Nikon P900 photos

SmugMug Appreciation Sunday — No. 007

The background for these posts can be found in THIS post.

In brief, these posts serve to introduce new readers — and reintroduce regular readers — to photos from the early days of this blog and, occasionally, to photos from days before this blog came into existence.

Today, I offer a gallery with 90 photos originally shared in THIS post.

I almost called it a “recent post” but it’s from five years ago. Anymore, I can hardly process the passage of time because — as an example of that post — it seems both “recent” and “ancient”; I can’t believe it’s been that long and it also seems like it was longer. Perhaps I’m just losing it; I hear it happens as one gets on in years.

Anyway, on to the photos, which, per the SmugMug Gallery name, are all taken with the P900 . . .

A cruise ship in Kona harbor on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi

For new readers, that’s from the time we were living in Hawaiʻi.

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The Last Day – Alaska Cruise 2017 — Part 1

This post documents our September 16, 2017, arrival and sojourn in Vancouver, British Columbia. It’s also the continuation of my documentation of our 2017 Alaska Cruise which began in November 2017. The documentation began in November of 2017; the cruise itself was in September 2017. With any luck, I’ll wrap this up this year.

Anyway, current and previous posts relating to this cruise are HERE(link).

There’s a gallery at the end of this post and a SmugMug gallery HERE(link) for photos from this day. Photos in SmugMug can be viewed full-size. The SmugMug Folder Containing all of the Alaska 2017 galleries is HERE(link).

You can click on the photos in the body of this post to see a larger-but-less-than-full-size-version. I’m breaking up photos into multiple posts in an effort to keep them manageable. Meaning, composing long posts in the Block Editor (ptui!) is still an exercise in frustration.

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December 2021 Moon

On December 11, 2021, I shot this image of the moon with the Nikon P900. I cropped the sides a bit, and output the image with a maximum dimension of 1200 pixels (for the purpose of what I’m posting, there’s no advantage in viewing the original size).

This has no processing other than mentioned above.

Yes, the sky was blue because I shot this a little after 4:00 pm, when it was still light. Let me show you two versions, one post-processed with Topaz DeNoise AI, the other with Topaz Sharpen AI, and then both processed using Lightroom to turn them into Monochrome images.

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December 2021 Birds — Part Two

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

Welcome to the second bird feeders bird post.

The weather having been unusually warm (we had a few days in the 70s and a number of days in the middle and upper 60s … in December) I have lots of photos to share . . . and if it’s anything like my cruise photos effort, I’ll probably finish sharing them sometime in late 2024.

Overall, I’ve been pleased with the bird attendance at the feeders, this being winter and all, and I look forward to more of a showing once Spring rolls around, which, at this rate, will probably be in the middle of January.

Sneak peek of a Tufted Titmouse using my Nikon P900

I’ll have more off those guys in future posts. They are cagey and seldom sit still long enough for a shot when at the feeders, hence why the P900’s long zoom came in handy for that opportunity.

I don’t remember if I mentioned it, but — weather permitting — I sit outside with a cup of coffee and the two cameras (Nikon P900 and Nikon D7500 with 70-200mm f/2.8 lens) for a few hours during the time the birds are most active. Even if there’s little avian activity, I still shoot photos of shrubs, rocks, leaves, etc.

Most of those photos get blown away (yes, I occasionally get rid of photos), but what I’m doing as I wait for birds, is trying different settings, learning what the cameras can and cannot do, and finding the best settings for the conditions.

American Robin photographed using my Nikon P900

And, what are the conditions?

Well, this set of photos are samples from two days — December 14 and 16 — and both days were overcast and featured an occasional raindrop or two (a few raindrops are visible on that photo, and you can see water drops on the bird’s tail).

In that particular photo, the bird was about twenty feet away. This next bird was about 160 feet away.

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December 2021 Birds — Part One

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

A little over a week ago, I broke down and bought a few bird feeders.

In Michigan, I used to have multiple feeders. In Colorado, I sought to duplicate my bird-feeding habits but ran into a problem with field mice getting into the house and garage (field mice droppings contain some nasty stuff), not to mention one had to bring feeders in at night lest one attracted bears.

I’m pretty sure I won’t have bear problems in my backyard, and I’m hoping field mice stay in the fields. Wait, I take that back. There was a confirmed bear sighting about 30 miles north of us (LINK).

Fortuitous capture of a White-throated Sparrow using my Nikon P900

Anyway, that White-throated Sparrow was one of the first birds to arrive at the feeders.

Well, actually, on the ground. I spread some no-waste feed on the ground to attract the ground feeders. The thinking was that other birds would then investigate.

Slate-colored Dark-eyed Junco photographed using my Nikon P900

The other first arrivals were one of my favorite bird species, Dark-eyed Junco. I’ll have more to say about them below.

I should note a few things about me, cameras, and birds. Because the weather has been warm enough (if a bit cloudy and wet), I sat outside for a few hours at a time just so I could observe and photograph the birds. The feeder is about 15 feet away from where I sit, but the edge of the patio — where those two birds were photographed — is about 25 feet away. My neighbor’s bushes are about 45 feet from my chair.

So, there’s me, my coffee, and both the P900 and the D7500 with either the 70-200mm or the 70-300mm lenses on it. You might thus notice a difference between various photos, with the DSLR photos perhaps (but not always) offering better quality. And, that’s all I’ll probably say about photography and cameras.

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A hand in the bush is worth … no, wait …

. . . zero birds in the hand is worth eight in the bush.

That’s right, mes chers lecteurs; there be eight identifiable birds in that bush. Meaning, you can definitively recognize them as birds (having recognizable bird characteristics).

Now, you have to be a bit careful because the milkweed seed pods, tend to have bird-like shapes depending on their orientation, but they don’t have legs, beaks, tails, or feather markings.

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Fresh Photos from Cache River Watershed

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

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Pelicans and more — October 25, 2021 — the photo files

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

Regular readers will recognize the above from the videos shared in THIS<<link post. I now aim to share the photos I snapped when I wasn’t shooting video.

I debated how to best present the photos and decided on chronological order. That means that photos from the D7500 and P900 are mixed in together, and I won’t bother identifying which is which, although one could probably guess based on the composition. That said, if you are curious, click the “i” button for the photos in the SmugMug Gallery and it will bring up information about the given photo.

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Stuff about cameras and photos

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow click HERE. When you click the link, it will open in a new window and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos as this will pause the slideshow.

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

~ 0 ~ 0 ~ 0 ~

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The ship and stuff – Alaska Cruise 2017

Edited to Add: the caca Block Editor’s Paragraph Block is — for some probably stupid coding reason — highlighting all the text in yellow. I’ve tried to fix it a number of times, and I’ll keep trying, but if you see the distracting and unwanted yellow highlight, please curse whoever coded the editor (I do).

Edited to Add: Apparently, per the response I received, this is a recent and known bug. They are “working on it” without a current estimate for when it will be fixed. Yes, yes . . . the caca Block Editor is great!.

Edited to Add: One of the support people sent me this email, and the fix appears to have worked (except the text color is not what I had specified when I created the post); the yellow highlight is no more. Below, I include the directions and the piece of code to add to your site (use the customize link provided) as directed by the support team:

BELOW THIS LINE IS FROM THE SUPPORT TEAM

Can you add the following CSS code to your site?

/* -- fix text highlight issue | 4377763-zen (DZ)-- */
mark {
  color: unset !important;
  background-color: unset !important;
}

Please browse to Customizer ( https://wordpress.com/customize/ ) > Additional CSS and add the code at the bottom there below any existing code.

ABOVE THIS LINE IS FROM THE SUPPORT TEAM

This post continues my documentation of our 2017 Alaska Cruise which began in November 2017 (the documentation began in November of 2017 — the cruise was in September of 2021 2017). How’s that for running a bit late?

Anyway, current and previous posts relating to this cruise are HERE(link).

There’s a SmugMug gallery HERE(link). Photos in SmugMug can be viewed full-size.

You can click on the photos in the body of this post to see a larger-but-less-than-full-size-version. I should also mention many of these photos are of lesser quality than I would like as they are primarily taken with my then Note II. Not that the Note II didn’t take excellent photos; the poor quality is a combination of low-lighting and a bit of carelessness on my part.

From the ship’s souvenir shop . . . reminders of excursions (we did not take any of those).
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Nikon P900 — is it still a thing?

This post has photographs, but the main impetus is photography equipment. Reader beware, some might find it a long slog unless interested in the topic.  

For them not interested in reading, you can see the photos in THIS<<link SmugMug Gallery.  

For a SmugMug slideshow, click HERE<<link. When you click the link, it will open in a new window, and you have two options:
1) Manually scroll through the photos by clicking the “<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos.
2) There’s a PLAY/PAUSE button at the top-left of the screen with the transition set at about 5 seconds. Note: clicking the PLAY arrow will run a full-screen slideshow. You can then still use the”<” and “>” symbols to the left or right of the photos (this will pause the slideshow).

If you want the full experience, keep reading.

I purchased the Nikon P900 in 2017 and for that year, it was my primary camera. Meaning, I took twice as many photos with the P900 than my then camera, the Nikon D7000, including using it almost exclusively on our 2017 Alaska cruise (which, I’m still documenting!), and wrote a lot about it.

For the next few years — until 2020 — I managed at least as many photos with the P900 as with the DSLR. And, I wrote about it (LINK). I especially revisited the issue of cameras at the beginning of 2019 when I was looking to make a change to my DSLR … and wrote about it …

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A comment on comments

In yesterday’s post, I linked THIS<<link post and my sister AnnMarie mentioned how nice it was to see multiple comments. I went back and counted . . . there were 16 unique individuals leaving comments.

It’s something I’ve also noted as I occasionally go back and read old posts. Namely, there used to be more people leaving comments as late as four years ago than this year. To be clear, the slowdown started sometime in the last three years and it has now reached a point where I can expect comments from a maximum of two, maybe three people leaving a comment, and it’s the same two or three people.

Most of the readers who at one time I considered “regulars” are no more. I don’t mean they’ve died (although — sadly — a few have, and they are deeply missed). I mean they no longer seem active in the blogging community. Some have blogs that have gone dormant without explanation, and some indicated their focus and interests have shifted.

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Sea Day – Alaska Cruise 2017

This post documents our September 15, 2017, sea day leg between Ketchikan, Alaska, and Vancouver, BA. It’s also the continuation of my documentation of our 2017 Alaska Cruise which began in November 2017. How’s that for running a bit late?

Anyway, current and previous posts relating to this cruise are HERE(link).

There’s a gallery at the end of each post and a SmugMug gallery HERE(link). Photos in SmugMug can be viewed full-size.

You can click on the photos in the body of this post to see a larger-but-less-than-full-size-version. I should also mention this will be a smaller (shorter) post than the previous posts because, well, the sea can be a bit boring In fact, for a goodly while, I just photographed the ship’s churning of the sea as the most interesting thing I saw.

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Ketchikan – Alaska Cruise 2017 – Part 2

This post documents our September 14, 2017, visit to Ketchikan, Alaska, a long-delayed continuation of my documentation of our 2017 Alaska Cruise. Current and previous posts relating to this cruise are HERE(link).

There’s a gallery at the end of each post and a SmugMug gallery HERE(link). Photos in SmugMug can be viewed full-size. Note that the SmugMug gallery will eventually contain all the photos from Ketchikan; those from this post (Part 2) and those from previous Ketchikan posts.

You can click on the photos in the body of this post to see a larger-but-less-than-full-size-version. If there’s a panorama, I’ll link the full-size files but be warned . . . they’re typically huge. Huger than people have ever seen before. Don’t click on those links unless you’re enjoying a biggly Interweb connection. Also, if you have biggly Interweb but you’re reading this on a phone — which is sad — VERY SAD — I wouldn’t bother with the full-size photos because they are HUGE; huger than anyone else’s huge photos. 

Ketchikan welcome sign

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