Post your Birds in Flight
- Thread starter Marilynne
- Start date
dh photography
Senior Member
Still need lots of practice at this. One of these days I'll get it.
RockyNH_RIP
Senior Member
You did pretty good as near as I can tell! 
Pat in GA
Pat in GA
dh photography
Senior Member
You did pretty good as near as I can tell!
Pat in GA
Thanks so much, Pat. Feels like one still either too far away for my 80-200 or 70-300. Either that or I'm just getting good focus lock where it needs to be. I really need to fully check the fine focus with each of them on the D7000 before long. Guess I'm striving for that 1 in a thousand cover shot. LoL.
You should nock your ISO down for these bright sun no need for ISO 1100
dh photography
Senior Member
Thanks, Marilynne!
Rodnender - HOLY CRAP!! I had the ISO on auto and made the poor assumption that it would have been MUCH lower in that light. Rookie mistake of not checking all my settings more thoroughly before I even get out of the car. Heck; I didn't even check the EXIF during post. Ugh! Thanks for the catch!
Rodnender - HOLY CRAP!! I had the ISO on auto and made the poor assumption that it would have been MUCH lower in that light. Rookie mistake of not checking all my settings more thoroughly before I even get out of the car. Heck; I didn't even check the EXIF during post. Ugh! Thanks for the catch!
Looking through this thread, I can't begin to get close to the excellence of most of you and your skills. Today I had a CPL filter on my 70-300 to get some cloud-mountain shots and a hawk flew by. I started shooting, but out of the many shots only a couple are even close to being worth posting. Remember it's my first real attempt at this. Ha!
photogramps
Senior Member
Touchdown by photogramps, on Flickr
Nesting Material by photogramps, on Flickr
Ash Face Owl by photogramps, on Flickr
Kingfisher Rising by photogramps, on Flickr
I'll preface all this by saying I'm no expert, but I think I can give you a tip or two that helps me.
Birds in flight are crazy hard. You can't just reach up and move the sun where you'd like it to be to light the bird. The bird very seldom takes flight in the direction you'd like, and it's always hard to get close enough. Often, you have only a second or two to react to a bird taking flight or appearing overhead. It's a really fun challenge!
I would use a faster shutter speed if I were you. I typically use at least 1/1000 and prefer 1/2000. Birds move quickly, especially the wing tips, so I like to shoot a really fast shutter speed to stop the motion. I try to approach birds with the sun at my back, but terrain doesn't always permit this. Also, so many BIF shots are opportunistic, just being in the right place at the right time.
Your shots are pretty good, and I think that with some post processing to bring out the shadow details, they could look even better.
Keep shooting and posting!
Woody, thanks for your comments. "Opportunistic" That was exactly the situation for my shots. I hadn't even planned on shooting BIF while out yesterday. That was why the shutter speed wasn't as fast as I would have normally set it. Ha! "Post Processing" I did some to get them to have as much detail as they have. Ha! I think they would have been better also, without the CPL filter. That is something else that I have just started playing with and was what my original intentions were. I wanted to see how the CPL would do with cloud-mountain shots and out of nowhere came the hawk. Of course all of this is new to me. Shooting with the 70-300mm lens and the PP. More shots to come, I am sure.
Thanks again for your good input.
dh photography
Senior Member
I hate spooking them just before you get close enough and at a good angle. Not sure when I turned into a freight train walking. LoL.
