Another great scene messed up by sloppy shooting!

[pnodrog]

Just to prove that I can mess up bird photos as well as anybody else.

7D Mk II with Sigma 150-600 lens at 600. 1/640 F8 Iso 400. A little on the low side for shutter speed but just about acceptable for a wading bird which wasn't doing anything interesting. So I was following it in the hope that something exciting might happen - and when I detected some movement I fired my first shot. But the bird leapt into the air with a great deal of wing flapping that took it out of my autofocus reach which concentrated itself on the water ripples instead. The shutter speed would have been far too slow as well.

Nothing much else happened on that day so after a couple of hours I gave up and went home without a single keepable photo. Except for a landscape type shot of some moored boats with reflections.

Blurred or over exposed flying birds are a regular feature for me with at least 90% failure rate. Sometimes, if I can work out an average exposure, I will set the camera manually to avoid all those false settings caused by background problems. But that is usually an invitation for the sun to hide behind a cloud!

You have just exquisitely proved your initial comment......well done - knowing what went wrong is the mark of a good photographer.