. Well we managed to snap 7 of their runners but also had an enjoyable time watching the race unfold. Here are the first runners through our 'checkpoint' at 7+ miles. Jonathan Escalante-Phillips was the final winner in 1 hour and 6 mins and many of the runners whose numbers can be read in this top group finished within 1 hour 12 mins.

Focus Stacking Experiments

Surprisingly few fungi in Hayley Wood compared with others visited but we found enough to take a variety of focus-bracketed images. The fly is a stack from just 5 images (F16) before it took off!. The fungi used larger stacks with apertures of F2-F8 (15 hand-held images using Fuji X100V plus Raynox 150). 

Following a very comprehensive talk by Duncan on various software for focus stacking, I returned to the images of the Shining Ink Cap and processed one stack with Zerene Stacker using PMax (my usual method) and DMap techniques and also Photoshop. Certainly for this image, DMap gave the sharpest image with least aberration, followed by Photoshop while the PMax technique produced a strong halo.

More Fungi - Sheringham woods

Apologies for more toadstools but it is that time of year!! Here some taken in very mixed woodland (Beech, Conifer, Silver birch, Oak etc) near Sheringham. I was using an LED light that can be set to daylight temperature and gives a very natural look to the image - all with the Fuji compact camera (F16 in most cases). Next step best setting for focus stacking to give some detail in the surroundings but isolate the toadstool a bit more.

 

Fungi Survey at Paxton Pits

The last wildlife monthly survey of the year at Paxton concentrates on fungi and we were fortunate to have a fine day and plenty of species last Saturday. The first image of a troop of Mycena (?) toadstools sums up the magic of the morning (second image with flash to light the stems). Puff balls, Shaggy Pholiota, Dead Man's Fingers, Beefsteak bracket, three types of Inkcaps and another Mycena species complete the images displayed here though we found many many more species and are hoping to identify a few more.

Holkham Birds

Sighting of a Great White Egret led some of the party to explore a side creek of the lake at Holkham where we discovered a whole community of water birds hunting for food in the reeds or just resting in the sun. A bit distant for my lens but the photos give an idea of the diversity there.

 

Holkham Park Deer

A very enjoyable day yesterday at Holkham - thanks Nick for arranging the RPS Nature Group outing and laying on very good weather and very cooperative deer. The males were busy setting up their groups of hinds and bellowing at each other. They are used to humans so take very little notice of photographers - one buck failed to get John's attention. I wanted to get some images that give the feel of the  motion of the herds - need further work on this!