The Shorties are back!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Tripod Mongoose head, Canon 7D Canon 500mm f4 L IS & 1.4TC ISO 640 1/800 sec f7.1
Yes they are back and still giving me a pain in the proverbial, it is a nightmare to get the camera to focus. I have dozens of shots from this shoot all with the bird dead centre on the focus spot but there was just insufficient contrast between the birds and the grasses for the focus to lock on. Hopefully I will get my hands on a 5D 111 before too long, and then I will see just how good that is compared to my 7D!
All C&C welcome.

[Jeannean Ryman]

Jon, it's a really neat shot. I would love to see something like this someday. I'm relatively new, so will leave the critique to those more knowledgeable, but take solace in the fact you have a 500mm with AF. Mine is MF only. Talk about focus issues!

[arash_hazeghi]

the action is super but the focus was a bit soft hurting the IQ. It is a tough subject I hope you get some good frames soon.

[Randy Stout]

Jonathan:

Interesting action, not quite sure what happened!

I appreciate your frustration when the camera just won't focus on great action. I am blessed to have a D4, which has great autofocus, but even it misses once in a while.

Will you be able to get in closer eventually? Bigger subject in frame cures a lot of auto focus issues.

Cheers

Randy

[Jonathan Ashton]

I will post some more, I do have some in better focus and larger in the frame -even got one with a little light on it!
I really enjoyed the action shot, I wanted to share it with you, but you are of course spot on in your critique, the image does not really stand up to close scrutiny.
There were 3 birds there and I think this was a little territorial spat, I was really happy yet frustrated I got so many "nearly" shots with two in the frame, still it just serves to entice me back, in fact I am off in a few minutes if the rain holds off!

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Jonathan -

You captured some really great action here! As you know, the focus isn't dead on, but the moment is still frozen for you to share. Keep shooting and sharing. I hope to see some more of these guys!

Miguel

[Doug Brown]

Nice action and some great habitat. Locking focus in scenes like this can be quite challenging. I would also push my ISO and open up your aperture a little to gain a bit of shutter speed.

[Karl Egressy]

I second doug comment regarding shuter speed, Jon.
When the light is not bright enough you wish you had a Mark IV.
I have both cameras and I experience the same with the 7D.
(I have no idea about the 5D MIII)

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Jon, love the backlighting in this, and well timed to capture the action. The higher owl really pops from the BG, and as you know, frustrations apart, you just need to go out and have fun getting a winner, and you will.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Good to see that even you had such hard time focusing still came out with a nice image. Keep it up! hope to see more images of these amazing creatures!

[Jonathan Ashton]

Thanks very much everyone, this was one of a few at ISO 640, most were ISO 800, I wanted to see if there was much difference in noise - as I understand things there is no ISO 640 this is an in camera fudge that is in all likelihood going to introduce more noise than if I was on ISO 800.