Touchdown

[terrib]

Just sharing this for fun. We had a lot of bird activity early yesterday morning and I was shooting in low light using Aperture Priority with ISO at 1600. Most of the birds were flitting from tree to tree and to the ground. Then I saw this one soar up and I was lucky to click the shutter at just the right time for this great wing detail. Lucky I had it on auto focus and ai servo. It was a long way off and this image has been cropped way down.

[AB26]

Great shot, TFS.

Andre

[Cantab]

A really good photo! I don't recognize the bird. What is it?
I was interested that you were using autofocus. I was shooting birds yesterday with the same 100-400mm lens you have and concluded that autofocus was a bust for trying to track birds in the air. But I suppose the difference was that your bird was approaching a fixed tree that the autofocus could latch onto. I'm going to get my bald eagle and merganser photos from yesterday up soon but I've only recently switched from film to digital and the post-processing is taking awhile to get used to.

Bruce

[terrib]

Thanks, Andre!

Bruce, The bird is a Black Billed Magpie. The colors look quite different all spread out and with the sunlight reflecting on them. Actually this one was taken with my 55-250 lens at about 235mm. But I did crop a lot of the photo out. I just got my 100-400 lens yesterday and haven't had a chance to try it out yet. I also have not gotten good shots trying to track them in the air but I'm hoping it's my skill level and not the lens. I'd like to think I can do better with practice or the right circumstances. I think in this shot he had just slowed to a point and was spread out to make a big enough target that the auto worked. One thing is for sure, I would not have gotten the shot on manual focus.