Tawny Frogmouth in the back yard

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Caught this guy and her chicks sitting in a tree in my folks' back yard

Nikon D40, 300ED @ f/4.5, 160th sec, ISO400

Lesson - do not attempt to photograph a fluffy chick using autofocus. I constantly found the branch the chick was sitting on was in perfect focus and it was just a fuzzy fluffball. No vertical lines! Manual focus was still tricky at distance these were shot at, but these worked out OK I guess.

[theodog (Jeff)]

Nice images Chris.
Nature poster stuff.

[leon]

Great Photo's Chris, gee those birds always look so serious.

Leon

[SkySearcher (Daniel)]

The adult one looks kinda dopey, like a caricature.
Great shots, I wish some birds like this would land in my backyard!

[ving (David)]

haha!! cute chris, very cute
havent seen one of these for ages!

[Matty P (Matt)]

Very nice Chris, the adult one looks kinda lonely.
Very cute though.

[astroron (Ron)]

I love the pics Chris, it's the first photo I have seen of a chick.
Well Done.
Ron

[jakob]

Originally Posted by Omaroo

Caught this guy and her chicks sitting in a tree in my folks' back yard

Nikon D40, 300ED @ f/4.5, 160th sec, ISO400

Lesson - do not attempt to photograph a fluffy chick using autofocus. I constantly found the branch the chick was sitting on was in perfect focus and it was just a fuzzy fluffball. No vertical lines! Manual focus was still tricky at distance these were shot at, but these worked out OK I guess.

Nice shots Chris!

Re focusing, I don't know the D40 but I found with the D80 on automatic I had the same problem.
I switch to 'P' mode where the centre spot is used to autofocus. That way I have control of the focusing point.
This may work for you too.

[Omaroo (Chris Malikoff)]

Originally Posted by jakob

Nice shots Chris!

Re focusing, I don't know the D40 but I found with the D80 on automatic I had the same problem.
I switch to 'P' mode where the centre spot is used to autofocus. That way I have control of the focusing point.
This may work for you too.

LOL! I put it down to heat of the moment... and the threat of a lost shot. Now that you mention it I should have done just that - D'Oh!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe it's time to put some custom menu settings together so that I can quickly change between various setups to suit most situations like this.

[GrahamL]

great pics chris .. we have a family on the farm .. they really are creatures of habit ..I often find them pretty much sitting on the same branch of the same trees over many months .