Trying for BiF

I'm still trying for those Bird in Flight photos, especially of them landing.

This time I've bought bird seed (though mainly for chickadees) and it seems I can lure birds to me over a distance that the non-lazy ones will fly over!

I'm not much of a bif photographer (yet) but looking at your pictures I think you need more dof (higher aperture). Otherwise, I think they are good pictures. Are they lesser scaups?

I do some Shooting of BIF and Find that DOF (Aperture Setting) and SS is Critcal and the Last thing I worry about is ISO. The Deeper the DOF to more Sharp Images you will get and I try to keep SS over 1/1000. You can see some of my postings!

Gary is being modest. He does a lot of BIF shooting. I'm not nearly that modest. I do a lot of it as well. Listen to what Gary has stated. He's spot on. A good rule of thumb is that shutter speed shouldn't be lower than 1/800" Anything lower and you rely on luck or superior skills. In bright light1/1600" is very common. The smaller the bird the higher shutter speed is required. ISO should be the last thing you worry about since there are ways of dealing with it in PP. You managed to get the head and eye quite sharp and that's most important but even at 1/640" there is too much blur in the rest of the image. I hope this helps a little.

Thanks guys for the feedback! I'll get back out there when it stops raining and try it out...

For eagles i always want f8.0 minimum and a SS of 1/800 but prefer 1/1600. I have gotten some pretty cool shots with 1/400 SS fo take offs with the wings blurred but the head eye sharp. I think you will find that 200mm is pretty short for BIFs, i have a 400 and most of the time with i had 600. but when it comes to bird photography i think most would agree that you will always want more reach. nice job on gettgin the head/eye sharp, i think that is the most important part.

Keep snapping away and you will figure out what works best for you.

The 450D should be able to handle correctly ISO 800 in good light to help you increase your shutter speed. Neat Image or Noise Ninja would be able to take care of whatever little noise you get.