Pied Kingfisher exiting the water with a fish. I woke up early this morning to drive 200kms to my favourate Nature reserve. This is one shot that I have been attempting for ages. Although not close enough, Im keeping it until a better one. I am contradicting myself having said not close enough, when my focal length was only 285mm out of available 400mm. My lens was set up for a take off shot, thus I had zoomed out, and this happens all so quickly, that one doesnt realise to get max out of the lens.
Canon 50D
100-400 L IS USM @ 285mm
1/3200
F/5.6
ISO 1000
Great action shot, on the plus side you nailed the water ripples on the other side the the fish and some bird detail is hard to see due to subject distance or FL issue. On balance I like it as a habitat type shot. Nice nature activity shot, must have been fun to live that moment.
With this much shutter, why the high ISO, I see you shoot ISO auto. What is the benefit?
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 06-28-2009 at 12:19 PM.
Jeff, To explain my this shooting method, you set your ss as high as possible to freeze the action. By setting the ISO to auto, as you capture the shot, the ISO will adjust according to the light at that specific moment. I was shooting from a hide down towards the water, thus not ideal light, therefore the camera adjusted to suit that light. I know with the same setting pointing upwards, reduces the ISO to between 200-320. Hope that helps.
Interesting, so the camera choose the 1000 ISO because of the low light, it assisted the shutter. Do you feel it can affect quality in some cases or does it have a max ceiling you can manage with the 50D?
Interesting concept used with shutter priority, the high ISO still makes me pause. Maybe I just need to try it and go from there.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 06-28-2009 at 10:18 PM.
Be happy you got it. You may not have been to get it if you were zoomed all the way to 400, unless you got exactly the correct framing. Congrats on your success and agree on cropping tighter.
Hi Stuart. It is a really good image, but I too have a problem with setting the ISO to auto. This may very well create images great for the web, but is not a good practice for printing or other high resolution work.
1) the fact is that the higher the ISO, the more noise evident in the image. Although noise can be minimized by overexposure, this isn't practical in images where blown-out whites are a real problem. If there are dark areas, not necessarily underexposed, but part of the image is dark, noise will result with higher ISO.
2) The most logical approach, and most common, is to use the lowest ISO you can get away with, down to ISO 200(not much advantage lower). Of course appropriate shutter speed is a primary concern in your image, and shutter speed priority does safeguard that, however underexposure is a possibility. Aperture priority does have the problem of allowing too slow a shutter speed. Manual works pretty well, but only if the lighting conditions don't vary quickly. Although I use aperture priority, and manual, I could see a place for shutter speed priority in this image.
3) In lower light conditions, instead of letting the camera pick the ISO, you can get a feel of what will work, and its not difficult. You may very well determine that ISO 1000 is the lowest you can get away with, I've been there, and more often that not, noise is a serious issue, and noise reduction software, with its smoothing algorithms, isn't a viable alternative IMO, unless you are going to downsize the image for the web.
just an opinion~Bill
A good keeper until you get the better one, pity about the focal lenght but I am sure you will get it next time.
Is this still a large crop Stu, or just far for the focal length?
Excellent capture and I like how you included the entire ring !!! One tough little guy to cpture
Regarding auto ISO I think its usable at times. Mostly use it early/late in the day but more often than not I stay away from it. Prefer going to manual and setting the required ISO
Noise wise I don't fully agree with your thought William I think it has to do with the camera being used, some are very capable of good noise performance. Might want to look at my posts in macro, have been using 1600 for most in order to get the needed settings. btw using the MK3 With some of the older cameras you do want to shoot as William suggest lowering the ISO as much as prudent ... always remember sharp beats noise every day !!!
some great thoughts being passed here. love the droplets and action Stu, I think you benefited more from the short focal length than you might think. like Fabs said you might have missed it entirely.
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