Success Again Today with Swallows in Flight

Yes I use the EE-1 most the time but not always.

Basically I keep both eyes open just as I do if I use the EVF. Practice in following and keeping ur sight or focus points (if using EVF) is a key factor and you must be able to follow them almost spot on when trying to lock on if you want to increase your chances. 
I hold the camera about 4 inches from my eye. Yes missing a lot too, no matter what camera one uses that will always be the case with swallows.

9 box focus, H mode and CAF. Pretty important to pre-focus too at the distance u expect to try lock on. Most the time the camera doesn't get a focus lock because of the short distance from lens to bird, eratic movements and speed of the bird but there are points where they slow down or fly parallel etc and this is where u need to take advantage of locking focus.
When the bird is flying directly at you and at speed and erratically u just close your eyes and hope for the best

cheers

Kazooless wrote:

Very impressive!

Is this what you were using?: http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-V329200BU000-Dot-Sight-EE-1/dp/B00STR9K1G/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1443626759&sr=1-1&keywords=olympus+ee-1

Can you tell us how specifically you use it? Do you hold your eye up to it like you would the view finder? Or hold it at arms length? Inquiring minds. It sounds like you still miss a bunch of shots, right? So are you using autofocus? I imagine you need really really fast autofocus too?

This definitely looks like something I should add to my list.

Thanks. Can get frustrating at times, that's for sure

Tony8232 wrote:

Excellent photos. These guys are hard to photograph.

Thanks mate.
Practice makes perfect but you must be keen and do a lot of thinking on how to get that shot but most importantly be very interested and never give up. The e-m1 is pretty good in action shots from my experience even thou mine is short because I have only been into getting BIF shots no longer than 3 months. All my early birding with e-m1 was 99% stationary because I love to see a lot of feather detail in my shots but birds in flight I have become interested in lately after seeing shots from NZ Macro, Martin.au and a few others on these forums. I always feel the need to try new things and achieve new goals, it's just me

Walt_A wrote:

These are superb. I would never have believed that M43 could regularly do this to this standard. The kit obviously works great in your hands. Well done.

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Fri13,

This is a fantastic explanation. Thank you. I love the rifle attachment. It's both funny and yet serious.

I can't wait until that 300mm f/4 is available. I have been hoping it will be reasonably affordable by me. (There is no way I could afford the $6,000 and up price of the 4/3 300mm f/2.8)

Fri13 wrote:

Kazooless wrote:

Very impressive!

Is this what you were using?: http://www.amazon.com/Olympus-V329200BU000-Dot-Sight-EE-1/dp/B00STR9K1G/ref=sr_1_1?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1443626759&sr=1-1&keywords=olympus+ee-1

Can you tell us how specifically you use it? Do you hold your eye up to it like you would the view finder? Or hold it at arms length? Inquiring minds. It sounds like you still miss a bunch of shots, right? So are you using autofocus? I imagine you need really really fast autofocus too?

This definitely looks like something I should add to my list.

You never put your eye on the sights. The reflex sight is kept almost as close or far you want but it is at "arm length".

Just like here

You lose the third support with the camera, meaning you should use a monopod, tripod or get some kind a stock to give a additional support.

Example:

Now you would attach the reflex sight on that and then aim like you would with a rifle.

The reflex sight does not communicate by any means with the camera. It doesn't know camera settings or alter those.

All what it does is to offer you a parallel viewpoint that allows you to see peripheral so you avoid the "tunnel vision" that cameras suffers and causes you to estimate what is happening outside of the field of view you are seeing and you have less reaction times to sudden situations.

The difference looks like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuZ2N35Vyig

Because you don't have the "tunnel vision" you see the "whole picture" and you can far more easily point the camera at the direction where the action is _going_ to happen.

You simply set the reflex sight to go parallel point with camera (like set camera on tripod and use camera center focus point to point camera something small at 50m distance and then set the sight to point same target) and it doesn't matter where your eye is behind the reflex sight (without parallax error) the reflected sight points where the camera center focus point is pointing.

So when you are taking photographs or video, you need to control your camera (focal length, shutter speed, frame rate, autofocus S-AF/C-AF) and then just point the sight on target and release the shutter.

That would be cheating for me. I use red dots on my rifles a lot and I'm very experienced with them. 
I thought about it but people are going to be calling in saying there is an armed gun man wearing camo in the nature reserve, forest, lakes and parks etc

Amazing shots!!!

Thank you all for the kind comments.

I started a new thread with the other half of the photo's.

vass wrote:

Thank you all for the kind comments.

I started a new thread with the other half of the photo's.

Amazing effort. I'm enying you.