This article features some older images of raptors captured at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre about ten years ago. I’ve been culling old images from my main office system for a quite a while now. As this process continues, I periodically come across files that I had previously not fully reviewed.
So, while these images are old, they still may be of interest to readers as many of them illustrate ospreys in-flight. I had processed a few of these photographs in the past. This article also contains some newly processed in-flight images, as well as a selection of newly processed raptor portrait-style images.
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The portrait-style images were all captured handheld through wire mesh enclosures at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre back in 2015.
All of the birds housed at the facility are permanent residents. They were either born in captivity, or had injuries that prevented their full rehabilitation and return to the wild.
The Mountsberg Raptor Centre runs various educational programs, and it is quite common to see school groups at the facility.
I had a Halton Conservation membership for a number of years but let that lapse a while ago. Some physical changes to the raptor display area made photography more challenging.
After a few years, the return trip of 130 kilometres and the cost of an annual pass, no longer made sense for me. The cost of a Halton Conservation Area annual pass is currently $165 CDN, which includes HST.
There was a photographer/bird watching blind at the facility, as well as a nesting platform that the ospreys used in the spring. All of the osprey in-flight images were captured as ospreys flew towards the nesting platform. As you can tell from the images, it was a dull, overcast day.
You’ll note that all of the images in this article were captured with a Nikon 1 V2 with the 1 Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 telephoto zoom lens.
My first Nikon 1 body was the V2. Although it had a small 1″ CX sized sensor it was quite a capable, little camera. It’s 14.2 MP sensor provided 10.8 EV of dynamic range and 20.2 bits of colour depth. By full frame standards that’s not great… but decent enough for many genres of photography.
The Nikon 1 V2 was introduced back in the fall of 2012 and was capable of shooting at 15 frames-per-second in full auto-focus, which was incredible at the time. The auto-focus performance was quick and accurate.
Paired with the 1 Nikkor 70-300 mm f/4.5-5.6 (efov 189-810 mm) it was a wonderfully small, lightweight kit for bird photography. The built-in grip was comfortable, and the V2 was DSLR-like in terms of its external body controls.
I suppose that’s why I still get quite a few emails from folks looking to buy used Nikon 1 gear, and asking questions about the system.
My image culling process still has a long way to go. 🙁 I recently did a full, deep scan of all the hard-drives connected to my main office system. That deep scan took over 2 days to complete.
Over the past number of years I’ve been far more disciplined purging my files shortly after returning from a shoot. Unfortunately I wasn’t as disciplined in the past… and paying the price for that now.
Technical Note
Photographs were captured handheld using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. All images were created from RAW files using my standard process in post. This is the 1,494 article published on this website since its original inception in 2015.
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