Laguna Seca Ranch

[DavidEccleston]

Nice composition on all of those, JW.

[Kayaker72]

Nice entrance JW!

And Day 2? I haven't even looked. Probably because they were the same blinds on both days, I stayed on Day 1 and 3. I'll take a look at Day 2.

But, a few more from me:

537A5719 by kayaker72, on Flickr

537A7851 by kayaker72, on Flickr

537A8328 by kayaker72, on Flickr

537A9641 by kayaker72, on Flickr

Thanks for viewing...Brant

[Kayaker72]

I was shooting Canon 1d MKIV with 500mm prime lens most of the time on a tripod.

BTW...as much as I love gear, can we focus on this for a second....that was a 1D MK IV with its 16 MP APS-H sensor from 2009 and a 500 f/4 MK 1.

Another smart choice, I rolled up with my CFExpress cards for my R5 with their 1500 MB/sec speed...Joel? UHS-I SD cards. Not even UHS-II. As I heard it, he never filled his buffer while shooting on the R5. Only drawback was downloading speed at night, which isn't really even much of a drawback.

You do not need the latest and greatest to take amazing pictures. I still maintain you need good gear, but it doesn't have to be the latest and greatest.

A lesson I may never truly learn.

[Kayaker72]

Really enjoying this post, and very interesting business concept. Maybe I'm just unaware, but I've not head of anything like this before.

It really is a great business concept, at least for us consumers. Not sure how good of a business it is, but good enough that there seems to be a couple of these located in Texas, likely other locations as well. But I will do something similar again. Also, it seems like several guides take their groups to Laguna Seca. Adam Jones and Alan Murphy were mentioned, but I enjoyed the two guides we met from the Ranch itself, and Gene, our guide, was the owner.

[Joel Eade]

BTW...as much as I love gear, can we focus on this for a second....that was a 1D MK IV with its 16 MP APS-H sensor from 2009 and a 500 f/4 MK 1.

Another smart choice, I rolled up with my CFExpress cards for my R5 with their 1500 MB/sec speed...Joel? UHS-I SD cards. Not even UHS-II. As I heard it, he never filled his buffer while shooting on the R5. Only drawback was downloading speed at night, which isn't really even much of a drawback.

You do not need the latest and greatest to take amazing pictures. I still maintain you need good gear, but it doesn't have to be the latest and greatest.

A lesson I may never truly learn.

The Sandisk SD cards I used were rated at 170mb/sec.

Since I like to use the crop mode quite a lot on the R5 which provides smaller file sizes (but very adequate for my needs) I thought that these inexpensive cards would perhaps write 8-10 frames per second to the card.

I rarely hold the shutter down more than 2-3 seconds. Turns out it worked just fine. Never hit the buffer limit as Brant described but download to my external drive was a bit slow.

I already had 3 Type B CF express cards (64 gb each) as well but didn't want to buy more for this trip

We did a total of 6 shooting sessions and I used one card for each session: 3 64gb CFExpress and 3 128gb SD1. None of the cards were full. I was shooting around 1200-1300 shots per session.

I was also shooting a 5DMIV with CF cards mostly on the perched birds..... still produces great images.

I downloaded each session into separate folders on an external drive and I kept the used cards sequestered as well.

Once I get through my files I will eventually re-format the cards for future use.

Might be a different experience for someone who likes to use a "machine gun" approach.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H9DVLBB...roduct_details

[Kayaker72]

The Sandisk SD cards I used were rated at 170mb/sec.

Since I like to use the crop mode quite a lot on the R5 which provides smaller file sizes (but very adequate for my needs) I thought that these inexpensive cards would perhaps write 8-10 frames per second to the card.

I rarely hold the shutter down more than 2-3 seconds. Turns out it worked just fine. Never hit the buffer limit as Brant described but download to my external drive was a bit slow.

So, one of the reasons I thought a dedicated thread on Laguna Seca, aside from not clogging up the "Best Birds" thread, was I had several lessons that I learned. These are a couple of them I learned from Joel.

If you do not need the whole FF, shooting in crop mode does save memory card space.

The SD UHS-I cards were sufficient. I had been thinking of mothballing my UHS-I cards. But, they really are still useful with the R5. But, I do put more of the reason on the R5 buffer as SD Cards are rated on their "transfer" speed, or read speed. Write speed is much lower. Looking at this card, the write speed is actually ~90 MB/sec. So, bursts of 3 seconds at 9-12 fps is 27-36 frames. FF picture size is ~50-60 MB and crop is around 30 MB. So, the UHS-I card is only writing 1.5-3 frames per second, but the buffer is holding all those other frames. I did not focus on this at the time, but Bryan did test this and the R5 held 151 images shooting full RAW to a UHS-I card before the buffer filled. So, 30-40 image bursts...no problem, as long as you have enough time to clear the buffer between those bursts, which was the case, which is about 10-20 seconds.

So, I already own probably more memory in CFExpress cards than I will need in the future, but if I do ever need more, I likely would go UHS-I and save some money. Or, more likely, I have been shooting to one card slot only as I did not want to invest in UHS-II cards as well as CFExpress. Well, now maybe I'll invest in a large UHS-I card and shoot in duplicate again.

We did a total of 6 shooting sessions and I used one card for each session: 3 64gb CFExpress and 3 128gb SD1. None of the cards were full. I was shooting around 1200-1300 shots per session.

Might be a different experience for someone who likes to use a "machine gun" approach.

So, it was a bit of a joke on the trip, as I shot ~6,500 images day 1 and Joel was around 2,500. While I definitely take a number of images, this is easily my record for an event or trip. By far. Heck, day 1 by itself was a new record for me. I did get a bit better each day, but I did end up with ~16,000 images. I know...I know....

But, interestingly, I think we shot our bursts similarly as my longest sequences I am scrolling through are 15-30 images (I was shooting at 9 fps most of the time), and most of my sequences are less than 10 frames. But, another lesson for the next time I do something like this will be to be more selective in the opportunities that I try to photograph. Like, not every time a Caracara comes in for a landing needs to be photographed, and once I have, say, 10 of those, maybe I can stop and try to get another type of image.....

[DavidEccleston]

Not sure how good of a business it is, but good enough that there seems to be a couple of these located in Texas, likely other locations as well. But I will do something similar again.

I only know Laguna Seca as a race track. Perhaps location is key here, if this is the same area. Photographers with a lot of high-end camera and lenses come to shoot races. These guys offer another use for that gear while you're already in town.

[Jonathan Huyer]

So, it was a bit of a joke on the trip, as I shot ~6,500 images day 1 and Joel was around 2,500. While I definitely take a number of images, this is easily my record for an event or trip. By far. Heck, day 1 by itself was a new record for me. I did get a bit better each day, but I did end up with ~16,000 images. I know...I know....

That's awesome. I'm probably the consummate machine-gunner type of photographer, leaning hard on the button whenever there's some action. Maybe I just love the sound of the shutter . So on that trip I would come home with at least that many shots, I'm sure. However I do use some discretion, holding off shooting when I know for sure the shots are just going to end up in the bin (for example, when the lighting is terrible). On the plus side, the extra shots and high frame rate do yield results. And I don't mind sifting through the huge pile of shots afterwards, even though it takes a fair bit of time. Every so often I'll uncover a gem that was a complete surprise, and that makes it all worthwhile.

[Joel Eade]

I only know Laguna Seca as a race track. Perhaps location is key here, if this is the same area. Photographers with a lot of high-end camera and lenses come to shoot races. These guys offer another use for that gear while you're already in town.

The race track is in California. This photo location is in southwest Texas near Edinburg. There are probably a lot of places using the same name which translates to "dry lagoon".

[Joel Eade]

Harris Hawk .... we only got a very brief visit from this bird despite a lot of effort.