Great Egret and company

No, it's not sensor dust -- a swarm of gnats decided to keep company with the Great Egret. It's probably because of fish breath.

Dissapointed you didn't get a single one in focus then

Nice shot of the bird though

artyman wrote in post #8860030
Dissapointed you didn't get a single one in focus then

Nice shot of the bird though

Thanks for the comments, Ken.

While the focusing system on the 7D is good, I don't think that it is quite up to the task of focusing on a gnat at 60 feet (18 meters) and tracking it in flight.

Oh! perhaps I won't get one after all then

Good one, Bill.

Great shot Bill. The little bugs are spices for the fish.

If you try sometime, to focus on the little things, you might be quite surprised at what you find.

artyman wrote in post #8860098
Oh! perhaps I won't get one after all then

Good idea, Ken, the camera is just trash if it can't do GIF (gnat-in-flight) shots.

sparker1 wrote in post #8860127
Good one, Bill.

Thanks, Stan.

canonloader wrote in post #8860321
Great shot Bill. The little bugs are spices for the fish.

If you try sometime, to focus on the little things, you might be quite surprised at what you find.

Thanks, Mitch.

I did a little pixel-peeping and bit-twiddling and found three gnats that were sort of in focus, but at this distance, they were just a few pixels in size. Here are a couple that were on the left side of the image (cropped out on the posted image).

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Nice shot.

Bill, I shot those gnats out my window one day when waiting for hummers at the feeder. I used the old 30D and Bigma I had at the time. I was quite surprised to see they looked like little Tinkerbells. Who knew?

Hmm gnats, just goes to show what all those megapixels can do

Beautiful composition Bill, the GE pose looks like one out of Audubon, nice shot.

db

I'm disappointed that I can't tell the sex of the gnats.
Nice shot of the egret.

Beautiful picture, like the expo and colors. Great!!

Nice shot, Bill!

Cyclop wrote in post #8864196
Nice shot.

Thanks, Cy.

canonloader wrote in post #8864278
Bill, I shot those gnats out my window one day when waiting for hummers at the feeder. I used the old 30D and Bigma I had at the time. I was quite surprised to see they looked like little Tinkerbells. Who knew?

It sounds interesting, Mitch. I think that I will try some gnats-in-flight shots the enxt time I have an opportunity.

artyman wrote in post #8864352
Hmm gnats, just goes to show what all those megapixels can do

It is a mixed bag, Ken. In the case of the 7D with high quality full coverage photodiodes, more megapixels is great for image resolution and low noise, but it really slows down image processing with its large files (typically about 24 MB for RAW images) even with a fairly fast computer.

dbriz wrote in post #8864652
Beautiful composition Bill, the GE pose looks like one out of Audubon, nice shot.

db

Thanks, DB. I think that I know the typical Audubon bird pose. Egrets and Herons may be the only birds that naturally contort themselves into unnatural positions.

snowyowl13 wrote in post #8864671
I'm disappointed that I can't tell the sex of the gnats.
Nice shot of the egret.

Thanks, Dan. I won't ask why you would want to know their sex.

Eric Rivera wrote in post #8864785
Beautiful picture, like the expo and colors. Great!!

Thanks, Eric.

jgrussell wrote in post #8865388
Nice shot, Bill!

Thanks, Judy.