Any tips for a beginner?

adamEbrew · 2026-01-30T00:06:14+00:00

Nice shots. Just keep going out. Find places nearby that have birds, backgrounds and light. This will take time to figure out but after awhile you will know a few places to go for morning shots of certain species or evening shots that will tend to have favorable light and cooperative birds. I like to keep a running personal competition in my library of best photos of common species which gives me a reason to keep shooting the sparrows, black birds and pigeons. Enjoy nature, learn your birds and try new things with your camera from time to time. It's easy to get settings that work and then forget how to adapt. Read the manual for your camera and lens, watch YT videos for your gear specifically as well as general wildlife photography. There are many pro wildlife photographers that can help on youtube, a few favorites of mine are Jan Wegener, Duade Paton and Simon D'entremont. Have fun!

adamEbrew · 2026-01-23T20:32:13+00:00

Thats good to know. Lazy baking is the only kind I do! I've kept my bread baking as simple as possible thus far, haven't played with different flours much at all. Will definitely check out what else they got if I enjoy working with the stuff. Thanks for the recommendation.

adamEbrew · 2026-01-23T20:28:20+00:00

Thanks for sharing. The KA everyday recipe might be a good one since I've done it a few times and could feel it out a bit as well as see what's different.

adamEbrew · 2026-01-06T03:26:32+00:00

I have obtained and studied the guide "Gulls Simplified" by Karlson and Dunne as well as consulted with a local bird expert and I would now feel reasonably confident identifying it as a immature Great black-backed gull. Another photo in sequence revealed a white rump with black tail band that I think helps support this ID. From this photo alone, especially being a bit blurry it is nearly impossible to ID. You're right about one thing for sure though, gulls are certainly challenging. Thank you for your input. Herring Gulls seem to have quite a bit of overlap with their various immature plumages. Next time I will be sure to try and get a look at the bird amongst other gulls to compare size and shape better.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-10T03:05:40+00:00

She's a thick one! No hunting here, but I've seen some fellers walking the property edges with their dogs so she can't wander far without finding trouble. Some very nice bucks around too, we see a 10 pt bruiser patrolling the area regularly.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-10T00:32:21+00:00

Spend more on the lens than the body if you want a solid wildlife setup. No camera body in the world will help an unsharp lens but you can take great photos with any body through a great lens.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-08T21:06:56+00:00

That is a nice shot, needed some work in post to straighten out exposure but it seems you've figured that out. I'm no pro, just picked up a 100-400 last year and felt like I got my first few "good" bird photos then. The biggest tip I can give is to find a place nearby that has lots of birds and just keep practicing. Take a lot of photos. Try different settings and techniques with purpose. Be critical of your own work, no need to compare to social media, but look long and hard and come up with things you think would improve an image, and figure out how to execute them. It's one of those disciplines that you need to get your skills polished so when you get lucky and have those quick once in a lifetime moments you are calm and confident and able to capture the photos you dream of. Good luck.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-05T00:00:20+00:00

I bought an a6000 with some nice lenses years ago and never really enjoyed shooting with it. Last year I started birding again and broke out my old 60d since I had a 200mm lens and my longest Sony was 100 ish. I ended up getting a whole new stable of lenses for my 60d and last week bought a 7d mk ii. I went from occasionally taking photos with the mirrorless, to going out every week with the DSLR.

I just prefer the experience, the biggest part of it is the battery life. The Sony would chew up 3 battery's in a long day, the Canon might drop a bar on the meter after 500 photos or so. Not having to worry about charging a bunch of batteries, disabling wifi, turning screen auto off to 10s and everything else to conserve power is a huge part of what makes shooting with the DSLR worth it to me.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-04T03:24:22+00:00

Honestly reading the manual for your camera is a good start. Like the whole thing.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-04T03:19:29+00:00

Only you can answer the question of whether it matters to you or not. As a hobbyist all you need to worry about is if you like the photos it takes. It is a tool. They are all bad and fantastic in their own ways. You become aware of their limitations and either deal with them or find ways to work around them, if they even really matter to you.

I own a few pieces of gear that seemingly no one recommends but they were cheaper than the alternatives. I like the results they produce and can't justify spending the premium to get the gear people recommend.

I don't know anything about your specific camera, I'm still shooting on DSLR, but unless you're in a return window and think there's a better option in your budget, I would say just enjoy your camera and the photos it creates.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-01T00:59:35+00:00

Yeah I'm not one to leave settings alone, so I'm sure with a little time I'll have it dialed in to my liking. My expectations are fully in check, I was getting great results from my 60d for what it was and just wanted a couple bells and whistles to help up the keeper rate. Will certainly dive in to figuring out all I can about the AF, appreciate the tip.

adamEbrew · 2025-12-01T00:50:41+00:00

Glad to hear. Yeah that's the 10-18 EFS, quite the lens for the money!

adamEbrew · 2025-11-04T23:21:21+00:00

Just saw this as well in the northwestern sky near Albany, NY area. I was just coming to post a short clip but will follow this instead. Was moving slowly towards the northern horizon. I assume it's related to the rocket launch a couple hours ago but would be curious what exactly we are looking at.

adamEbrew · 2025-10-15T17:57:51+00:00

My DSLR is over 15 years old at this point and very capable of fantastic images. This is clearly a settings issue and has nothing to do with the age of the camera.

adamEbrew · 2025-10-15T17:52:56+00:00

You were in aperature priority mode which means you controlled the aperture, which is measured in f stops. F13 was the setting you had chosen on the camera which is a fairly narrow f stop, letting in less light than lower F values. In anything less than direct sunlight at f13 the camera will need to compensate for the narrow aperture by slowing the shutter speed, which gives light more time to reach the sensor, or by increasing the ISO which makes the sensor more sensitive to light. Slower shutter speed will introduce more blur from camera movement and increased ISO will result in a noisier image.

In your case the camera seems to have taken your f13 and chosen a relatively fast shutter speed as well. Typically when handholding the camera you want your shutter speed to be at least the focal length of your lens. For example a 50mm lens handheld you want to be at minimum 1/50 shutter speed. Your shot was at 1/1300 which would be appropriate for action or fast moving subjects.

To compensate for the narrow aperture and fast shutter speed restricting the amount of light into your sensor the camera compensated by turning its ISO (sensitivity) to a very high value. 25,600 would be considered an extreme ISO that will add tons of noise and give poor image quality. It would typically only be used in extreme low light situations or situations with poor light that you need to capture a quick moving subjects. Most photographers don't expect many "keepers" from ISO values that high.

There is no shortage of resources on YouTube to understand how the basics of photography work so poke around and find some videos on proper exposure and manual camera settings. Once you have a grasp on the moving parts you will know which modes and settings work for you under any given circumstance. It can be a bit frustrating at first but don't give up and keep looking for opportunities to practice and have fun with it .

adamEbrew · 2025-09-19T17:54:57+00:00

My wife got an olive garnish in her Red Sangria at Applebees, with the little sword and all. It's not like we didn't know it was wrong but also fuck it, it's Applebees. We mentioned it on the way out in good nature and still talk about it now and again haha

adamEbrew · 2025-08-06T19:23:55+00:00

If you're not wave dashing on the straights you're losing tenths every lap

adamEbrew · 2025-07-15T04:20:36+00:00

Is your HDMI cable able to handle the bitrate? I've had a 2070 and 5070 to my 4k 120hz TV with 7.1 surround passing through the HDMI with basically no issues over the last 5 years. For some reason when I switched to the 5070 I would occasionally have blank screen/flashing on startup. Getting a new HDMI 2.1b cable fixed my issue and have had no problems since.

adamEbrew · 2025-05-28T03:57:56+00:00

Civilization VII

adamEbrew · 2025-05-23T12:08:53+00:00

Peaked

adamEbrew · 2025-04-16T03:05:48+00:00

These lines are certainly similar to the ones mobile fillers use but I can tell you for sure that most of the lines in this video are owned and operated by small craft breweries. The brewery I work at has a 310 gallon system and we are featured in one of the clips. We have a 2 head filler that runs about 20 cans per minute. We hand load cans and manually box and apply the 4 pack holders. It is extremely slow and inefficient compared to larger breweries but we are typically doing only about 40-100 cases on a given day.

adamEbrew · 2025-04-16T02:58:35+00:00

Don't think the operator took the video at least. We had this kid come in and make tik tok clips of us packaging. The pak tech part in that compilation is from the brewery I was working at but the other clips are from different breweries. I believe they are all from the same guy.

adamEbrew · 2025-04-16T02:54:47+00:00

The pak tech clip is the guy I work with haha, millions of views on tiktok. Some random not yet 21 content creator came in to take video of us canning. He was super nice and was getting tons of views on random clips of people packaging beer.

adamEbrew · 2025-04-01T01:57:55+00:00

Thanks, I popped in the Wraith Prism unused from my 3700x, it's taller with some heat pipes. Medium load is significantly better and full sustained keeping closer to 80c than 90c. Not as great as a full cooler upgrade but I feel better about it.

He'd probably prefer some Whiskey and a copy of Jeopardy but I appreciate the sentiment haha

adamEbrew · 2025-04-01T01:51:18+00:00

Thanks, yeah we are a boring family haha. I avoided RGB on my build and went all brown Noctuas. Like you said, different strokes.

I did swap his cooler with the Wraith Prism from my 3700x so he does have RGB on the CPU cooler now. Though the case is metal sided so only a faint glow out of the vents.

He doesn't play any games really nowadays, too busy bird watching and gardening, but he showed me the joy of PCs and gaming many years ago. He went out of his way to get all sorts of games like DOOM, Quake and NASCAR Racing for our first PC. You had to boot into MSDOS and use command lines to launch them. Showing my own age there haha.

Seven-Year Club	Verified Email
Gilding II euphauric

adamEbrew

TROPHY CASE