Black-tailed Godwits (1st Post)

[Sebastian Erras]

Hi everyone,

this is my first post here.
I´m 21, german, and at the moment I´m studying in the Netherlands.

I took this pic yesterday at Lauwersmeer. I saw some mating Black-tailed Godwits there, so after having the "keeper" shots I tried to play a little with the shutter speed.

I´m not really sure with my results.
Is it too blurry?

400D - Sigma 500/4.5 EX HSM + Kenko 1.4x TC

1/13s - f23 - ISO200 - fullframe

[Manos Papadomanolakis]

Hi Sebastian,
Welcome to BPN!!!
I really like the action and the blur wings,I would prefer more details to the heads,thanks for sharing!

[Marina Scarr]

Welcome to BPN. Love the action on this shot. I wish for a sharper focus on the bottom bird. I also think it would help if the birds were less centered...maybe less space on the right and more on the left. You are so lucky to have had the opportunity to shoot these shots. I am envious. Hope to see more of you on the site.

[John Chardine]

Nice capture of behaviour. The problem with the image is motion blur/camera shake caused by such a slow shutter speed. Your lens was hugely shut down so you had lots of room to open it up and speed up the shutter. Also you could have easily boosted the ISO setting on the body which would have given you more to work with for shutter speed and aperture. Amazing capture considering you used 1/13s shutter speed!

[Sid Garige]

Sebastian,

If its the wing blur you are looking for then your shutter speed is too low for that. Figuring out shutter speed just enough to create that desired wing blurr depends on subject. I guess its more of an experiment. Would like to see this image with hight shutter speed where atleast once subject is in focus.

[Jim Poor]

I think with a little work on the eyes to sharpen them up selectively, this image could be very interesting.

[Maxis Gamez]

Hello Sebastian and welcome to BPN.

This image should be vertical, not horizontal. I like the blur but at the same time it does not add anything to the image.

Keep them coming!

[Sebastian Erras]

Thanks for the great comments and suggestions!

I will give it another try this afternoon and try to follow your suggestions.

I hope I can show you some results soon!

[Norman Pyett]

Hello Sebastian, and welcome to BPN, you'll love it here, & you'll learn a lot here. About your shot. Personally I like the blur look of the wings. The heads & bodies could have been in better focus. you shot at f23 & 1/13sec. on a 500mm + 1.4TC. Unless you didn't have enough time to get this shot off, you could have narrowed your depth of field to maybe F11 which would have increased your shutter speed. You could have also increase your ISO to 400, nothing wrong with shooting 400.
Did you shoot with a tripod or hand held? If hand held remember the old saying 1 over the focal length, unless it's an image stabilizer.
Keep up the posting & good luck
Norm