This afternoon I had a chance to work with BBF and 3D AF. I was really looking foward to it!
On my way to find some birds, I came across this stream. It was flowing at a pretty good rate of speed. Looking through my viewfinder, the AF dot was racing around faster than a mouse on an exercise wheel! :beguiled: Seriously, it was all over the place. I tried changing to dynamic 9 but for some reason couldn't get anything to change.
Once I was finished with the stream, I drove further to the lake. There were lots of birds sitting around on the boat dock. :encouragement: I was stoked. There was a cormorant sitting on a post so I raised the camera and looked through the viewfinder (keep in mind I was still in 3D AF). Well...that bird went in and out of focus so quickly that I thought I would fall over from dizziness! :shame: Oh my gosh! There were trees along the distant side of the lake so the bird was totally in focus, then totally out of focus, in, out, in, out, and so on and so on.... :beguiled: Now I understand why Steve Perry says he doesn't use it for wildlife.
So once again I tried to set the AF to dynamic 9 and was finally able to do so. Then I quickly switched to dynamic 39 which is the most focus points allowed. It worked well but I also went back and tried out dynamic 9. My biggest concern is not being able to keep my subject under one of those 9 points. Unfortunately I only had 2 opportunities to try out BIF--and one was with a bird flying in the opposite direction. I don't think anyone will be excited to see a bird's butt.
This following shot was rather interesting though. What I hadn't realized when I took the photo is that the bird has bands on its legs. First up is the original shot followed by a very large crop showing the bands (
On1 Resize 10 resized the crop from 2" up to 10" wide--it's amazing software!).
Most of the birds were chilling and very relaxed. Although the follow image isn't a BIF, the seagull stayed put the entire time I was there. It was about 12 feet away--I need to pay more attention to my f-stop. At such a close distance plus with my 1/4x teleconverter, I should have stopped down more. This is the entire image--no crop was done to it. And before I go, I just want to thank everyone who helped explain the settings to me!