Spoonbills in flight

[Craig Brelsford]

Any comments will be welcome, but I'm particularly interested in how you'd have handled the situation and what I should do next time.

Some background:

After more than two hours of patient stalking, I came to within 90 m of these Eurasian spoonbills. I'd timed my stalk so as to be in a good position during the good light. I was knee-deep in muddy water and having the time of my life. Suddenly the spoonbills took off. To my surprise, their trajectory was somewhat toward me. Because the spoonbills were close and because they'd just begun their flight, they are bunched up in the frame. (This shot is full-frame; no crop.) I regretted not having taken off my 1.4x teleconverter, but just moments before I'd been shooting the spoonbills standing still and was needing all the focal length I could get. I thought that the spoonbills would give some warning that they were about to fly, allowing me time to take the teleconverter off, but they gave none. Shooting these white birds is problematic, especially in the bright sun of semi-arid Inner Mongolia. I want speed, but if I run my ISO too high, then I get noise. If I try to compensate for the noise by exposing to the right of the histogram, then the whites of the spoonbills burn out. How can I square this circle?

Results such as this one have put me in the market for the Nikon D3 (or possibly D4, rumored to be coming out next year).

Specs below. Note my exposure compensation of -0.7, necessary even minutes before sundown with the spoonbills to avoid hot areas. The downside is that the faster speed means a darker photo and therefore noise.

Device: Nikon D300
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal length: 850mm
VR: OFF
Aperture: F/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1000s
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: -0.7EV
Metering: Center-Weighted
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 320

[Randy Stout]

Craig:

Nice colors, well exposed, attractive birds. The merges and cut off birds are a challenge here. I think that the two right birds could be interesting if you had just the two of them and the entire bill of the lead bird. To my eye they have alll started to angle away from you at this point.

I don't think there is a perfect answer for your questions re: exposure and getting caught with the wrong focal length on the camera.

If it is physically possible, I carry two bodies, the second one with a medium zoom, such as a 70-300 on a crop body (D300) for when they fly and I need to be able to adjust to the changing angles and sizes quickly. If they fly away from me, I won't take a tail end shot anyway, so the relatively shorter reach is less of an issue.

It doesn't sound like a second body would be easy under the circumstances you described however.

The exposure issue is also a challenge. I occasionally shoot loons (;)) and their black and whites can be a real exposure challenge in anything but the softest light. I am constantly shooting a test shot and checking the histogram to be sure I have the best compromise for the every changing lighting conditions. The newer sensors in the next round of Nikons probably will have a wider dynamic range, which is what will really help that issue.

Thanks for sharing your adventures.

Randy

[Craig Brelsford]

Randy, hi, thanks for your detailed response. I see that you use the D700 and D300; I'd like to have a more serious discussion with you about why you don't use the D3 series. I'd also like to know where you got your info about the "next round" of Nikons. I presume that by "next round" you're meaning D4. Where did you find out that the next round of Nikons will probably have a wider dynamic range? (If necessary, you and I could communicate one on one rather than use the forum.)

My D300 is showing the effects of two and a half years of hard use. The only thing keeping me from buying a D3s now is the probability that the D4 will be coming out in the next several months. I've seen too many of my fellow D3 photographers shoot at higher speeds than I because they could jack up the ISO. True, the cropped sensor of the D300 is useful, and I'll miss that. But I'm acutely feeling the need to shoot at higher ISO without the noise.

Going over my shots from Inner Mongolia, I'm finding many shots compromised by noise. In the bright light, it was often impossible to go high ISO plus expose to the right of the histogram. Even non-white birds could burn.

Yes, the birds were beginning to angle away from me at the moment captured in the photo. Yes, it was impossible to carry anything into that water except my camera and lens mounted on the tripod.