7d 100-400 bif help

I need help. I have gotten back into doing some bif pics and my keeper rate sucks. I know it is not the camera nor the lens, birds in trees are just fine as are my other shots. I am not getting good focus on my bif pics. I am shooting in av, ai servo, high speed, af point expansion, and keeping my shutter speed above 640. I also am using image stabilization. Any suggestions on what I need to do?

Do you have your AF focal point selected for the center dot? I was shooting bif once, when I realized that I have the AF focal point set to automatic selection, and all my shots were pretty useless.

Yep I have it set on center.

Try turning IS off on your lens and up your shutter speed to 1/1000 at a minimum.

What kind of birds are you shooting in-flight? Care to post an example straight out of the camera?

Great question Duane. I should have asked that one.....

And manual focus?

These are not hummers in flight, I am talking egrets and herons. I am trying to shoot 7.1 and above and I am focusing on the head. I will get a pic up.

Just trying to see where the focus point is landing....providing an image straight out of the camera will give us an idea if you strayed of target or not. Also interested in seeing if you're shooting speeding bullets or lazy flyers.

Here is one from this morning.

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That is not a good one for that then. Let me look at some other ones.

HKGuns wrote in post #12679559
Try turning AF off on your lens and up your shutter speed to 1/1000 at a minimum.

I think he means IS, not AF.

krb wrote in post #12679718
I think he means IS, not AF.

Yes, thanks...Fixed it.

For that shot, monopod, attached to your lens foot, manual exposure, IS off, Shutter speed minimum of 1/800, 1/1000 would be better. You're going to have a hard time on over your head type shots and it looks like that may be a pretty severe crop which you can't fix except by getting closer.

Exif attached to a similar situation as yours to which I was equipped as above only I was using the 400/5.6. The exif is in the image below.

What body?

Also, you might try switching your IS to Mode 2...that's certainly helped me a bit.

How much did you crop that photo?