Laughing Gulls mobbing Royal Tern to steal fish meant for chick
This image was created on 30 June 2021 on a beach near Jacksonville, FL. I used Induro GIT 304L/Levered-Clamp FlexShooter Pro-mountedSony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 640. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the rear dial: 1/3200 sec. at f/5 (stopped down 2/3 stop) in Manual mode. AWB at 7:16am on a sunny morning with a bit of haze in the eastern sky. Wide/AF-C was active at the moment of exposure and performed perfectly.
See two more image from the amazing JAX colony in the Tips, Tips, & More Tips: Chick-Feeding, Flight/Fight, and When the Light is Bright ... blog post here.
As for the image, don't be shy; all comments are welcome.
From the same post:
The #1 Flight/Fight Tip
Photographing midair avian battles is extremely difficult. There is never any indication that a fight is about to start, and the action is usually over in a few seconds at most. Getting a good look at all of the faces of the combatants is nearly impossible. And the more birds involved in the squabble, the less chance you have of getting decent — much less excellent, head angles. On sunny days, most of the fights you see are likely to be well off sun angle.
My very best advice is that you do not hesitate: get on the action as soon as is humanly possible, trust your camera’s AF system by assuming and anticipating that it will acquire focus, and then hold the shutter button down. If you follow that advice, and you get lucky, you just might come up with a few decent frames. I got really lucky here as six images from a 12-frame sequence were decent. The frame after this one was slightly stronger but the face and bill of the gull at the top of the frame is blocked by the tern’s right wing. Not surprisingly, all twelve frames were made in less than a single second. As I said, you must not hesitate.
As noted in the SONY Alpha a1 Set-up and Info group e-mails, when you are in Wide with Bird Eye and Face Tracking enabled, the Alpha 1’s AF system will revert to a zone-like AF and use multiple AF points to achieve success when it is impossible to detect an eye or a face. In any case, all of the images in the sequence were sharp where they needed to be sharp. Though I was stopped down 2/3-stop, it was primarily the distance to the subject that rendered all of the birds relatively sharp.
with love, artie
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This is so cool Artie. The past couple posts have been awesome in terms of multiple sharp subjects fighting for food!
To get so many subjects in the same frame and focal plane, especially at f5 is awesome. Like your choice of composition leaving in some of the ground for perspective.
Hard to nit anything here but there are some really pronounced halos along the dark wing edges, for instance, the upper arc of the wing on the left most subject where it is maybe most prominent.
wow this is over the top, love everything. contest material, no nits from here except for tiny bit of halo, I think feathering the sharpening mask will fix it
WOW! Pretty amazing to get 4 birds all in the same focal plane and tack sharp.
I am impressed!
I like the crop and how you left a bit of sand/grass at the bottom of the frame. Anchors everything nicely.
Gail
Food Fight!
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