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Well just got back from WTP with Nicole and Tai (spelling?). We had a pretty good day for spotting birds, but an attrocious day for lighting. Weather forecast was for a fine day with a top of 16. I think it reached this temperature but there was a lot of cloud cover that made for really high key backgrounds when shooting into birds perching on trees or midflight. I think we lost count of the number of raptors we spotted during the day. I think another outing to WTP is in order when the sun is out.

Anyway here is the first of my shots, a Black Shouldered Kite.
Will post more later as I'm about to go out for dinner and a movie.

Nikon D70
Nikkor 70-200VR with TC1.7
Focal Length 340MM
ISO 400
Exp Mode Manual
Shutter Speed 1/500th
Aperture F/9
Flash: SB800
Flash: i-TTL
Flash Comp: -2 & 2/3 (probably not right)

Cripes... that is a nice photo Darryl... I love the translucency of the tail feathers...

When I saw the title of your post, I wasn't expecting photos of birds...

I'm interested to see that you used flash for that shot... How close was the kite???

It was pretty full frame so fairly close. There were two of them and they were fairly friendly, not as jumpy as some of the others we saw later that day. They put on a great aerial display.

Great shot.

Is there any particular reason you shoot fully manual? I know it's the way it was done in the past, but I can't see much of an advantage?

That is one fantastic shot. The wings, tail and eyes are all spot on - it's almost too perfect! Well done.

Frank

What can one say about this bird pix.......... except just fantastic.......

looking foward to seeing more

cheers
bp

Great shot Darryl, Yes sky was much the same here today in parts. But yeh i like this birdy shot.

Darryl

Awsome shot. And this was on a BAD day

Darryl,

What a great shot, and nicely filled frame. Did you do much cropping in post processing? I presume external flash?

Alex

Kipper - great shot, so enjoy your dinner and movie

Tah tah and tah.

Pippin, recently I have been using a mixture of aperture and manual priority for bird shots. There isn't much different between aperture and manual, the only thing is I do a lot of shooting with flash and that limits the shutter speed to 500. So if I'm shooting aperture which is practically fully auto except keyed in aperture I tend to look at the subject, wait for the beep and fire. So I tend to ignore the camera saying HI at me because it can't automatically select a shutter speed high enough to get the right exposure. However if I'm in manual mode I tend to check the metering bars while I'm shooting. I will get around to using aperture all the time, I think I was in aperture for about 80% of the day. The problem is that I should of really taped off the back two contacts so I could of used a higher shutter speed.

Alex, cropped image was about 2600x1740. So not much cropped off the shot.

Darryl
This is an image I just love to keep looking at. It's beautiful! I guess this is why we take photographs. Outstanding bird image.

Tah, Matt.

Does anybody know how one can specify image sizes for Smugmug for each of the sizes it creates?

I'd love to have specific sizes it uses from the Original Photo.

Hmm, todays outing photo count (more like shutter, 2/3 are tripe) around 1000+ shots. I think I got a bit trigger happy. Plus the light was so bad I was hoping to try to shoot as many shots and hope for the best. This shot here thought was about shot #20 and taken right at the start of the day. Like 5min into the area.

kipper/Darryl,

Great shot. BTW: what movie did you go and see

I have just read Nicole's report from yesterday. Then I came across your shot. Look forward to sighting more, and also Nicole's.


Cheers,

Another shot of the Black Shouldered Kite that I liked. The edge of the top wing was cropped off a bit, and the bottom tip was just obstruct by a branch. When I was out in the field I zoomed in and liked a crop like this. Almost could of done with the D2X crop feature :0

Both are very good shots, Darryl, but that first one is my fav. I really like the way the feathers appear on that shot. Well done.

The first one is my favourite too. I swear you were luring them with mice. It's a great shot though.

*collapses* WOW!

Hi Kipper,

Nice capture there. I like the first pic. Very well composed and exposed. Only it is little noisy.

regards,

Arthur