Theme: Making Eye Contact

[Duncan Groenewald]

a1/100-400GM

[Brian Sump]

Hey Duncan, nice to have you!

Well, this is a pretty close encounter it seems. About as much detail on an in-flight swallow as I've seen.

Not normally a fan of cutting off wings and tails.... but I do like the pano crop. Colors are shown nicely, though would wish for the opposing wing to be in a position other than straight out from the head.

How much crop? What camera settings and was it handheld?

[arash_hazeghi]

nice job getting this fast flier, sharp with good exposure but you were too close as a result the subject is clipped and too large in the frame, only the head is inside DOF... zooming back could have been a solution here

TFS

[Duncan Groenewald]

Hey Duncan, nice to have you!

Well, this is a pretty close encounter it seems. About as much detail on an in-flight swallow as I've seen.

Not normally a fan of cutting off wings and tails.... but I do like the pano crop. Colors are shown nicely, though would wish for the opposing wing to be in a position other than straight out from the head.

How much crop? What camera settings and was it handheld?

Thanks, yes not a fan of clipped wings either, but "it's all about the eye" or so I tell myself. Just couldn't hit the delete key so it serves as a reminder of what technology can do today, and, as a desktop background(16:9 crop), of times before lockdowns where a thing !!

Cropped the image is about 5400px wide and the desktop version is a bit over 6500px wide. With wings extended the birds pretty much fill the frame, see image below from earlier in the sequence.



Settings were 1/6400s f5.6 iso2000 400mm and yes all hand held

[Duncan Groenewald]

nice job getting this fast flier, sharp with good exposure but you were too close as a result the subject is clipped and too large in the frame, only the head is inside DOF... zooming back could have been a solution here

TFS

I have never been very happy with the detail on swallows when they are further away so I was trying for the same kind of detail as I can get on tiny scrub-wrens at 2.5 meters with the 200-600+1.4TC. I think DOF is only one or two centimetres then so I am relying heavily on getting a side-on or banking view but a lot has to go right at once for that all to happen in the frame.

I did get others that I think are much better traditional shots and will post some of them, but each has their challenges. Still haven't got the one where the entire bird is in sharp focus with the kind of detail I like to see so not quite done here yet.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey Duncan, welcome to BPN!

Well this certainly has a 3D factor going for it, and I like it. The thin dof does not bother me at all here. The crop held up well too - something my beloved but long-in-the-tooth 7DII struggles with many times. Thanks for the exif on the second image as I was curious about that.

[Jonathan Ashton]

The image is really an eye opener quite literally I doubt anyone would have seen such a close up of a swallow in flight. It is impressive but on the negative side and truly having been impressed I would have liked to have seen the whole swallow, I looked at the image in the absence of metadata and I got the impression it was a snatched shot and the wings/body were clipped.

[Kurt Bowman]

That is one sharp eye for a Swallow in flight image...but I agree about the crop....not a big fam of cut off wings and tails on BIF images. Still very impressive!

[Colin Driscoll]

Agreed on the outstanding Swallow flight shot, That detail is too good to waste so i would go even tighter, from the near shoulder.

[Duncan Groenewald]

Thanks for the feedback everyone - I will try a tighter crop as that did cross my mind, either way it will remain as inspiration to find a replacement.