POST YOUR BIRDS IN FLIGHT !!!

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #18083123
Rob, how about landing and flying ??
(sorry about the quality. Downloaded from Flickr and then back up to SmugMug down down to POTN, something is always lost)

IMAGE LINK: https://medicineman202​0.smugmug.com …/BIF/n-HRVHv7/i-PD9gkc8/A

Awesome shot!!!!

MalVeauX wrote in post #18083958
Got into an interesting Tern today, with a catch that it fed to it's offspring in a crowd. Took it a while, as it was chased constantly, which gave me a good while of taking some shots of it evading.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Kzs3​XS IMG_2441 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KBVu​zg IMG_2448 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KiEx​pS IMG_2450 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KiEu​FA IMG_2459 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

https://flic.kr/p/KBVw​KtIMG_2417 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

And a typical lumbering sky-boat looking right at me...

https://flic.kr/p/KzrR​7sIMG_2469 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

Very best,

Holy smokes, I am so impressed. I have spent so much time trying to catch these guys in flight at local wetlands with almost no success. They are so fast.....great series, you have humbled me!!!

robamy wrote in post #18083972

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/JNkV​o6 Banking Left by A & R Photography, on Flickr

Beautiful image, great light and color tones.

edmidlifecrisis wrote in post #18084002
Holy smokes, I am so impressed. I have spent so much time trying to catch these guys in flight at local wetlands with almost no success. They are so fast.....great series, you have humbled me!!!

They are no joke that's for sure! I took 111 exposures with the Terns today, and only 5 had any pleasing value to them to me at least. I have tons more, but I felt like the body position, wing position, face and presentation in general were the most pleasing of the 111 captures, where a ton were with wings all weird, or looking away, or wing in front of the face, etc. I went through and culled most. They are really fast and I had to be very close to them to even get enough pixels on target.

I was shooting with a 300 F4L IS and a 7D. The 7D was able to keep up for the most part (expanded zones, low sensitivity on servo) and the 300 can lock on instantly without any hesitation, if any focus error happened it was the 7D being all confused, which it did sometimes as it would latch onto something else here and there. But 300 on APS-C makes it a lot easier. I used to try to do this with 600 on APS-C & APS-H and the arc degrees were just nuts, and I couldn't keep them framed enough for a pleasing composition hand held (did better with a gimbal, but even then, I much preferred shooting at 400~500mm tops for such fast birds). I recently went back to a 300mm prime and I prefer it tons over the longer lens I was using before, it's just fast and the wider field of view makes it a lot easier to do birds in flight.

My future camera, for doing this, would be something like the 5DSR, to me, one of the better birding cameras so that you can have that wider field of view while tracking, but so much resolution and no AA filter to allow for a big crop and still get the pixel density and detail of the best APS-C sensor with the same lens. But that's out of my budget for a few years until people start throwing them away! I'm a "$500" birder at best, as that's the most I can spend on this basically. So maybe in 10 more years I can get a 5DSR lol and then maybe a 30~40 year old (by then) 500 F4.5 (the old one!) will finally be affordable to me?

Here's the crappiest capture I grabbed today by the way, spiral shat!

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KJVS​a2

MalVeauX wrote in post #18083958
Got into an interesting Tern today, with a catch that it fed to it's offspring in a crowd. Took it a while, as it was chased constantly, which gave me a good while of taking some shots of it evading.

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/Kzs3​XS IMG_2441 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KBVu​zg IMG_2448 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KiEx​pS IMG_2450 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KiEu​FA IMG_2459 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

https://flic.kr/p/KBVw​KtIMG_2417 by Martin Wise, on Flick
And a typical lumbering sky-boat looking right at me...

https://flic.kr/p/KzrR​7sIMG_2469 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

Very best,

Awesome imagery Malveaux.

robamy wrote in post #18083972

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/JNkV​o6 Banking Left by A & R Photography, on Flickr

Beautiful indeed! Love the banking pose and the delicate fingers of the feathers.

MalVeauX wrote in post #18084009
They are no joke that's for sure! I took 111 exposures with the Terns today, and only 5 had any pleasing value to them to me at least. I have tons more, but I felt like the body position, wing position, face and presentation in general were the most pleasing of the 111 captures, where a ton were with wings all weird, or looking away, or wing in front of the face, etc. I went through and culled most. They are really fast and I had to be very close to them to even get enough pixels on target.

I was shooting with a 300 F4L IS and a 7D. The 7D was able to keep up for the most part (expanded zones, low sensitivity on servo) and the 300 can lock on instantly without any hesitation, if any focus error happened it was the 7D being all confused, which it did sometimes as it would latch onto something else here and there. But 300 on APS-C makes it a lot easier. I used to try to do this with 600 on APS-C & APS-H and the arc degrees were just nuts, and I couldn't keep them framed enough for a pleasing composition hand held (did better with a gimbal, but even then, I much preferred shooting at 400~500mm tops for such fast birds). I recently went back to a 300mm prime and I prefer it tons over the longer lens I was using before, it's just fast and the wider field of view makes it a lot easier to do birds in flight.

My future camera, for doing this, would be something like the 5DSR, to me, one of the better birding cameras so that you can have that wider field of view while tracking, but so much resolution and no AA filter to allow for a big crop and still get the pixel density and detail of the best APS-C sensor with the same lens. But that's out of my budget for a few years until people start throwing them away! I'm a "$500" birder at best, as that's the most I can spend on this basically. So maybe in 10 more years I can get a 5DSR lol and then maybe a 30~40 year old (by then) 500 F4.5 (the old one!) will finally be affordable to me?

Here's the crappiest capture I grabbed today by the way, spiral shat!

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/KJVS​a2 IMG_2457 by Martin Wise, on Flickr

Appreciate the kind words by the way, I'm a total amateur just enjoying the journey.

Very best,

Well you are doing way better than me on the terns!!!! I think your images here and on Flickr are great!! Keep it up!!!

Where are you based out of? I am in Palm Beach County, north end.....

edmidlifecrisis wrote in post #18084086
Well you are doing way better than me on the terns!!!! I think your images here and on Flickr are great!! Keep it up!!!

Where are you based out of? I am in Palm Beach County, north end.....

I live in Chiefland, Florida, near Cedar Key, Florida, and I tend to stomp around both these areas in the swamps & wetlands and of course the coast. I work out of Gainesville.

Very best,

White Ibis in morning light

extraordinary shot!

edmidlifecrisis wrote in post #18084003
Beautiful image, great light and color tones.

What ED Said

P.

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #18083894
Amazing capture!! You are master of the 5Dsr + 100-400ii. So very well done!

Thanks for the kind feedback

These little Swallows took forever to capture. I recon I was on the edge of a wetland lagoon in very cold conditions for about 2 hrs trying to get one shot that was sharp. ......And only reason I got one sharp was the wind picked up for a few mins which meant this little guy started hovering into wind and so stayed in one position long enough for me to get him sharp! . And I couldnt have done it without the 100-400IS2 as its light weight meant I was able to follow the birds erratic changes of flight paths for longer periods of time than what I could do with say a 400mm prime .

Rgds

clipper_from_oz wrote in post #18084255
Thanks for the kind feedback

These little Swallows took forever to capture. I recon I was on the edge of a wetland lagoon in very cold conditions for about 2 hrs trying to get one shot that was sharp. ......And only reason I got one sharp was the wind picked up for a few mins which meant this little guy started hovering into wind and so stayed in one position long enough for me to get him sharp! . And I couldnt have done it without the 100-400IS2 as its light weight meant I was able to follow the birds erratic changes of flight paths for longer periods of time than what I could do with say a 400mm prime .

Rgds

Clipper, an ISO question on the 5Dsr.
What would be better for wide-field (think Milky Way) astro-High ISO short expsosure or cap it at 3200 and deal with star trails and the longer exposures.
So far in my research the 5Dsr is not coming up tops for astro application and happily I didn't purchase with that in mind but I'm headed to dark skies in a few days
and might as well give it a go.

itsallart wrote in post #18084148
extraordinary shot!

Thank you