First BIF - Brown Pelican

Hey all - a friend loaned me his 70-200 + TC 2 and I thought I would at least try this BIF thing. Much harder than I thought - started out mainly trying on white egrets but they were all OOF and blown out Had a little more sucess with this brown pelican (probably because he was a lot slower!!). I certainly learned a lot and think I have a plan for the white guys if I'm able to borrow this setup again. C&C and tips more than welcome. All shots taken with my Xti.

1. ISO 200, 1/1000, f 7.1

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Good shots of a bird we don't see to much of here. Shooting birds in flight is a challenge that many here make it look easier than it is. Since I like to mess with things I did a little bit of editing. Not sure if it though.

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Thanks rw2 like the edits - they certainly bring out more detail. So you think these are underexposed basically I take it (well that and these were not taken in the best of light), I know for the egrets I'm going to have to cut the exposure down as they were blown out even in the early morning -- maybe a different metering mode would help?

Great shots, my first BIF photos are... well... nowhere near as good as these!

Thanks Grimm -- well I didn't post the egret shots.... talk about BAD.... Working on a checklist for next time around.

I really like #2, especially the editted version! Nice BIF shots...

Thanks Zippy and I agree the edit is much better.

You got the wing tips, feet and end of the beak all inside the frame. That's the hard part. You've got the mechanics down.

Read your book for the XTi and figure out how to set exposure compensation in Av Mode, and set for AI Focus. For white birds, set Ev to the plus side, from 2/3 to 1 1/3 to start. For dark birds, set to the minus side. Set metering to Evaluative. Use those settings for a day and practice. You'll see improvement right away.

THANK YOU very much Canonloader -- that's what I meant by tips!!! Revising the checklist now

Your welcome. I just paid back some kind soul that got me started on those setting. And I still use them, with ISO and aperture adjustments only.

Oh yeah, start shooting in RAW only. You won't regret that either.

canonloader wrote in post #3771340
You got the wing tips, feet and end of the beak all inside the frame. That's the hard part. You've got the mechanics down.

Read your book for the XTi and figure out how to set exposure compensation in Av Mode, and set for AI Focus. For white birds, set Ev to the plus side, from 2/3 to 1 1/3 to start. For dark birds, set to the minus side. Set metering to Evaluative. Use those settings for a day and practice. You'll see improvement right away.

Question! Why not use partial metering? Would you not want your main subject to be metered? If you have a dark subject and light background Would you not underexpose the subject and if you had a light subject and dark background would you not overexpose the subject?

Experiment with both. I've just had good results from using Evaluative. The camera algorythms are pretty good.

Thanks I'll try your suggestion. Your shots speak for themselves!