Wings, Dolphins, Penguins & Polar Bears!

[Dennis]

Hello,

Weather hasn’t been up to much recently, so here are some snaps of a few birds that I considered for last month’s “Wings” photo comp, along with some dolphin, penguin and polar bear snaps from our recent mini break at Sea World on the Gold Coast. It is a very photo friendly and photogenic place; you simply can’t help but get good photos as the subjects are so cute!

Cheers

Dennis

[Robert_T]

Wow Dennis, some great photography here. I love the twin birds in flight, but my favourite is the bears... looks fantastic and the shower of water spraying off them gives a real feeling of movement and power.

Well done:thumbsup:

BTW Do you make much use of the rapid fire capability of the 40D for this sort of thing?

[Dennis]

Hi Robert

Thanks!

I’ve been experimenting with a few techniques and only used the low speed continuous shooting drive mode for the dolphins as their position was reasonably predictable.

For the birds in flight, I use single shot exposure with manual metering and have found that I can use the Canon L lenses wide open, so that gives me a higher shutter speed to freeze the movement. Typically I’m shooting at 1/1000 to 1/1600 sec at ISO400. This prevents the underbelly of the bird from being underexposed, although the bright sky background is usually over exposed by a stop or two.

I have tried “predictive focusing” where I focus on a point where I think the bird is going to be and then squeeze the shutter just before it gets there, but I have had a lot of failures – I can’t seem to time the lag as well as I used to with my film SLR’s.

So, I change the auto focus mode to AI Servo and select the centre focus point and then try to follow the bird. I still get a lot of failures but have found the success rate at around 30-50%. Even out of those, usually only 1 or 2 are keepers.

Another trick is to set the mode to Aperture Priority and with an L lens, leave it wide open so that the camera then selects fast shutter speeds. The challenge here is to spot meter on the moving bird. The danger is that if you miss the bird and meter off the sky, the bird becomes under exposed as the meter is fooled by the bright sky. Also, if the bird has large areas of white feathers, that can give a false meter reading too.

It’s a steep learning curve but also a lot of fun. So much less tiring that an all nighter!

Cheers

Dennis

[ving]

great shots dennis:) now if the penguin and bears were flying... LOL

i love the second shot mate :)
really interesting pose.

[RB]

Hi Dennis, love the shots, especially the bears and birds in flight, well done.

IMO Aperture Priority is a good choice in these situations.

Another method I've tried is to take some test shots in this mode and then go into manual mode with the settings that yielded the best test result.
If the scene is repetitive and conditions fairly unchanging, it usually produces well exposed images.

Which lens did you use for these shots?

Did you try any shots with a lower ISO?

[Dennis]

Hi David

Thanks and yes, #2 of the Egret preening is my favourite too. Reminds me of a Chinese tapestry pose.

Cheers

Dennis

[Dennis]

Thanks RB,

Hmm, there are so many features and functions on the 40D and it is really good fun exploring them. Last night I read about the “Highlight tone priority” function, C.Fn II-3, where you can force the highlights to be recorded from the 18% grey to highlight tonal range, although I have yet to use this.

Most of the shots were taken with the 70-200 F4L IS, with the in-flight Tern & two Oyster Catchers shot with the 400mm F5.6L which is a really sharp lens provided you afford it the handling respect that such a long focal length deserves.

The bears were shot through some safety wires which were not wide enough apart to poke the 70-200 lens through.

I kept the film speed at 400 just to keep the shutter speeds higher. I think that if the 400mm was tripod mounted on a B&S head just done up enough to allow for smooth panning, I could try ISO 100 to see if that improves IQ?

Cheers

Dennis

[gary]

Hi Dennis,

I have learnt to look forward to your animal shots and these ones don't disappoint either!
Really nice and thanks for sharing them.

Best Regards

Gary

[Dennis]

Thanks Gary – I find it immensely rewarding to be able to peek into the life and behaviour of animals by recording their activities through the lens; the memories seem to last forever.

Now if only you and your team could further develop and enhance Argo Navis to perform GoTo’s on birds in flight, as well as track them! LOL! ;)

Cheers

Dennis