A Tough Shot Part I: Short-billed Dowitcher

[Doug Brown]

I followed a week in Costa Rica with 5 days in Northern California, where I photographed with Arash. He showed me a place that's great for shorebirds. I wanted some decent flight frames of the small fast birds. It was pretty challenging but I came away with a few good frames. This is a Short-billed Dowitcher (unless it's a Long-Billed Dowitcher :S3:) taken the other day.

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Canon 1D Mark IV, 600mm, f/7.1, 1/2500, ISO 400, manual exposure, hand held

[Dumay de Boulle]

Great top side banking pose and IQ...Lovely image!

[gail bisson]

Beautiful Doug. I love the vertical composition and the wing spread and fan tail. BG is great. I love the v shaped white feathers on the back. I have never seen this before. A keeper for sure!
Gail

[Herb Houghton]

Nice topside capture Doug. I do like the feather patterns on these shorebirds. The BGD looks good too.

[Chris Kotze]

Super banking pose captured, well exposed and excellent detail

[Mital Patel]

Doug

This is extremely beautiful and hardest part for me if i choose to shoot.
I would be glad if you can make a little text on how you shot and decide the settings to understand the situation and how you really manage such wonderful shot.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Its beautiful Doug Bhai, nice IQ and loved the pattern here...:cheers:

[Doug Brown]

Doug
This is extremely beautiful and hardest part for me if i choose to shoot.
I would be glad if you can make a little text on how you shot and decide the settings to understand the situation and how you really manage such wonderful shot.

Hey Mital. I'll try to explain my thought process. These are very small very fast birds, so shutter speed is critical; I was going for 1/2000 or faster. I used manual exposure, although aperture priority would have worked fine (the birds were on a constant water BG, not a varied BG). I positioned myself in between two groups of birds, knowing that birds were flying from one group to the other on a regular basis. All that was left to do was lock focus and track them, but this was the hardest task of all. I opted for a bare 600mm lens because AF performance is much better than when you attach a teleconverter. A 500mm lens would have been suboptimal because the birds were small and relatively far away from me. Hand holding is key due to the extra degrees of freedom of movement you have when photographing a challenging flight subject. It takes a lot of repetitions to get the rhythm of the birds down, and then you need a little luck to get the right pose. Hope this helps!

[Nico Steenberg]

Great in flight pose and eye contact. A super IMG !!!

[Harshad Barve]

great pose , nice BG and eye contact
TFS

[arash_hazeghi]

This one was a tough shot and you nailed it. It was great shooting with you!

[Stu Bowie]

Superb wing position Doug, tack sharp, and the comp works well.

[Mital Patel]

Hey Mital. I'll try to explain my thought process. These are very small very fast birds, so shutter speed is critical; I was going for 1/2000 or faster. I used manual exposure, although aperture priority would have worked fine (the birds were on a constant water BG, not a varied BG). I positioned myself in between two groups of birds, knowing that birds were flying from one group to the other on a regular basis. All that was left to do was lock focus and track them, but this was the hardest task of all. I opted for a bare 600mm lens because AF performance is much better than when you attach a teleconverter. A 500mm lens would have been suboptimal because the birds were small and relatively far away from me. Hand holding is key due to the extra degrees of freedom of movement you have when photographing a challenging flight subject. It takes a lot of repetitions to get the rhythm of the birds down, and then you need a little luck to get the right pose. Hope this helps!

Oh doug you are such a gentleman. i will def give try myself to give hands on flight .. i did in past with my old nikon 300s and 80-400 and it was just too good with smaller focal length and lighter lens for flight captures. after using 500 for almost two and half year for documenting birds i never gave try for flight .. seems more fun and good to have if you get sharp .. will sure try my luck on that.

Thanks a stack guru.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Doug, the intricate details have come out so well....masterfully done...fully understand how tough this must be.

[Doug Brown]

Thanks to everyone who took the time to comment!