Post your best bird shots!

[ddt0725]

Really nice shots this week guys!! Quite the catch on your last one, Joel! Fantastic!


I am taking the day off work tomorrow to go eagle scouting since the sun is suppose to be shining for one brief day and I am starting to feel better!


Wish me luck! I am not sure how long they hang around this area in Wisconsin so I hope they are still there!


Denise

[Steve U]

Nice capture Joel, an ethereal quality, nice feel.

[Andy Stringer]

Visited a well known waterfowl winter hang out here in Kentucky

I saw the same three birds on one of my first outings with the 1D Mark IV last May, at a country park in the north east of Scotland.


Mute Swan, 1D Mark IV, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 200mm f/8, 1/1000s, ISO 200


Canada Goose and Gosling, 1D Mark IV, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 200mm f/8, 1/200s, ISO 200
There were three more goslings under the adult's wing


Sleepy Mallard, 1D Mark IV, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM @ 125mm f/2.8, 1/500s, ISO 200

I notice that the bird in Joel's third picture doesn't have the white band around the collar that I see on Mallards in Europe. Is it a juvenile? A hybrid? A North American subspecies? Something else? Just curious...

[Andy Stringer]

I took the liberty of looking at your flickr page ---- Wow, you have some really nice stuff there --- you have been holding out on us. Can't wait to see more.

Thanks, Bob. Glad you liked it, and sorry to have kept you waiting. Here are a couple more ocean wanderers...


Wandering Albatross, 5D Mark II, EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm, f/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 100


Black-Browed Albatross, 5D Mark II, EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm, f/7.1, 1/500s, ISO 100
I was awake early to catch this one at sunrise with the light underneath it.

[JJphoto]

thanks Steve, Rick ,Joel and Denise for your kind words, really appreciate it!


Joel, the Dove picture is really cool, I really like the motion blur of the wings, also good PP work to cloned out the unwanted subject!


Andy, I like the goose with the baby picture very much! I

[Andy Stringer]

I'v noticed that your pictures have the clean looking that my picture don't have, is it because the 5D II, or there are some secret in PP?

JJ, I think you are being hard on yourself. I don't see much difference between my shots and yours in terms of how 'clean' they are. Maybe you notice it more in your full size images.

The larger sensor of the 5D II and 1D IV helps a lot with noise, but I sometimes notice pattern noise in the shadows on my 5D II. I often use a lower ISO and a longer exposure time than I really should for wildlife shots. You wouldn't normally try to shoot a flying albatross at 1/320s and I missed a lot of shots that day by trying to keep my ISO low. I know now that I don't need to worry so much about low ISO with the 5D and 1D. Where necessary, I use Lightroom 2 for noise reduction, but this often isn't required for the web. I pay more attention to noise if I'm going to be printing a shot.

I export as jpeg without resizing, with quality set to 100 and the standard amount of sharpening for screen output. I upload the full size (10-15 MB) jpeg to flickr but what you see here is a downsized version at 800 pixels wide (or 640 pixels tall for portrait shots).

[Joel Eade]

Andy, very very nice images.....that Antarctica trip looks like it was amazing. The 5D2 does well with wildlife and should be able to go to very high iso levels without much noise. I have seen plenty of shots at iso 3200 without a problem.


PS: The Male Mallards here also have the white band around the neck, I believe the one I shot was a juvenile as you suggested.

[Joel Eade]

Another Canada Goose from this past weekend .... I was shooting the birds just slowly swimming around and didn't have enough light for really high shutter speed so I was panning with this one to try to get the head sharp and it came out pretty good, but probably should have bumped the iso even more to get more speed. This bird suddenly started chasing another one and I wasn't ready for the action.


1DMKIII, 300mm 2.8L + 1.4TC, 1/100 f/5.6 iso 1000





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[Andy Stringer]

Joel, thanks for clearing up the query about the mallard. That's a fantastic action shot of the goose. I think you caught it just right as it really has a feeling of motion in the wings and feet.

I checked my archives for higher ISO shots and found this one at ISO 1000. Bonus points for anyone that can identify the species (shot in Argentina):

5D Mark II, EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm, f/8, 1/400s, ISO 1000, cropped.

Then there's this example at ISO 5000:

1D Mark IV, EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm, f/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO 5000, cropped.

The second one really needed the high shutter speed (and the 10 fps frame rate of the 1D IV). I need to get a 500mm f/4L if I'm to bring the ISO down to a reasonable level. A bit of bright sunshine would help too, but there's not much chance of that in a typical Scottish summer.

[Steve U]

I think that could be a nice example of the Argentinian yellow beaked black headed brown bird, heh heh.