Swallows over water

[Marco]

Some feeding swallows

1.


2.


3.

4.

5.

 

[musicaleCA]

A 1D Mk II!!! *insert jealous face*

Beautiful shots. Tack sharp and with so little blur it makes my head spin...And 1/1600 too. I'm going to remember that my camera is capable of such things too from now on, though perhaps not with quite the same sharpness (due to operator silliness I'm sure).

Fantastic man. (Just...use sRGB for monitors maybe? AdobeRGB gets compressed oddly to fit the gamut and I've found it can wash-out colours. I accidentally uploaded a bunch of photos to Flickr in ProPhoto. Gods was that ugly. >.< )

And, and what glass did you have on there?

 

[squirl033]

superb! the 1D III's lightning fast AF obviously helps, but for me, the challenge is just keeping the little buggers in the viewfinder!! do you track these, or focus at a preset point and shoot when they fly through?

 

[Josh220]

I really like #2

 

[Marco]

Thx peeps

superb! the 1D III's lightning fast AF obviously helps, but for me, the challenge is just keeping the little buggers in the viewfinder!! do you track these, or focus at a preset point and shoot when they fly through?

I'd love a 1D III
Could only afford an old second hand 1D IIn though

I've tried the preset focus but the DOF is thin enough at the distances(and light) I'm working at that it doesn't do much good.

I'm trying a couple of methods
1.
Track them coming from afar, keep them centered and as they get close enough get a decent size snap away.

2.
Similar to the first, but instead focus on the water below them(and a little closer to account for angles)

8 out 10 times the system is busy hunting for focus, seeing as its damn hard to keep one centered, so most passes no shots are taken.
Out of the other 2/10 times most shot are slightly OOF which make them worthless.

This time I went out I was shooting for 3-4 hours (twas too dark most of the time, overcast, winter, not enough light) took about 3-400 shots and had about 15 sharp shots in the end.

Love that keeper ratio :blushing:

 

[PhotoXopher]

I've been trying to get a shot of these things for 2 months now, amazing work here! This has to be about THE hardest subject to photograph - man they are quick!

Awesome stuff.

 

[ben306]

They are breathtaking. I know how hard it is to capture these birds simply because they are so fast, been trying myself with no luck. Nr 2 gets it for me