TECHNICAL & PHOTOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ABOUT THIS WEBSITE
(Updated 11/22/09)

The Web sites for Hilton Pond Center for Piedmont Natural History and Operation RubyThroat: The Hummingbird Project were designed and are maintained by executive director Bill Hilton Jr. The sites are housed on Comporium servers in Rock Hill, South Carolina USA as an in-kind gift to the Center. Some hardware and software products mentioned below were donated to the Center in support of our work.

Both Web sites were constructed exclusively with Adobe PageMill (now GoLive CS 7.0.2) on Apple Macintosh computers and currently on an iMac (left) with 2.66 GHz Intel Core Duo processor, originally using Mac OS 9 and now OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)--the only way to fly.

Prior to the fall of 2002, on-line photos were taken with an Apple QuickTake 150 and then a Sony Mavica FD83 digital camera at "standard" resolution; for the latter, the macro setting was used for close-ups with an initial image size of 1216 x 912 pixels. Since then we have used a Canon D60 (below right) or, more often, a Canon 20D; these cameras allow attachment of various interchangeable Canon SLR lenses. In June 2008 we received donation of a Canon 40D with 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 internal stabilization zoom lens; this has become our set-up of choice for general use.

Most close-ups are taken with 50mm f/2.5 compact macro (sometimes with 1:1 adapter) or the 60mm f2.8 macro. (Hand-held photos of birds bigger than hummingbirds are taken with the 50mm macro; our arms are too short to get the whole bird in the frame when we use the 60mm!) Distant shots employ the 100-400IS f/4.5-5.6L telephoto zoom (occasionally with 1.4X or 2X extender). The D60--a 6.3 megapixel camera--is set at "large/fine" resolution (3072 x 2048 pixels) with ISO speeds varying from 100 to 1,000, depending on available light. The 20D is an 8.2 megapixel unit with ISO ratings from 100 to 3200, while the 40D goes to 10.1 megapixels; with the latter two cameras, images can be captured in JPEG and RAW format.

For close-ups we sometimes use a Canon 180mm f/3.5L macro or, more often, the lighter-weight Canon 100mm f/2.8 macro--particularly for butterfly and other insect photos--and a Canon 16-35mm f/2.8L wide angle zoom for certain landscape shots. The Canon 40D has a "live view" function that is especially useful for macrophotography.

Most photos are taken when we serendipitously come across an interesting organism or object as we walk the trails around Hilton Pond. We much prefer the effects of available natural light, although we sometimes use built-in flash or a Canon MT24EX Macro Twin Lite electronic flash (left) in low-light situations or to offset the effects of wind by allowing faster shutter speeds. Rotating polarizing lenses are used for some outdoor shots to reduce glare and enhance color. Occasionally we bring an organism or object back to the lab for tabletop macrophotography, in which case the light source is often an Ott-Lite daylight-balanced fluorescent lamp. For this set-up we sometimes employ a Canon MP-E 65mm 1x-5x macro zoom lens for ultra close-ups.

Almost all photos in the field are taken with camera and lens mounted on a Really Right Stuff B55 Pro ball head or Arca-Swiss B1 Monoball head on a Gitzo Mountaineer 2227 carbon fiber tripod with tilt-column (now in the Explorer series, below right), providing maximum stability and enabling unusual shooting angles. (NOTE: After camera and lens, we consider the tripod to be our most essential and important piece of equipment.)

A Really Right Stuff L-plate (below left) securely mounts the camera to the ballhead and allows quick change from horizontal to vertical perspective. On close-ups, a gear-driven Novoflex Focusing Rail enables for a shift in camera position in two axes (right/left and forward/back) without moving the tripod. For desktop work--and some ground-level work in the field--we mount the focusing rail, ballhead, and camera on a Kirk Enterprises Low Pod; sometimes we remove the standard column from the Gitzo tripod and replace it with a short 4" column to get down to ground level. In the field we may use one or two Wimberley Plamps (below right) to move objects into--or out of--view and to stabilize plants during windy conditions.

Away from Hilton Pond Center we download photos from a Lexar Professional 4GB 133x CompactFlash card to a 160GB Mercury On-The-Go Firewire/USB combo portable hard drive via a Lexar Firewire card reader attached to a Mac PowerBook G4. We back up photo files onto various hard drives and also to DVDs and maintain duplicates using the Time Machine component of Mac OS X 10.5x.

A few of our Web site images are from 35mm slides taken 1975 through 1999 with +1, +2, +3, and/or +10 close-up lenses attached to a 50mm lens on a Nikkormat EL or, much less commonly, a Canon Elan II. Slides (and a few prints) were scanned with an Agfa DuoScan T1200 flatbed/slide scanner--more recently with a Nikon Super Coolscan 5000--and imported into Adobe Photoshop CS4.

All Web images are cropped and reduced to 72 dpi resolution in Photoshop and most are compressed with freePhotoConverter 3. Some images are color-adjusted with Intellihance Pro 4.2, artistically bordered with PhotoFrame, or modified in PhotoTools--all products of Extensis Corporation--or fine-tuned for sharpness and "grain" with FixerLab's FocusFixer and NoiseFixer. Art Age Software's epsConverter is used to convert some eps images to Photoshop-readable format; Lemke Software's GraphicConverter is also used to convert some images. The Hilton Pond Center logo was designed using Strider Software's TypeStyler.

All Web site photos, maps, charts & text © Hilton Pond Center

Green Frog

Links to most software developers or manufacturers who have donated currently used applications or equipment to Hilton Pond Center can be found on the Supporters page.

Contents of the Hilton Pond Center website--including text, photos, maps, charts and other graphics--may NOT be duplicated, modified, or used in ANY way except with the express written permission of Hilton Pond Center. In general, to maintain control over our images we do not allow them to be posted on other Web sites, but we can make them available for fee-based one-time use in print publications. All rights reserved worldwide.

Back to Miscellany