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500mm + Bluebird in flight

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I try to assume a direction of flight, then frame with the bird just in the far corner of the viewfinder. Then the waiting game begins and I see if I'm fast enough to fire off a shot before he clears the frame.
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http://www.pbase.com/clknight
Colin
 
Flighty little birds are near impossible to properly catch. You need excellent reflexes and a camera with very little shutter lag. In desperation, if I can tell the bird is about to go, I start firing off high speed frames prior to the bird moving. Many times the bird is way too fast and successive frames will have the head in one and the tail in the very next. With my 50D, the high speed flutter of the wings is enough to cause the Single Point AI Servo AF to completely fail with none of the bird in focus, even though the red center square is properly centered on the bird. I've had birds literally stationary above me, high speed flapping their wings. The 50D refuses to focus in that situation, no matter how many times I half-press the shutter button. Its like the focus has stopped working. As soon as the bird lands on a tree branch and stops flapping its wings, the focus starts working again. I don't have this problem with larger birds as their wing-flap rate is quite slow and doesn't confuse the camera focus.

http://rixbox1.telusplanet.net/rick/2009_11_23_Pygmy_Owl/album/slides/IMG_6424_bif_oof.jpg

I hope the 7D doesn't have this problem.

--RICK--
 
Yes: more light, but you might also try using a higher f-stop to see if you get more detail.

The speed used (1/1000) may have been quick enough to freeze the wings. It may be the depth of focus causing the increasing lack of detail further from the bird's body.
 
... so you'll get distortion on the wings in any case (unless you use a good old 1Dinosaur, where 1/16,000th takes only 1/16,000th!

Otherwise, any shutter speed much faster than flash sync speed takes the same amount of time as the slit moves down the frame ... the slit just becomes narrower.
KP
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Use the new site features to hide my homely face and banjo!!



http://www.ahomls.com/photo.htm
http://www.phillipsphotographer.com

'The urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.', H. L. Mencken
 
Love it. Quite an accomplishment tracking these little guys.
--
Kevin Barrett
Lowell, MI
http://www.kbfoto.com
 
The "Flash Synch speed" is a measure of how fast the shutter goes.

For slow shutter speeds the first curtain opens fully, and then the correct time later the second curtain comes across to close the window. For faster shutter speeds the first curtain starts and then the second curtain follows it, with the gap between them being a horizontal slit that moves down the frame.

In order to expose properly with a flash, the whole frame has to be open, so that neither the top nor bottom is put in the dark as the (very short) flash pulse fires, so the flash has to be synchronised to fire when the first curtain has fully opened, but the second curtain has not yet started to move across.

The fastest speed this happens is the synch speed, and is typically 1/250s, or about 3 milliseconds.

For faster shutter speeds trying to capture really fast movement, like a small birds wings beating, the 3ms time is not enough to freeze the motion properly, and it looks like the wing is bent.
 
Well if this is a foretaste of things to come, I'm buying my ticket right now for a front row seat!
--
Kevin Barrett
Lowell, MI
http://www.kbfoto.com
 
I've not yet shot birds inflight. But Military Fighters.

The thing was, I used a rather long exposure (1/100) to get a nice background motion blur, but it was even harder.
I only got three tricks which might help you:

I dont do burst shots, I wait until I got the right moment. It needs some practice, but I get better results with it.
I dont use the AF, I use MF. Depending on the situation of course.

I have both eyes open, one trough the viewfinder, the other just plain. With some practice I seem to get much more shoots at the right spot.

Maybe you already to this, but maybe it helps you.
Some of the pic's I shot are here:
http://www.striking.ch/archives/3-Axalp-2009-13-Climbing-and-Shooting.html
One here: (the one with the copter, at the bottom)
http://www.striking.ch/archives/4-Axalp-2009-23-Copters-and-Cameras.html
--
http://www.striking.ch
 
Very nice explanation. Wouldn't be then a solution to underexpose the picture by closing the aperture, so that only flash firing will expose. Using another flash for the background in sync mode, you might get sharp result. Am I wrong?
 
verybiglebowski said:
Very nice explanation. Wouldn't be then a solution to underexpose the picture by closing the aperture, so that only flash firing will expose. Using another flash for the background in sync mode, you might get sharp result. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
Sometimes this is appropriate, sometimes it's not. The small eyes of the songbirds wouldn't reflect much of the light for that unnatural glare, which is good. However, I'm rapid firing as fast as the 50D will go. After a few hours of that my 580 EX II could be toast. =(

But in other cases, I do use fill flash in wildlife photography.

--
http://www.pbase.com/clknight
Colin
 
Nate Khler said:
I only got three tricks which might help you:

I dont do burst shots, I wait until I got the right moment. It needs some practice, but I get better results with it.
Click to expand...
Not an option with little songbirds. The "right moment" is beyond my reflexes to react. "Spray and pray" as they call it. =)
Nate Khler said:
I dont use the AF, I use MF. Depending on the situation of course.
Click to expand...
Yeah, MF here. The camera doesn't have time to lock, and I don't have time to track the bird anyway. I MF to the assumed plane of flight. Sometimes I'm right, sometimes wrong.
Nate Khler said:
I have both eyes open, one trough the viewfinder, the other just plain. With some practice I seem to get much more shoots at the right spot.
Click to expand...
With songbirds, I position the viewfinder to the assumed direction of flight, so the bird is just on the edge of the frame. Then I sit back with the remote and wait. =) The difference is when I can sometimes catch hovering flights, which I'm learning to do a little better.

Thanks!

--
http://www.pbase.com/clknight
Colin
 
I didn't think of fill flash, I was reacting on the GoldenSpark explanation of the high speed sync. As 1/250s is too slow, I considered that the way to obey this fact is to underexpose the image, so that without flash you are black. As the flash itself fires much faster then 1/250s, if you achieve proper exposition on the bird, you should capture frozen move, but your background will be partially dark, depending on the scene situation and power of your flash. Therefore you might add another flash just for the background. This are just my thoughts, so I am not sure it will work in a real life.
GoldenSpark
clknight said:
verybiglebowski said:
Very nice explanation. Wouldn't be then a solution to underexpose the picture by closing the aperture, so that only flash firing will expose. Using another flash for the background in sync mode, you might get sharp result. Am I wrong?
Click to expand...
Sometimes this is appropriate, sometimes it's not. The small eyes of the songbirds wouldn't reflect much of the light for that unnatural glare, which is good. However, I'm rapid firing as fast as the 50D will go. After a few hours of that my 580 EX II could be toast. =(

But in other cases, I do use fill flash in wildlife photography.

--
http://www.pbase.com/clknight
Colin
Click to expand...
 
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