My annual visit to the flamingos has been really productive this year with the 500VR lens. A lot of shooting opportunities to photograph flights with very different light conditions and different skies (deep blue, white and grey). I am not sure why but the grey skies in the area are really dramatic and match perfectly with the flamingo´s colors, at least in my opinion. Pink and grey works really nicely for me. The first morning lights has been really nice but problematic because the intense reds of the flamingos are oversaturated very quickly due to the wave length of the morning light, very rich in red color, and the tendency of digitall bodies to oversaturate the red channel.
Almost all my images has been created using the 1,4X-TC and handholded, with no blind because the birds are really cooperative there. I think that the 500VR+1,4XTC is really handholdable and a terrific combo for birds in flight. Sharpness is amazing, in the same league of my old 300VR, even with the 1,4XTC.
In the past months I have been testing a D300 and, instead of the fact that at first glance I didn´t liked a lot, now I am really happy with it. I miss the building and ergonomy of my D2X but it is obvious that the image quality is much better in the D300. Another reason is that I like to overexpose a bit and if you want to capture a bird in flight at f8, 1/1650s and overexposed… you need a high ISO and that is not the strongest point of the D2X. Now most of my flight images are in the ISO640-800 range (some of them even at ISO1000). Why? Very simple, I wanted to produce overexposed images (about one stop) because I can fix the exposure in the RAW conversion very easily, producing very good details in the blacks with less noise. The images doesn´t look great in the camera but they are perfect for processing, especially if the image is strongly contrasted.
More images at my blog.
As always, your comments and critics are strongly appreciated :)
Murcia, Spain
Nikon D300 AFS NIkkor 500VR+1,4XTC, handheld f8 1/







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