Those of you that have seen my previous posts will know i spend a lot of time at the Hawk Conservancy in the UK trying to get Action shots of Birds in flight, and really enjoy the challenge of trying to capture sharp images of particularly the smaller and faster birds like Lanner & Peregrine Falcons.
I post below a shot taken in July of last year as i was getting used the my then new 500mm F4 lens, the shot was almost what i was trying to capture but its not quite razor focused on the eye. Now maybe i am expecting too much from the equipment. But i would be grateful to hear from anyone else who has more experience of shooting small fast birds.
I can't be objective about this image or your other falcon images..I love them:) A dream of mine to even see one in flight. I agree that you probably don't have pin point focus on the eyes and striving for perfection is the way to go..Love the image anyway.
I like this a lot John One difficult bird to follow Can't say much except I wish it were mine The best advice of these fast birds is panning faster !!!! Love the selected Crop !!!! Big Congrats !!!
Photographing birds in flight is the best fun you can have with a camera in my opinion, and this is a pretty good shot given how fast Peregrines fly - it certainly looks like that bird is moving!
The best thing I've done with flight shots is to close down the aperture a bit - it seems counter intuitive at first b/c you want to maximise shutter speed, but it gives you that bit more chance to get the whole bird in focus. You certainly could have gone to F7.1 or even 8 with this shot - you'd probably still have well over 1/1000 on the shutter which is generally more than enough.
Jim Neiger also had a good thread called Bumping the focus for BIF which is well worth a read.
Peregrine - Flyby
