BIF at Bolsa Chica

So I was driving by the Bolsa Chica Wetlands today and decided to try my hand at my first ever BIF shots since the lighting seemed perfect. I was shooting with my 1DMKIII and my longest lens which was a 70-200 2.8 IS so I was a bit handicapped on the focal length part but fortunately I was still able to get some good shots from it. BTW, most of the shots here were shot in manual with an aperture between 2.8-5.6. EXIF is still intact to.

Anyways I'm looking for any c&c and some tips with regards to BIF since I've never really done this before and my percentage of keepers was pretty horrible. After reviewing a lot of my shots I think I should have stopped it down a bit more for more DOF and just bumped up my ISO to keep the fast shutter speeds. Other than that I can't think of anything else so any tips on aperture, ss, shooting in av or m, frame or crop afterwards, anything would be appreciated. Also any tips on cfn's settings for the MKIII that work best for birds would be great too!

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Wow... Those are some awesome pictures!! I think you are doing good. #4 would look god as a verticle I think... and maybe crop a little closer.

Thanks Dbirdman and Hameedah. These photos came out good but my keeper rate was pretty low so I've still got a lot of learning to do. I'll look into a vertical crop of # 4 but I'm not sure if I have a whole lot of room to play with towards the bottom end of the frame on that one!

doubleo6point9,

You are on the right track using manual mode, but the exposures are off. The whites appear to blown resulting in a loss of detail. If you read thru some of the informational posts I have made on this site you will find lots of info that should help youy with BIF images. You may also wish to look thru my most recent posts in the birds forum for examples of BIF images. The Elegant turn images in my posts were made in the same place as yours. I haven't posted my Black Skimmer images yet. If you have questions after reading, ask them here. I'll watch this thread.