Hiking and bird watching at Sallandse Heuvelrug - Fujifilm X-T3 and 100-400mm
Full screen gallery below
A weekend escape just the two of us, going on a hike and bird watching from a special photo hide, a hut so to say, in the east of The Netherlands. The bird watching spot is situated in the area of the Sallandse heuvelrug, therefor we also decided to do a day hike there and as it’s quite a drive we decided to stay the weekend, nice!
We had two separate days planned, one for a day hike and one in the photo hide to spot birds and shoot photos obviously. We arrived Friday afternoon and after settling in and getting our stuff sorted, we went out for dinner.
The hike
The next day started with a short trip to Enschede to get some supplies and food. Right after getting our supplies, we went to the main visitors center at Nationaal Park Sallandse Heuvelrug. There are many routes to follow here, ranging form kids and family friendly routes and hikes up to 20km. We chose the 13km route that had bit of everything!
We started off great with part of the route going through the forest and ending up at the forest edge, where the route continued and took us to the open fields filled with heather. This part of the route would have been very nice, but the grey weather and the already blossomed heather made it a bit dull. However still a very nice hike to do, but not so photogenic as I thought. Ow well, can’t have it all right?
Around the half waypoint we did encounter small birds and a really nice patch of birch trees. Especially the birch trees where standing proud within the heather surrounding fields. That was a photo worth taking! As we continued our route and just after this midpoint we saw that the green route was intersecting with our purple route. Seeing that the green route would directly lead us into the forest, we chose to follow the green route. This was or at least we thought a good decision as we saw some European robins. I managed to get one, but it was almost in the darkest park in the forest.
Continuing our hike we met the forest ranger doing his chores and exchanged some words as we continued our way. Not long after our meeting with the ranger we walked at the edge of a meadow, an opening within the forest, where we saw a really young deer. Still with scruffy fur and still walking uneasy on its long thin legs, it was a really nice sight and we just sat there and observing the young animal eating from the vegetation, it wasn’t bothered with us at all.
Really a nice bonus to see this young deer, although it was quite far away for some really good photos, still managed to capture some! After that encounter our luck ran out I guess, we continued our hike, but nothing really special that presented itself. We ended up with the purple route again, so that was bit of a surprise. All in all a good hike after a periode of really doing not that much, so getting almost 15km in total was well worth the beer and burgers for dinner later that night.
The photo hide
The next day was an early start to get to the photo hide. Situated near a forest area and in between farmland and water, made it a perfect spot for all sorts of birds (and more as we experienced later on, see photos below).
The hide itself is enclosed in an area in a small group of trees, where there was room enough to get the background out of focus and also to give the birds room to fly and explore to get close to the water basin in front of the hide and the hide itself. This meant that there is a nice setting of different compositions ranging from water with rocks and tree logs with plants and mosses.
The cool part of this setup is that the trees and the open area provide light and sun rays to pass through for a spotlight or halo effect in the photos. This is something I really like! The only downside is that when there is no real good light this doesn’t work that well as most parts become quite dark in the photo.
Speaking of dark photos, this was exactly the situation I encountered. There was little light to begin with and with the sun barely showing itself, it was making do with what we got not what we needed. In the end you need to work with what you have, that’s what makes you more adaptable and creative the next time.
To summarise there were some shots I’m happy with, others not so much. Due to the light or lack thereof, I needed to get the ISOs up. The Fujifilm X-T3 handles high ISOs quite well, but ISO6400 is still high at best. When editing the photos I remembered that I purchased Topaz Denoise earlier this year to get better detail and sharpness in conjunction with Adobe Lightroom.
Initially I did some test, also with CaptureOne, but after getting into the settings and trying out Topaz Denoise in-depth I was quite amazed about the power of this program and the results it yielded. The next blog will go deeper into some of the settings and the results with Topaz Denoise.
For now the photos, keep an eye on the next blogs for more Topaz Denoise examples! And don’t hesitate to leave a comment or an e-mail. All photos are taken with the Fujifilm X-T3 and the Fujinon 100-400mm. Click to view larger in a light box and navigate with mouse or arrow keys. Enjoy!
