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Birds in Flight : Bee-eaters (40-150 pro)

Started Jan 3, 2016 | Photos thread
boxerman Senior Member • Posts: 1,946
Re: Kudos, and a question on focusing
1

vass wrote:

Thanks Boxerman

I got pretty close to them on some occasions there which means thinner DOF. I try to focus on the front of the bird, head and neck area which is why the body is in focus when it is. I find the lens with tele has a very narrow DOF, guessing teleconverter doesn't help here.
I'm pretty sure on shot 7 the wings are in focus, just slightly blurred from movement. Not sure if you ever seen a bee eater fly but they are very fast.

Yes, I was thinking you must have gotten pretty close, and noted the TC would, indeed, further reduce DOF.

I looked back at shot 7, and given three things, I'm still leaning toward OOF, and not motion blur.

  1. The blur of the tip of the back wing is noticeably more than the front. Motion blur should be mostly symmetrical.
  2. The wing is at the top of its "travel," so should be going "slow" (comparatively), compared to its maximum speed.
  3. Good heavens, 1/2500 sec! I tried to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of wingtip speed, but couldn't find data (and wasn't willing to search for high enough speed video to determine) on frequency of wing flapping, to give a good estimate of wing-tip speed.

Anyway, I have seen bee-eaters in Africa, but I don't think I got any good BIF shots. Lilac-breasted rollers, on the other hand, I have a few! Both rollers and bee-eaters are spectacularly colored birds.

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The BoxerMan

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