Winter Bird Photography｜FE 70-200 2.8 GM II

In this video I'm traveling eight hours in my car to the north of Sweden to visit Kalle Flodin living in his beautiful cabin in the middle of the Swedish woods with his girlfriend and their two dogs. We're building a hide in the snow to get really close to the wildlife in his garden so grab some snacks and enjoy the video. Good morning! So I arrived here yesterday and we've been focusing on flying drones and just having fun. Kalle made a reindeer stew that was just amazingly good and that's something you eat up here in the north. Tastes amazing and yesterday we had this amazing light that was just too good to not be captured. So we got around the area and flew some drones, some fpv drones and Kalle got to try out the Avara which is an fpv drone that you use the goggles for to to see what the drone sees which is so much fun. So Kalle has this great bird feeder with a lot of activity and we have seen some squirrels sitting on it today actually. So our plan is to build some kind of hide and use a camera to sit behind it and we want to get really close to the bird feeder because I'm using a new lens today and that is the Sony 70-200mm f2.8 G Master Mark II and I haven't ever tried it out so this is the first time trying it out for me. I'm going to show you where where the plan is that we're going to place the hide. So as you can see the bird feeder is right here so I wonder where we should place the hide. I think the sun is right here but as you can see it's a lot of clouds so we won't get any like backlit shots today so we just have to figure out which angle is the best. So why we want to get really close is because the 70-200mm is obviously not 600mm so you don't get as far. If we get really close and shoot at 200mm at f2.8 the background will be super super smooth that's what we're after but then you need a hide and just sit and wait. I really like how this background is dark so the subject will pop a lot but unfortunately even having a dark background like this like the bokeh is not as like dramatic so maybe I think having this as a background is better because then when we get this wide wintry feeling. Oh it's a bird there. Can you see it? Hi there. They are not too scared so maybe I think this angle could be better. Let's see. Yeah definitely. We're thinking of placing another stick for them to perch on like before they jump onto the food. So as you can probably tell the snow is very deep here so that is good then the half of the hide is already built so yeah let's get to work. So what do we need? A shovel? Two shovels. Two shovels would be nice if both of us could work. So we have this plan of maybe building some kind of stomme. Yeah frame. Frame yeah with some like wood. So they could be a bit of a more solid structure than just snow. And then use a white camo net as a like wall for it. So I guess we need shovels to find the right spot. Yeah some pieces of wood. Some pieces of wood. Some screws. Screws and a camo net I guess. Yeah. Yeah let's get to work then. We found this tree that has been laying on the ground in the snow as you see so it's very frozen and wintry. I hope they will sit on this stick right here. Then we have the perfect background with the frozen trees in the background and we're sitting in here like two morons. Food. Perfect. How cozy. Yep now we wait. This lens is sharp. Oh my gosh. We were just checking the photos. This blue tip it's incredibly sharp. That is very nice. Almost annoyingly sharp. Yeah almost. The thing is as you can see I don't use the foot here. So I get to borrow this lens from Sony. Thank you Sony. But they missed to put that put in the foot in the package so I don't have a lens foot. That's why I'm using this here and I use this one as a backup safety foot. It works. How does it feel sitting outside your cabin in a something? It's a bit weird but I still enjoy it because it is a way different experience from sitting inside like looking through the window. Yeah. Because that gets so like I've tried really try taking photos through the window but it gets like a bit of it's almost like a foggy feeling to the photos and that's not the same thing. And it's also a different experience sitting here close to the birds. One of the most important things for a photo is choosing the right background. Yeah. As we I think we've done here. Yeah. Because it really gets the whole photo is all white. Yeah. Crispy and frosty. Yeah frosty. If we would point the camera like 10 centimeters that way we would get a totally different photo with dark background which is nice in some cases. So as you know Kalle is living in the middle of the forest in this cabin and I am so jealous because this is like a dream paradise for owls. Have you have any like cool encounters here on the on the garden? Yeah several actually. Owls several of them and then we've had several mooses just running across. They're very fast though. They rarely stay they're just you know even though it's like one meter of snow they can just like run straight through it. That's insane. And they're big like really really big. Yeah. We saw one yesterday. In front of the car. Yeah that's very close by. Yeah. And then I've had lynx on the lawn. Oh my gosh. Like just walking across the lawn when we were having lunch me and my sister. That was surreal seeing like a big ass cat in the middle of the yard. That's very surreal. It was in the summertime. Yeah like June I think. Oh my gosh. That was very cozy. And it like I like was shaking when I took off my camera like couldn't find the focus. Yeah I can imagine. And then I've had a bear like literally two meters away from here. So we're sitting two meters away from the cabin this way and the bear was standing right down here. It was by the feeding station. Yeah exactly exactly by the feeding station. It was the middle of the night. Three o'clock or something. 3 a.m. And we were sleeping upstairs and then I woke up by our dog Nala just sitting up in the bed and like and she doesn't make that noise normally. So I was like okay there's something is wrong. And then I just peeked outside and like oh ----. Like I was like got really surprised because we didn't ever think we were gonna hear hear or see bear here. We've seen several tracks but like never an actual bear. So that was so very cool. It stayed for about 10 seconds. Did he notice you or? I think he heard me. Okay. Because I literally think I like I was yelled because I was so surprised. Yeah I'm happy we got something today. Yeah me too. Continue but I think it's time for lunch. Yeah some warm and cozy. Yeah so go inside make some lunch then get back for a second session. Yeah I think that's a good idea. The light is getting better and better. Yeah actually. So to make food in a place like this you need firewood because they have a wood stove. It makes the whole cabin smell like cabin and like firewood and yeah I love the smell of it. I hope this is enough. I don't know I'm one of those guys with a regular stove at home so this might be too big. I don't know. So the music you've been hearing in this video is all from Artlist who was kind enough to sponsor this video and making it possible for me to travel up here to the north of Sweden. So Artlist is an online based licensing platform for music and sound effects for your videos. You can find any type of music for any type of video with the browsing system on Artlist. So you can sort by mood, video themes, genre or instruments. And what I really like is that you can combine these search categories to make your search very specific. So let's say you're making a video for a wedding or vlog or like I do nature videos. You can easily find the right song for the mood of the video thanks to the advanced search features. And Artlist also has a huge library with sound effects that makes it very easy to find the right effects for your projects. All from whooshes to impacts to transition effects to more ambient sounds like birds, forests or overall nature ambience. And something I personally appreciate a lot is that you can see the waveform for all music and sound effects directly in the list. So it's very easy to quickly look for what you're after without having to look through all the 27,000 sound effects that Artlist has. So they offer three different pricing plans based on your needs. So finding the right plan for you is very convenient. So if you purchase Artlist via the link in the description you get two extra months for free on top of your subscription. So make sure to check out Artlist if you're after high quality sound effects and music for your videos. Now it's time for me and Kalle to go out into the hide again and we're gonna try something spicy with his a7s3. So for session number two in the hide we're thinking of placing Kalle's a7s3 very close with a sony 14 millimeter g master super wide angle lens. This camera is able to record in 4k 120 fps so you can get really slow motion footage that looks very good. The light right now is absolutely perfect. I'm going to show you. Now we just need birds. I hear them. Ah yep, they are on their way here. So Kalle also have a fox that is living under the cabin and he photographed it last summer I think. Yeah. Very nice. It's a real experience. Like I remember looking out from the windows like what is that moving on the lawn and they're like oh it's a baby fox and like it's so tiny and so cute. Very fluffy. Yeah. So I took days on like trying to get close to it and just like yeah befriended it but without you know kind of disturbing too much. But it moved in under the house. That's amazing. You can hear it when it goes, now it's been winter so I haven't seen it in a while, but you could hear it when it went in and out of the like their little crawl space because it bumped its head sometimes like it's like yep it's here now. That's such a cutie. Yeah very cute. Like I said earlier we or you should set a trail cam. Yeah I need to actually. It would be so cool. Yeah there's a lot of things that should be captured out here. That's a project in itself. Yeah. So Kalle went inside to edit a video and I thought I tried to move myself out of the hide so I can place myself where I want to and I have the sun peeking through the forest at one spot the forest is covering like everywhere else so I'm so happy because I managed to take a photo now with a bird inside of the bokeh ball or what do you call it framed with like darkness. Like I've been sitting here for the last 10 minutes and just like I saw that bokeh ball and I just oh please come on bird please sit here so I can frame you inside of that ball. I'm so happy you need to see this. So well my friends that is it for this video and this evening I'm going home tomorrow morning early so I won't have time to photograph anything basically but I want to say a huge thanks to you for watching this video and remember to check out Kalle Flodin's channel if you haven't he has his whole youtube channel around simple living life in this cabin so yes have a good one and I will see you in the next video cheers bye