Posts for: patmalone51
Apr 12, 2018 15:22:24 #
excellent!!! do you have a species chart that goes with it? Don't recognize all of them... they're gorgeous even nameless.
Apr 12, 2018 09:37:09 #
I've only been doing birds in flight seriously for a few months but feel like I'm getting better with practice. Here's what I've been learning:
Locations: It helps to find a really magical place like Corkscrew Swamp in Florida, where every time you turn around you're faced with another great shot (here is my album from visiting there a week ago on a quick trip: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmhamcQW ), but there are plenty of national wildlife refuges (many of them almost totally unknown and under visited even for nearby residents), Audubon sanctuaries, rivers, lakes, etc., all over our wonderful country. I shoot mostly in the DC area where I live and have discovered a number of spots that local birders know about but not so much the rest of us. Example: Dyke Marsh south of Alexandria Va: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8xP3wY . There are state-specific birder listservs you can join to get tips.
Types of birds: They're all great, but to get them in flight, bigger birds like raptors and wading birds are a heck of a lot easier than sparrows and other small songbirds. You can get a songbird in flight at takeoff or landing without too much trouble but otherwise, they're just too fast, at least for me. Not that you shouldn't try: I got some meadowlarks in flight at a wildlife refuge in NM which you can see here (along with a bunch of raptors in flight): https://flic.kr/s/aHskue6amp . That was mostly luck. They say that luck favors the prepared, and that's true, but I don't do anything too elaborate. The main thing is to get to the site and keep the camera on and ready to shoot at all times. Try to keep the sun behind you and the birds facing you, but that's easier said than done. I don't have the patience to sit in one place for long times, but if you have that fisherman mentality, go for it. If you do that, you can set up what amounts to a stage and wait for the birds to do their walk-ons.
Lenses: You need a long lens, minimum 400 to 500. My current fave is the nikon 200-500. I can handhold with that, although it's a tad heavy. You can drop 12 big ones and get a 600mm f4E, but then you have to use a tripod which limits you from quick reactions. You can get a shorter lens like a 300 and use a 1.4 teleconverter to take it up to 420mm, but that really slows down your auto focus and you miss a lot of shots.
Camera body: I have been getting a lot more keepers since getting the new D850 - with faster auto focus and more pixels (so you can crop down if needed) and less noise in low light.
Settings: A lot of trial and error, but what I currently do and is fairly reliable:
* shutter in range of 1/1250 to 1/2500 -- faster speeds get you crisper focus but more noise. You need to go even faster if you want to stop a hummingbird's wings, for example.
* Aperture wide open or up to around f8 max.
* ISO Auto. So shutter and aperture are both on manual and only ISO fluctuates auto. You can experiment with where to set the upper limit of the ISO but on a body like the D850 you can go really high (like in five digits).
* Exposure compensation: This is hard to remember in the heat of the moment. But for darker birds I try to keep it at +0.7 to as high as +2.0 and keep checking the histogram to make sure I'm not too far to the right. For white birds, you need to go in the opposite direction: -1.0 or even more. Check your white clipping on the histogram until you're not getting any blinkies on the bird bodies.
* Auto focus set to D9 or something like that, and back button focus which works great once you get used to it. Steve Perry talks about how to set this up in his Nikon auto focus book.
One more important thing I just remembered: Check your focus on the display from time to time by setting a button to give you one-button 100% zoom on the image. Nikon has this easily with the center button. A lot of times what looks like good focus to the casual eye turns out to be not so crisp when you blow it up.
Persistence is a good thing. Obsession can be good too.
Hope that helps.
Pat Malone
Locations: It helps to find a really magical place like Corkscrew Swamp in Florida, where every time you turn around you're faced with another great shot (here is my album from visiting there a week ago on a quick trip: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmhamcQW ), but there are plenty of national wildlife refuges (many of them almost totally unknown and under visited even for nearby residents), Audubon sanctuaries, rivers, lakes, etc., all over our wonderful country. I shoot mostly in the DC area where I live and have discovered a number of spots that local birders know about but not so much the rest of us. Example: Dyke Marsh south of Alexandria Va: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8xP3wY . There are state-specific birder listservs you can join to get tips.
Types of birds: They're all great, but to get them in flight, bigger birds like raptors and wading birds are a heck of a lot easier than sparrows and other small songbirds. You can get a songbird in flight at takeoff or landing without too much trouble but otherwise, they're just too fast, at least for me. Not that you shouldn't try: I got some meadowlarks in flight at a wildlife refuge in NM which you can see here (along with a bunch of raptors in flight): https://flic.kr/s/aHskue6amp . That was mostly luck. They say that luck favors the prepared, and that's true, but I don't do anything too elaborate. The main thing is to get to the site and keep the camera on and ready to shoot at all times. Try to keep the sun behind you and the birds facing you, but that's easier said than done. I don't have the patience to sit in one place for long times, but if you have that fisherman mentality, go for it. If you do that, you can set up what amounts to a stage and wait for the birds to do their walk-ons.
Lenses: You need a long lens, minimum 400 to 500. My current fave is the nikon 200-500. I can handhold with that, although it's a tad heavy. You can drop 12 big ones and get a 600mm f4E, but then you have to use a tripod which limits you from quick reactions. You can get a shorter lens like a 300 and use a 1.4 teleconverter to take it up to 420mm, but that really slows down your auto focus and you miss a lot of shots.
Camera body: I have been getting a lot more keepers since getting the new D850 - with faster auto focus and more pixels (so you can crop down if needed) and less noise in low light.
Settings: A lot of trial and error, but what I currently do and is fairly reliable:
* shutter in range of 1/1250 to 1/2500 -- faster speeds get you crisper focus but more noise. You need to go even faster if you want to stop a hummingbird's wings, for example.
* Aperture wide open or up to around f8 max.
* ISO Auto. So shutter and aperture are both on manual and only ISO fluctuates auto. You can experiment with where to set the upper limit of the ISO but on a body like the D850 you can go really high (like in five digits).
* Exposure compensation: This is hard to remember in the heat of the moment. But for darker birds I try to keep it at +0.7 to as high as +2.0 and keep checking the histogram to make sure I'm not too far to the right. For white birds, you need to go in the opposite direction: -1.0 or even more. Check your white clipping on the histogram until you're not getting any blinkies on the bird bodies.
* Auto focus set to D9 or something like that, and back button focus which works great once you get used to it. Steve Perry talks about how to set this up in his Nikon auto focus book.
One more important thing I just remembered: Check your focus on the display from time to time by setting a button to give you one-button 100% zoom on the image. Nikon has this easily with the center button. A lot of times what looks like good focus to the casual eye turns out to be not so crisp when you blow it up.
Persistence is a good thing. Obsession can be good too.
Hope that helps.
Pat Malone
Apr 10, 2018 12:08:48 #
handsome! interesting well-captured variations in these tiny birds.
Apr 7, 2018 12:53:00 #
Impossible not to get some good shots there of beautiful birds and scenery. Here are a few more. My Flickr album has more: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmhamcQW
_8503351.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
_8503351.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
Apr 5, 2018 21:57:50 #
Had a chance to escape our dreary early spring weather in mid-Atlantic and visit a bird sanctuary near Naples FL called Corkscrew Swamp. I got some good photos of egrets, ibis, heron, spoonbills, anhinga, and even a couple of uncommon wood storks, plus woodpeckers, hawks and some sundry swamp creatures. more photos on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmhamcQW
_8502037.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
_8502037.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
Mar 25, 2018 12:20:15 #
at Piscataway Park south of Fort Washington MD. (Thanks to the UHH-er who tipped to this site!)
More on Flickr
_8500619.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
More on Flickr
_8500619.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
Mar 21, 2018 20:43:41 #
#2 is especially fine with the iris detail.
Mar 21, 2018 20:39:30 #
nice. hard shot to get. I got the 200-500 not long ago and it's about all i'm using now for birds. i just posted some back yard snow birds today. we're in DC area.
Mar 21, 2018 20:34:51 #
well, one was technically not in our yard, but not too far away.. click on the Flickr link https://flic.kr/s/aHsmcJCqjb to see the rest. 
_8500268.jpg by patmalone51, on Flickr
_8500268.jpg by patmalone51, on FlickrMar 21, 2018 11:56:30 #
Beautiful pix! glad you could retrieve your memory card. what is that little spotted bird?
Mar 19, 2018 16:29:46 #
very nice. I also like #2 best. I live in Montgomery County and have been going to several spots across the river- Dyke Marsh, Riverbend Park among others. send me a private msg if you'd like to try a joint adventure one morning.
Mar 19, 2018 16:25:26 #
Mar 19, 2018 11:10:08 #
thanks, everyone. I am going to try this again with late afternoon sun - in this one taken mid-morning the bird is westbound so his head was in shadow which I had to lighten up with consequent noise.
Mar 18, 2018 16:04:18 #
got some good shots this morning. all these are at a spot on the Potomac River with cars rushing by below and airplanes overhead. the birds don't seem to mind.
more on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8xQs2G
more on Flickr here: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm8xQs2G
Mar 12, 2018 13:31:41 #
another lens to consider is the Nikon 200-500 zoom. light enough to handhold. at f5.6 it's not nearly as fast as yours but the extra length adds a lot of pixels to the image.