Birds In Flight (Swallows & Martins)

I went out in cloudy weather yesterday and managed to get a flight shot of a Fairy martin which turned out ok. Today I went back while there was a bit of afternoon sun and didn't see the martins close again but there was some Welcome Swalllows. Anyway I decided to have a quick go again but this time with the Swallows and got some keepers.

I would prefer a 300 or 300 plus lens for this as you have to get very close with the 40-150 pro to get enough detail which means you have to follow them with faster movement but I managed to get some close shots.
It's a lot easier to follow these birds from further away than close so I was pleased with the results.

Welcome Swallow

Welcome Swallow

Fairy Martin

Very nice shots.  The EE-1 dot sight helps with swallows.

Beautiful

Great photos!
I think you must have 1/3000 sec. or maybe 1/4000 sec. to be really sharp, so it must be ISO 1250 with this light. Only the last bird is sharp at 100%.

Jozef.

Excellent! And very good technique you show, I am certain that it was very difficult!

Thank you

Jozef M wrote:

Great photos!
I think you must have 1/3000 sec. or maybe 1/4000 sec. to be really sharp, so it must be ISO 1250 with this light. Only the last bird is sharp at 100%.

Jozef.

You are panning with the bird and there is typically little wing movement. 1/2000 should easily be sufficient and probably as low as 1/1250 or 1/1600. The problem with all long telephoto lenses is the very shallow depth of field which often results in only part of the bird being in good focus. Increasing the shutter speed would result in a wider aperture, further reducing the depth of field and the amount of the bird in good focus.

With sitting birds or very large slow flying ones, you can focus on the eye so that the bird looks to be in good focus. Unfortunately with small fast moving ones, you take what you can get.  I think they are all good.

In the first image, the far wing is in focus (the E-M1 tendency to focus on verticals), but the depth of field is not sufficient to cover the birds body.

You did very well here, congrats

Thank you all for the comments. I had time to play with the RAW and sharpened the 1st photo a little with some minor noise reduction.

Here is the result