I was in a blind, photographing a male Ring-necked Duck that was swimming in a small opening in the ice. While I was tracking him in the viewfinder, he suddenly decided to take to the air. He started coming directly at me! I was kind of lucky, as I already had him in the viewfinder, and focused, when he launched his takeoff. Of course, there was no time to change settings for the flight action - I just made sure to keep the little red square on his head and fired away!
It was interesting to me that he used the ice to get a good push-off with his left foot. This opportunity showed me the importance of being able to fire off a lot of frames quickly; the two attached images were less than a second apart, yet they are completely different. There were, of course, some other frames of this action......ripping off 6 fps allows me to choose the frames that I like the most, with respect to wing and leg position. A bird can do a heck of a lot in a fraction of a second!
Both images:
Canon 50D, 400mm f2.0 IS lens with the 2x converter + 800mm focal length
f10, ISO 400, 1/400th of a second
A client bought a 36" by 24" print of the first image, and it looks good and sharp at that size . . . the 2x TC isn't as bad as many believe it to be, especially if used with the right glass.
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