Tawny Eagle

[John Harper]

Hi There

Another shot from my recent trip to see if the MKIII focus fix holds up in brighter light conditions, something we don't get a great deal of in the UK in the winter.
This was taken over the weekend at the Hawk Conservancy Trust and is of a Tawny Eagle called "Frodo".

I was stood off to the left of the flying ground and towards the end of his demonstration he was flying straight at me, this is pretty close to minimum focus distance on the 500mm he was about 6 metres (20 foot) or so away so fairly minimal depth of field.

John

EOS 1DMKIII
EF 500 F4L
ISO 400
1/2500 @ F4

[Lana Hays]

John
A terrific in your face view. I wish that the light had been pointed right at the bird. Beautiful colors, great BG and nice detail. Did you clone something out on the bottom of the bird.....it looks a bit smudgy.

[Harold Davis]

john, that is absolutely fantastic!! i love it. looks like the fix worked great.

[Jim Neiger]

John,

I really like the in your face view of this Eagle. Like Lana, I wish for a direct light angle. The 1D3 and you did very well. You must have had your focus limiting switch on close to focus inside of 10 meters and that makes it more difficult to focus on a flying bird. I hope you set it to the long setting for most of your flight shot attempts. If not, you should try it. It will make things much easier in many cases.

[John Harper]

John,

I really like the in your face view of this Eagle. Like Lana, I wish for a direct light angle. The 1D3 and you did very well. You must have had your focus limiting switch on close to focus inside of 10 meters and that makes it more difficult to focus on a flying bird. I hope you set it to the long setting for most of your flight shot attempts. If not, you should try it. It will make things much easier in many cases.

Hi Jim

Thanks for taking the time to have a look and provide your insight on this and it's a very interesting point that you raise.

As you are no doubt aware from most of my posts i shoot all of my bird shots at the Hawk Conservancy, where you get pretty close to the birds as they are flying, and it is always my aim to get the bird as large in the frame as possible before tripping the shutter.

Now with this in mind I would say possibly 70% or more of my shots are at or inside 10 meters and i always have the limit switch set from 4.5m to infinity.

In my experience on these type of shots i have been quite happy to accept that maybe 80 - 90% of shots at those distances won't be tack sharp focus for a number of reasons but the main one being not keeping the central sensor on the bird. I have found in my somewhat limited usage of the MKIII that its better than my MKIIN in low light and about the same in brighter conditions.

However my knowledge of the focus issues prior to purchasing the camera may also be swaying my perception on this as i am more conscious of getting sharp focus before releasing the shutter so maybe its an unfair comparison, its just i am taking more care over using the MKIII over the MKIIN

In your experience how much does your percentage of in focus shots drop by when you are shooting inside of 10 metres, as to be honest it wasn't something i had even considered before i just figured that Birds in flight was a numbers game and you just have to shoot a lot of frames to get the good ones.

John