Yep,.. more Herons. BUT A NEW LENS!

The 1st shot is my favourite You have it sitting on a rock, with beautiful left to right composition and framing. Pretty slick I would say.

Allow me to show my ignorance by asking what kind if heron this is anyway?

And what were your A, T., and Focal Length settings ?

You the birdman.

HOWIE

CDS, that lens is just craaazy!!! I love your shots, especially the one in flight.

And are they hand held?

Beautiful shots.

Sheri

Handheld? With a 500?
Schwartzenegger probably can do it, but no regular mortal I think will be able to take that beast handheld for more than a few minutes....

According to Schwartzenegger he can do anything...

I can shoot with it handheld,.

.......for a few seconds!

But no ,. it is a tripod lens for sure! In fact I was convinced my existing tripod/head would be of little use,. but as it is the lightest 500mm prime around it works quite well with my set-up. I do think I will want a beefier head,. like a gimble mount (Wimberly is the pricey one but Manfrotto makes one that looks really good)

Great Blue heron,

EXIF;

The "Wingshot";
Shutter speed: 1/250 sec
Aperture: 5.0
Exposure compensation: -1/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Partial
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 200
Lens: 500.0 mm

In the marsh;
Shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 9.0
Exposure compensation: -2/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Partial
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 400
Lens: 500.0 mm

Flight;
Shutter speed: 1/1000 sec
Aperture: 10
Exposure compensation: -2/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Partial
Drive mode: Continuous
ISO: 400
Lens: 500.0 mm

I see I made a booboo,.. on day two (the flight and marsh shot) I had started the day @ iso 400,. but based on my aperture and shutter speeds I clearly should have been down at 100 or 200. Whereas on the fisrt day I gad the lens I took "the wingshot" and would have benifitted from an iso of 400,. but I had left it at 200....

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #97774

IMG NOTICE: [NOT AN IMAGE URL, NOT RENDERED INLINE]

You all have to appreciate that these are obviously resized and compressed jpegs... the full size images are unreal.

I can't figure out this wing on the Heron. There is only supposed to be one red burnished spot on the top of the wing, but this wing has 2 and it is extra long - HMMM

Any Idea -

Gene

I think there is one at the "wrist", ( the one we usually see, ) but there is one on the shoulder as well.. which is not as often visible,.. see the back/shoulder feathers all puffed up? They normally cover it I guess.

I'll look at some other shots to see if I can find more examples.

Here's another good example,.. see how the shoulder patch is actually still partially covered by those long breast feathers?
Note also the nice rust color on his "pants".

All of this is Mating season plumage too I think.

I just checked my archives and found several birds with red at the wrist and more at the armpit. Hard to see unless the wing is unfolded.