Flight fun

I have been experimenting with images of small birds in flight recently...

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Absolutely fantastic!!! He looks so jubilant

Beautiful in-flight capture Mark.

Nailed that one

Holey Cow. That's great. Marks raising the bar on us folks.

Your experiments seem to be working, great shot.

I have a hard time capturing big birds in flight, I can't imagine these quick little suckers.

Thanks everyone, this is just a fun winter project for me - I actually prefer the static bird portrait stuff to be honest...nothing beats a smooth BG, good perch and perfectly posed bird

Great capture, Myself I prefer if I can get good shots of birds in flight, you for sure nailed it in this one

I'm totally gobsmacked by this shot! Wow, wow and thrice wow. That has to be one of the best in flight bird shots I've seen in a long while. Now - how in hell do you get shots like this!!!

Dave

That is amazing! Did you have to crop much? I know I would have to crop a lot. I have tried to do some tracking of small birds and have not even come close yet. Very good job.

Superb, Mark.

John, Mark says in his post that this is 80% of the original frame.

I don't suppose you'd be willing to share your secrets... It's all I can do to get a clean image of a hawk in flight. How did you manage to freeze one of these hyper little guys?

Experimenting? WOW!

Thanks everyone. As Keith pointed out I mentioned the crop in the post - I cropped a little off the top, bottom and left to 4:3 from native 3:2. When I say 80%, I mean 80% of the area, not 80% reduction on the height and width, so still most of the frame really.

First secret is in the techs - maintaining a very, very high shutter speed and nailing the exposure in camera. Adjustments to compensate for under-exposure when processing RAW is just like upping the ISO - any detail recovered in the darks tends to be noisey (I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to noise ). I normally do this wide-open (so f5.6 on my 400) for the extra shutter and make sure that the sensor is parallel with the longest side of the subject to maximise use of the available DOF (so in this case, the bill to tail is longest). I didn't shoot wide-open on this shot though, I was experimenting to get a better flight angle...but missed it

Second is just learning the behaviour of the bird. You can control the flight path with food - place a food source and learn the direction the bird flies in from and set-up there. If you have a feeding station you use for photography, re-arrange perches to maximise the flight potential.

Third is technique - Manually pre-focus to where the bird will pass and manually dial in exposure settings. Pick a spot that will have light over your shoulder (and you need lots of light) and no distracting elements in the background to screw-up AF. Learn to pan and follow through (i.e. keep panning after you release the shutter) or set-up on a tripod and capture as the bird passes a fixed spot (this is the technique here...requires both eyes and good reflexes ).

HTH, happy to clarify anything if needed