Albatross in flight

[zackiedawg]

I am personally not a fan of burst mode but that is me. I tend to always shoot in NEF format which with my camera would possibly slow this burst mode down but not using it means that I am guessing. I do see the virtues of burst mode but I find it distracting, the albatross is a graceful bird that is a slow flyer, so hopefully I can get the right shots but I will try and play with this burst mode.

 

I'm like you, in that I'm a more deliberate shooter and don't like the spray-and-pray approach of just firing off huge bursts of shots to see what I get. But there's another important upside to shooting some bursts, even slower ones, when shooting birds and wildlife...it's not about trying to get one shot in focus, or hoping to get something in frame, as much as it's about getting all the random variables right. If you wait for just the right moment, and fire a single frame of a bird, you may get home only to find out that the bird had blinked its eye at that moment, or the wing tip partially obscures the face. By firing more than one shot of a constantly moving animal, you give yourself a much better chance that at least one of those 2, 3, or 5 shots has the right wing position, the nice open eye, the perfect foot position, the nicest background (ie: a nice strip of white cloud and blue sky, which is more interesting than just blue sky). Even in burst mode, I'm pretty sparing - I may shoot 10 frames of a bird, in short bursts of 3 or 4 at a time...just to cancel out all the random annoyances that can ruin the single shot.

[zackiedawg]

BTW, here's a quick example of where a burst mode can make a tremendous difference in the result you get. This is a belted kingfisher, a very difficult bird to photograph in flight because it tends to be extremely fast. This was shot from a fixed position, handheld, with a 300mm lens (and 1.4x teleconverter):

 

 

According to the EXIF data, it was shot at 2:58:32. According to the EXIF, the next two shots were taken in the same exact second, 2:58:32, in a 3 frame burst:

 

 

 

Now, in less than 1 second, this bird not only traveled a few dozen feet through the air (note the completely different background cloud patterns in each of the 3 frames), but also was captured with the wings all the way down, the wings all the way up, and the wings part-way up. The advantage of the burst sequence is that there's no amount of great timing or skill that can perfectly capture the exact desired wing position of a bird at this speed, because of the various incremental delays in the shutter movement and the great speed and variability of the bird's movements...throw in that he might have briefly blinked his eye in one of those frames, or at that very moment of capture might have been passing a blank patch of blue sky, or worse, a telephone pole or some ugly background, and had you only captured one frame, though it certainly could have been a 'technically' fine capture, the question is how much better could it have been if you had 2 or 3 more shots from that very moment to pick from, which might have given you a nicer wing position, less blur in the wingtips, a better background, a pop of color from underwing, and so on? That's why I'd strongly endorse you considering using short bursts when capturing birds in flight, especially something so regal and rare that you may not get the opportunity to see and shoot one again. If you came home and your only single frame of an albatross ended up having closed eyes and a trail of bird excrement trailing out the back, that would be too unfortunate!

[glojo]

Beautiful stunning pictures and thank you for sharing them

[dtvmacdonald]

You've got the exact right equipment. You camera has a LCD screen on the back that almost surely can magnify the image to 100% size. Look at your pics after the birds have left (and they will) and throw away the failures,

and learn from them.

 

You've gotten all the advice you need! It WILL work out just fine.:)

[glojo]

You've got the exact right equipment. You camera has a LCD screen on the back that almost surely can magnify the image to 100% size. Look at your pics after the birds have left (and they will) and throw away the failures,

and learn from them.

 

You've gotten all the advice you need! It WILL work out just fine.:)

I will be taking a laptop with me which I will be using to download all my images. The small screen on the camera is okay for making sure I have captured an image but I much prefer making my decisions when looking at the pictures on a larger screen. I will sort out the wheat from the chaff and then in slow time I will convert the keepers into jpegs whilst storing the original files. I am guessing there will not be enough hours in the day once I get started.

[Hotshot80]

Hi. here is an image of a Yellow-Beaked Albatross I was lucky to get when we went on a whale Watching trip from Kaikoura on the South island of New Zealand

 

[glojo]

Hi. here is an image of a Yellow-Beaked Albatross I was lucky to get when we went on a whale Watching trip from Kaikoura on the South island of New Zealand

 

Beautiful picture which to me highlights what is possible and given me the confidence to take this very heavy lens on our cruise.