Pintail Flights

DsrtVW · December 4, 2013

Morning before work photo session. Lunchtime too
Sunrise breakfast bite

Lunchtime Flyby

Harryb · December 7, 2013

super

PGM · December 10, 2013

Chris, you are the duck whisperer, for sure! Beautiful! Best, Pam

DsrtVW · December 11, 2013

Thanks Harry and Pam
Merry Christmas

kobistar · December 11, 2013

I like it a lot.... great work!

Oso · December 16, 2013

Both are great. Nice light.

Stumblebum · December 17, 2013

One runs out of superlatives with pictures like this. Not sure how everything is in perfect focus and how it maintains sharpness throughout. Any knowledge you drop is much appreciated!

DsrtVW · December 17, 2013

Stumblebum wrote: »

One runs out of superlatives with pictures like this. Not sure how everything is in perfect focus and how it maintains sharpness throughout. Any knowledge you drop is much appreciated!

Thanks everyone,
First off you need good morning or evening light a pond full of frisky Northern pintails drakes chasing the females around. After 10 am you start to get a lot of shadows on sunny days
My camera setup is a D3 with a Nikon 200mm f2 AF-s lens with TC-20 III 2x teleconverter giving me 400mm f4.
Try to work above 1/1000 s on the shutter speed to freeze motion. Usually shoot Manual or Aperture priority. Single focus point(center) on continuous AF. Fast frame rate of the D3 and big buffer get a lot of frames of each flight.
Tripod is helpful I can shoot handheld but I get far more keepers off a tripod. Ballhead is good then Wimberly Gimbel head is better, but the best I have found for birds in flight is a fluid dampened video head it is so smooth and the one I have is a fairly inexpensive one ( I bought it used) but enough to support my setup.http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=243272&is=REG&Q=&A=details
Using a remote shutter release and dual handles on the video head I do not even touch the camera when tracking and shooting, when shooting mixed stills and action I go with my Wimberly gimbal head.
I have more keepers when using the video head. Smooth movement and vibration dampening.

Most of all get out and shoot when ever you can to practice technique of camera tracking and AF control. Study your targets habits to help anticipate their movements. During the summer I practice on pigeons that follow a certain route consintently

Shot this one this morning

Stumblebum · December 17, 2013

DsrtVW wrote: »

Thanks everyone,
First off you need good morning or evening light a pond full of frisky Northern pintails drakes chasing the females around. After 10 am you start to get a lot of shadows on sunny days
My camera setup is a D3 with a Nikon 200mm f2 AF-s lens with TC-20 III 2x teleconverter giving me 400mm f4.
Try to work above 1/1000 s on the shutter speed to freeze motion. Usually shoot Manual or Aperture priority. Single focus point(center) on continuous AF. Fast frame rate of the D3 and big buffer get a lot of frames of each flight.
Tripod is helpful I can shoot handheld but I get far more keepers off a tripod. Ballhead is good then Wimberly Gimbel head is better, but the best I have found for birds in flight is a fluid dampened video head it is so smooth and the one I have is a fairly inexpensive one ( I bought it used) but enough to support my setup.http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=243272&is=REG&Q=&A=details
Using a remote shutter release and dual handles on the video head I do not even touch the camera when tracking and shooting, when shooting mixed stills and action I go with my Wimberly gimbal head.
I have more keepers when using the video head. Smooth movement and vibration dampening.

Most of all get out and shoot when ever you can to practice technique of camera tracking and AF control. Study your targets habits to help anticipate their movements. During the summer I practice on pigeons that follow a certain route consintently

Thanks!

boco · December 18, 2013

prachtige beelden.
grt,boco.

Pintail Flights

Comments