After getting the crested tit portrait last week, I feel like my bird portrait quota is full. So I decided to try something new and catch the birds in flight, or at least with their wings raised. Now that’s a challenge for sure! I stood a little bit further away than normal to give the wings some room in the frame and then when a bird sat on a perch, I kept the finger on the shutter to catch the moment they take to flight. And then of course the bird would just sit there until the buffer was full and lift off right after that… But even when the buffer didn’t get full, it’s incredibly difficult to catch the right moment. I also found out that the 40D is not fast enough, and all too often I would have a sitting bird in one frame and an empty perch in the next, because the bird flew off in between the frames. That’s how quick they are! And stuff like getting a sharp eye, I can just dream about it. It wasn’t the brightest of days and I was working with shutter speeds of about 1/500 which would be plenty enough for the portraits, but for the birds on the move it’s not enough and there was motion blur in the eye.
So doing this perfectly, in natural light in the late autumn, with the 40D, is borderline impossible. I could of course keep shooting hundreds and hundreds of frames and at some point the numbers would tip in my favour and I would get that perfect shot, so we’ll see… until then, I’ll settle for this compromise where the eye is sharp for a sitting bird, and the wings are spread for a bird in flight. I had no idea I had caught this until I saw on it on the computer!