40D AI Servo BIF Photo Sequence - 8 shots in 3 seconds

Here's a sequence of 8 shots, taken within a 3 second timeframe with a bird coming towards the camera. These were shot in raw and converted to jpeg in Lightroom with no editing at all. I think all things considered the results are not too bad. I've had a few other results of similar quality and several others that were less successful but these show what can potentially be accomplished.

Kit was a 40D with 70-200 f/2.8 IS lens at 200mm, 800 ISO, f/2.8 and shutter between 1/640 and 1/1000. Focus was with AI Servo and centre AF point only.

I dare say a little sharpening and a tweak of levels would improve them somewhat but I wanted to show what the camera (and lens!) was capable of without fiddling with the results.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

very good indeed i dont thing you could ask for much better,was this centre point or all point's.
Rob

Sorry, I should have mentioned these were with centre point only. I really don't trust the random 9 points to pick what I want in focus. I've updated the original post.

Excellent! The 40D is a performer for sure.

I only use centre anyhow,

well it sure works on centre as these shots show .
Rob

wow
that's all I have to say...
wow

OP, how about taking the best one and PP it, and a crop lets see how good it really is

Just two words:

IM-PRESIONANTE

Thks for share

Zoiks! That's sweet!

Nice Job!!

Makes me happy I bought the 40D---
and that is the lens I am saving for....sweet

Mike

I've tried improving the last photo, which has the sharpest detail on the bird's head, and actually I'm struggling to improve on the vanilla file with the facilities available in Lightroom, since I can't isolate the bird and deal with the subject and background separately. Also, the subtle changes I can see in Lightroom become almost lost with the compression down to these tiddly 800*533 files. Anyway, here is the original, my best efforts at a tweak and a 100% crop from the tweaked file.

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

very cool Tim!

well as for DDP and Lightroom, I only use CS3, and for me I would never use DPP or never do, I much rather use CS3, the raws in CS3 seem better to my eyes, but it is all personal preference

Great Shots anyhow, 40D in my views is still improving as people get used to them and learn it's differences over other bodies

i always thought raw files were the same in any converter, but the post effects could be different...is this not the case? (although i would say i'm a digital expert, raw is not my most indepth area) Is it that each program interprets each data bit differently and produces a different colour pixel?

Looking at the comparison i would say (if asked) that there is more going on there than a mere opening of a file...they both look like they have been sharpened but using difference noise reduction algorithms...in fact the top one looks like it's had a median filter run over it. To me, there's not only a clipping effect going on with the noise, there's a loss of resolution (in the analogue sense) of the finer details especially in the subtle white feather tones and their contrast edges against the black feathers. The head and beak seem to have finer detail in the lower image...finer, less obvious though...almost like the difference in radius in unsharp mask.

Lovely sequence by the way