(c) Saker Falcon in flight

I really like this one, finally I have got my membership sorted out and I can post decent size pictures! (I had alluded to a flickr album with this picture in my first post in this forum). The reason for liking this photo for me is the technical difficulty (these birds are amongst the fastest raptors) and the nice light (about 3pm BST, about 1 week ago in the UK). Taken at the Raptor Foundation, Cambs UK. I will attempt to post non-captive birds, where possible, in the future!

I appreciate this is very simple in composition, but comments welcome!

Nice capture and light Andy but the leg straps spoil the image for me,and I would have placed the bird over to the left alittle and you have only posted this image @640 on the longest side when you can go to 720,alittle bigger and it will bring out the detail alot more

Craig

Thanks for the tips - I got a bit confused as the sizing requirements for NPN are subtly different to the PhotoPortfolios.net (720 vs 640 max long-side size). Not a lot I can do about the straps, but the positioning slightly to the left to allow space to 'fly' into is sound. Amended image attached...

Ta

Andy

Looks alot better Andy,nice detail and light

Welcome and good to see another Oly shooter. BIF are very challanging with the Olympus bodies so you have done very well here. Which combo was this shot with?

I would challenge the idea that BIF are tricky with Oly bodies. 90% of it is practise. I think there is a good chunk of 'oly inferiority complex' amongst a lot of oly shooters that assumes that Canon and Nikon guys have more success. My experiences at the Raptor Foundation show the opposite - I have been with many Nikon D300, D700, D3 and Canon 5Dmk2, 40D, 50D shooters whose keeper rates are far worse than mine. The Nikon's extra points often lead to the wrong bit of the bird in focus if you don't watch what you are doing, and I would only rate the later 1D and new 7D bodies better for this sort of thing.

I typically shoot these with the 50-200SWD and the E-3 (the 50-200SWD is a very fast refocussing lens, faster than almost all other ring-type motor lens I have seen).

My top tips, equally applicable to the E-30 and probably the E-620 are:

- RAW only (lower processor load trumps smaller JPG file writing, allows faster refocussing)
- Set 'L' mode to 4fps (lower processor load than 'H' allows faster refocussing)
- C-AF + M with single point (birds coming straight at you or panning in you're feeling brave/cocky!), diamond (panning for most birds), all points (falcons in the air). The 'M' allows you to spin the focus back to infinity quickly if the AF goes on a hunting spree!
- Turn 'C-AF Lock' to off (sometimes with panning, it can help, but, on balance, leave it off for B-I-F)
- Turn the release setting for C-AF to 'OFF' - better to shoot when you have a focus lock!
- Use manual exposure with spot metering turned on - usually f4 on the 50-200 and set the speed between 1/500s (1/1000s for faster ones) and the ISO to get a 0EV reading on green grass out of shadow (ISO 250-400 should be okay based on the weather forecast). Over-expose by a stop or two for the birds shooting in lower light areas. Do the odd test exposure on the stationary birds and tweak up or down. This prevents under-exposure when shooting against the sky. You'll need to further tweak the exposure down for the light-coloured birds like the barn owls or you'll blow the highlights.
- Prefocus on the stationary bird, half press to start focussing and follow it as it takes off rather than trying to grab it once it has taken off.
- Blow your mirror box out (just the bottom) to make sure there isn't any crap on the AF sensor - it really does make a difference!
- Focus point size set to 'normal', not small
- Start with 'diamond' AF pattern - focus lock is most easily acquired. For birds flying straight at you, switch to single, centre point. Falcons in flight, I tend to use 'all points'. With practise, you can dispense with the diamond pattern and just use the single point.

Here's one with the E-1 (ancient AF system, circa 2002) and the 300/2.8 (not as fast as the 50-200) shot on a gimbal arm - proving that it isn't the equipment!

From my testing at Gigrin and the diving kites I found the 150 F2 plus 1.4 tc much more reliable than the 50-200 swd with the e-3 body also the 300 F2.8 produced more reliable results than the 50-200swd shooting larger swans at the Ouse washes. Comapred to the Canon 100-400 it is a much sharper lens, but I found the swd focussing performance poor by comparison.

My experience is that swd lens suffers from focus stutter under/over focus (its not true hunting, but a fine tune focus delay) and does not nail focus directly unlike the two pro spec lenses - early theories for this behaviour were that it is too quick and cannot be braked fast enough, not sure if that is true, but there is certainly an issue when going from near to infinity focus, focus speed is lost as it fine tunes the focus point.

I haven't tried 4FPS over 5FPS and will give that a go to see what difference it makes.

I think the 50-200 may be more twitchy, but the twitchiness seems to be improved by using the single AF point and smooth panning - for big changes in distance over a short time (e.g. the raptors, which are at 6 - 15m away), the 50-200 is faster than the 300. The delay in refocussing is removed by setting the C-AF lock to 'off' - only really useful for slowish pans where there are things in the way. The Canon 100-400, as well as being not as sharp, focusses pretty slowly. The 70-200 f4 or f2.8 is a lot better for these sort of shots on a cropped-frame Canon body.

The 150/2 is on my shopping list for the end of next year - only just bought the 300/2.8, so I can't afford the extra expenditure right now! Give the alternative settings a go - you will notice a big difference in keeper rate by turning release priority for C-AF and C-AF lock to 'off'!

Andy

BTW, Gigrin looks excellent - I would really like to go there!

The improvement of 4 vs 5fps is not large, but repeatably demonstrable.

Andy

The 150 F2 is a must have lens, when you get it you will understand why, I've hijacked this topic enough.....perhaps catch up at Welney over this winter? it seems to be a relative stones throw away for you

I am hopefully going to go over there with Jeff Harrison (also on these forums) - glad to get multiple recommendations for it!

Andy