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Kevin Fedde

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Lake Metigoshe Summer Scouting | North Dakota

8/31/2016

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So I photographed a wedding at Lake Metigoshe, North Dakota this past Saturday. However, I went up there the day before to do some location scouting and just familiarize myself with the area a bit more in the summer, since the only other time I had been there was in the winter with my brother. Check out that post here! Quite a bit different in the summer, I have to say, but really really really nice, especially since it was a bit cooler out and some of the leaves are even starting to change. I was also shooting around very near to sunset, so the light was pretty spectacular!

I'll start off with one of my favorite shots though as the header photo, a curious deer wondering what on earth I was doing on his trail! Also, this is going to be a fairly long post, but I LOVE these photos!

All these photos were taken with my Fujifilm X-Pro2 and 50-140 f/2.8, 23 f/1.4, or 16-55 f/2.8. 
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500

9/25/2015

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So I was the first person to receive a Nikon 200-500 f/5.6E lens here in North Dakota, which is pretty awesome considering how photogenic our wildlife is here! 
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @500mm, f/6.3, 1/4000, ISO 800
This was also my first outing with my new D4s as well! It has been super impressive so far, better even than my D4, as unbelievable as that sounds. 

It was really interesting using such a long lens, even longer than my 200-400 f/4 (which I will have a couple comparisons here).
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 w/1.4x teleconverter @ 700mm, f/8, 1/4000, ISO 2000
I was very impressed with the performance of the lens, even wide open at f/5.6, and I was just as impressed with the wide open performance at f/8 when it is paired with a 1.4x teleconverter! Here are a couple quick sample photos comparing between the 200-500 and 200-400,  both on my D4. Ubiquitous Prairie Dog shots! 
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Nikon D4, 200-500@500, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO 800
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near-100% crop of wide-open 200-500
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Nikon D4, 200-400 f/4@5.6, 1/2000, ISO 800
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near-100% crop from 200-400
Very impressive. If I only did wildlife I would seriously consider getting rid of my 200-400, but we will see how the 200-500 does during hockey season before I make that decision. 

I am very impressed by its performance wide-open, as shown above, as well as the color rendition and contrast. Even though it is only f/5.6 you can see that the bokeh is still very nice, more than good enough to help remove any distracting elements in the background. 

Next up are some bison shots taken with the 200-500 with my Nikon 1.4x teleconverter. Personally I have the latest version, the version 3, but I'm sure that the version 2 will perform very well as well, as long as you have a camera capable of focusing at f/8, which my D4s did beautifully. 
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Nikon D4s, 200-500w/1.4x@700mm, f/9, 1/2000, ISO 1600
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 500mm, f/5.6, 1/1600, ISO 800
And of course the horse photos! Because wild horses are awesome, and more unique than bison, for me at least. Some of my favorite photos from the whole group. 
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 290mm, f/6.3, 1/4000, ISO 800
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @500, f/5.6, 1/8000, ISO 1600
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ f/6.3, 1/2500, ISO 800
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 500, f/5.6, 1/2500, ISO 800
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 500, f/5.6, 1/3200, ISO 800
I also had a lot of fun doing landscapes with the 200-500, as well. Really interesting seeing the compression in the field of view. 
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 500, f/5.6, 1/8000, ISO 1600
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 200, f/8, 1/2500, ISO 800
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Nikon D4s, 200-500 @ 500, f/5.6, 1/1000, ISO 500
Last photo. This is more of an impression of the D4s than the 200-500, but I am super impressed with how well the camera performs at higher ISO. If you hadn't noticed most of the shots in this post were above ISO 800, because it is a relatively slow lens at f/5.6. I felt comfortable with that because the camera does amazingly there. Great colors, exceptional sharpness and clarity, even at higher ISOs. This next shot was after sunset by about 20 minutes, in the shade, at 500mm, with an f/5.6 lens, and it looks awesome. I have an 8x12 print of it and you can barely tell it is more than iso 800. Madness. 
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 Here is a link to the image on flickr, since they don't have any compression like my website does here. 
https://www.flickr.com/photos/crimson_wolf/21414554460/in/dateposted-public/

I love it. Definitely one of my favorite photos of a deer that I have taken.

Anyways, thanks for reading! I'll have another post with other photos from the park, as well as a few posts with images from my week in Colorado, already a month ago. I have been working on my timelapse project for the past month, so the blog and images got put on the back burner. I'll try to get a couple posts out this weekend and next week .

​And a bonus picture of me using the 200-500, taken by my lovely wife. And a picture of her too, taken with the 200-500!
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Thanks!

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios
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More at the Park

6/19/2015

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I always seem to come up with some pretty decent shots while at Teddy Roosevelt National Park here in North Dakota. It is pretty much the same story every time, though, so I'll mostly post photos here instead of lots of words.

I did manage to get myself a 1.4x Teleconverter to use with my 200-400, though, giving me pretty close to 550mm equivalent, which is really super nice to be able to use on a Full Frame camera like my D4. So all of these photos were taken with either my D4+200-400+1.4x TC or my D3s with my 70-200. 

Carrying on:
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I always seem to start with a bison face photo, but this post will probably be more horse-centric, since they are more interesting anyways.

Also Prairie Dogs!
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We (literally) almost ran into this next group of wild horses. There will be a lot of photos from here, so be prepared.
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So yeah, pretty horse heavy. But guess what, theres more! But first, more bison face!
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Before we ran into another group. 
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Of course we couldn't get out of there without taking a couple landscapes. 
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Thanks for reading! I'll have a post about the 4 timelapses that I took while we were there up later too! 4K timelapse goodness!

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios
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Dakota Zoo

4/21/2015

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Since getting a new computer I have sort of neglected the left-over photos on my Desktop that were forgotten in the move from a Desktop PC to a Macbook Pro. Well I had some pretty good photos from the Zoo here in Bismarck the Dakota Zoo, that I wanted to have a home for, so here we are!
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D4 400mm f/4 1/4000 ISO 800
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D4 400mm f/4 1/1600 ISO 200
While I tried to keep the photos as "wild" as possible, that is pretty much impossible in a Zoo. Oh well. 
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D4 380mm f/4 1/1600 ISO 400
Super cute baby Mountain Sheep, I believe. 
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D4 400mm f/4 1/1600 ISO 400
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D4 310mm f/4 1/2000 ISO 400
And Monkeys!
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D4 400mm f/4 1/800 ISO 400
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D4 400mm f/4 1/800 ISO 400
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D4 400mm f/4 1/500 ISO 800
Lion Monkey.
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D4 400mm f/4 1/400 ISO 800
Tigers and Bears and Cougars... and an Otter!
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D4 400mm f/4 1/6400 ISO 1600
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D4 400mm f/4 1/1000 ISO 800
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D4 350mm f/4 1/1250 ISO 800
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D4 400mm f/4 1/2000 ISO 800
Almost done. 
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D4 350mm f/4 1/1000 ISO 800
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D4 400mm f/4 1/800 ISO 800
Birds. Words.
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D4 400mm f/4 1/1000 ISO 800
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D4 400mm f/4 1/5000 ISO 1250
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D4 400mm f/4 1/4000 ISO 1250
Thanks for reading! I'm sure I'll go back when it is green out. 

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios
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Teddy Roosevelt National Park, 6 Months later

4/12/2015

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And Teddy Roosevelt National Park is pretty much looking exactly the same as it did in my last post (and the first one ever on my blog here!) That being said, though, we (my wife and I) did see a ton more Bison than we did last time, so this is like to be a bison-heavy post. It'll also be a very photo-heavy post, so be prepared for that...
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Since so many cameras, I'll actually put some settings here. Nikon D4 400mm f/5.6 1/800 ISO 125
This is going to end up being a 5-camera post, so plenty to look at! 5 cameras: Nikon D4, Nikon D3s, Nikon D7000, Fujifilm X-T1 Graphite, Fujifilm X-T1 with 8 different lenses. Way too much going on, but they do their jobs very very well. 
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One of my Favorite photos from the whole day. X-T1G 23mm f/7.1 1/3000 ISO 400
So many bison herds chilling everywhere. Lots to look at and take photos of. 
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X-T1G 23mm f/8 1/1400 ISO 400
Unfortunately they close the long road loop in the park during the winter, so we weren't really able to get out here to get any pictures in the snow, but it still looks very nice in the spring and fall, and even better in the summer. We bought a year-long pass, which I am sure we will use when we come back this summer. It'll be nice to see the park green again, as it has been a couple years since we were there in the summer. 
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X-T1 106mm f/4 1/640 ISO 200
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X-T1 140mm f/5 1/1250 ISO 200
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X-T1 140mm f/4 1/1000 ISO 200
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X-T1 140mm f/4 1/1600 ISO 200
There was a good amount of younger bison, probably around a year old or so. So not newborn tiny, but still fairly small compared to the adult ones around. While the light wasn't the best (especially compared to the last time we were here) it was still all right. Fairly soft light which leads to a nice lack of hard shadows. 
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D4 400mm f/5.6 1/1000 ISO 320
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D4 400mm f/5.6 1/1600 ISO 320
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D4 400mm f/8 1/160 ISO 320
This guy has magnificent facial hair. Look at that finely groomed beard! 

Of course we couldn't get away without taking some regular landscape photos, as well. 
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D3s 14mm f/4 1/5000 ISO 250
There is just something awesome about the Nikon D3s sensor. I don't know what it is, but it just gives great colors and a super nice overall look to the photos, something that my D4 doesn't really do. My Fuji cameras are definitely closer in quality to the D3s in that regard. 
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D3s 20mm f/4 1/6400 ISO 640
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X-T1G 23mm f/5.6 1/1800 ISO 400
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D3s 14mm f/4 1/2000 ISO 200
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X-T1 71.5mm f/5.6 1/750 ISO 200
There is definitely a distinct difference in the colors between my Fuji cameras and the Nikon ones. The Nikon cameras tend to give a more clinical image, whereas the Fuji ones give a more artistic one, if that makes sense. 

Anyways, as usual it was taking forever to drive around the loop in the park, since we were stopping to get out and take photos so much. But that was the whole point! Also carrying WAY too much stuff. 
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We also were on the lookout for some of the wild horses that live in the park as well. While we didn't see as many as we did Bison, we still saw a few. They are way prettier looking than the Bison, as well. There was one brown one near the highest point in the park that was super photogenic with his mane and tail blowing in the wind. 
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D4 340mm f/5 1/1600 ISO 640
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D4 400mm f/5 1/5000 ISO 800
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D7000 180mm f/4 1/2000 ISO 400
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D4 200mm f/4 1/2500 ISO 640
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X-T1 140mm f/2.8 1/1100 ISO 200
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And my favorite. D4 350mm f/4 1/2000 ISO 640
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X-T1 14mm f/8 1/750 ISO 400
After moving on a ways we found more wild horses! We were getting pretty close to sunset, so this was going to be our last stop. This next one is another one of my favorites. 
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X-T1 140mm f/2.8 1/900 ISO 200
This spot is generally the one that we tend to end up at around sunset, with a nice bend in the river that makes for very nice landscape photos. 

And of course you have to have a massive panorama! Click through the image to get to the full-sized image over on flickr.
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9 X-T1 frames stitched together.
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X-T1 14mm f/5.6 1/2400 ISO 400
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Going artsy with reflections. X-T1 14mm f/9 1/2700 ISO 200
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D3s 24mm f/8 1/3200 ISO 400
And I did manage to get a good shot of a deer. 
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D4 400mm f/4 1/1000 ISO 1600
That about wraps it up. I'll leave you with one more photo, though. 
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D4 340mm f/5.6 1/640 ISO 200
Bison are weird. 

Thanks for reading, and thanks for making it all the way to the bottom, this post is a bit ridiculously long.

Kevin Fedde
Fedde Studios
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    Favorite Blog Posts: 
    • Rikki + James Adventure Wedding
    • Iowa Green
    • Great Sand Dunes
    • RMNP Snowshoeing
    • RMNP Snow
    • RMNP w/ Fuji
    • ​Long Exposure Tutorial
    • Camping at Vedauwoo
    • Cathedral
    • ND Fall
    • Detroit Zoo w/Fuji X-T1s
    • Rainy Badlands
    • Lake Metigoshe
    • Omaha Architecture​
    • Thanksgiving Landscapes​


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