[Theme] Show Birds

[Nasos Kosmas]

Very  nice catch Colin Wellcome back to action

I just remembered this owl I got some weeks ago 

[ColinM]

Very  nice catch Colin Wellcome back to action

I just remembered this owl I got some weeks ago 

Thanks Nasos
I went to this site twice last week, but on the second night the birds didn't appear until it was much darker.

I like your image.
In the UK we have one like this that is locally known as a Little Owl.
When I Google this I find its Latin name is Athene Noctua, and its also known as the owl of Athena or owl of Minerva

[Øivind Tøien]

Can you tell us how these various setting fare when birds are flying through
- groups of trees,
- branches,
- past structures etc?

When I switched to groups and 3D, I lost many shots because the AF was latching onto other things nearby
(much of the time, the owl was flying almost directly towards me, but through branches etc)

Even in open sky when it was flying on a path parallel to me, I got worse results with 3D and groups than I did single point AFC

Contrasty backgrounds are always a challenge, grabbing the attention of the focusing system. It helps a little to have costom setting a3 set to maximum delay. I have subject motion set to the mid value.

[Øivind Tøien]

Very cute Little Owl, Nasos!

While looking for dragonflies, the local Herring Gull (Larus argentatos) at my little nearby lake got a very luck catch! The lake is stocked with Rainbow Trout each spring, as it is too small for anything but the Blackfish to survive the anoxic conditions under the ice. Lucky captures with 500PF on the Z8. The shutter speed was 1/1000s, really way to long, but no time to change settings!
#1  Looking for pray
#2 Spotted
#3 Got it!
#4 -9 Taking it away
#10 In-flight meal

[golunvolo]

Excellent action. The calm pond reflections are the icing.

[Hugh_3170]

+1

A wonderful sequence Øivind (except for the wee rainbow trout that is!).

Excellent action. The calm pond reflections are the icing.

[ColinM]

Really good sequence Øivind

[Birna Rørslett]

Dinner is served, courtesy of Z8 some like it raw ....

[Øivind Tøien]

Thanks for the enthusiastic comments all of you! Raw for sure and no problems for the Z8 to digest it all. The part of the sequence with the trout fully visible happened within time stamps of two seconds. I see I missed the moment of the actual catch when I paused capture for 2 seconds between #2 and 3 and during swallowing the fish for 3 seconds between #9 and 10 due to my old habits of shooting short bursts, which would not have been necessary with the Z8 and the HE* raw format I was using at the time. But then it was not foreseen that there would be an actual catch after #2. I am using a 1TB CFE Prograde Gold v. 4.0 card, so no reason to try save on card space during captures.

[Bent Hjarbo]

No just keep pressing. I did this at a sports event at 30 fps, but didn’t realise that I was only getting JPEGs.

[Øivind Tøien]

No just keep pressing. I did this at a sports event at 30 fps, but didn’t realise that I was only getting JPEGs.

Yes, that is for sure part of the learning curve transitioning from D500. There is need to keep a close watch on the drive mode settings. I wish they could be linked to the shooting bank. I have 30 fps permanently activated for pre-captures and only use that frame rate when that is needed. In the above case I am not sure if I was at 10 or 20 fps as I was looking for dragonflies - I usually have low set to 10 and high set to 20. But since I got 17 frames that bridged two following second-timestamps, it was likely at 20fps.

[ColinM]

Along the rocky cliffs & coast of West Wales, the air (and cliffs) was full of Guillemots and Razorbills (sorry I only know the English names for them)
Plus lots of different types of seagull, cormorants etc

This pair of Razorbills are desperately trying to protect their chick from a seagull (who's trying to look like he's really not interested)
The decision about when one of them goes off to find food can't be easy - the gulls are quick to spot an opportunity

D500 300mm PF plus TC1.4 handheld

[Nasos Kosmas]

Very  nice sequence Oivid
I always use 20 fps to capture action but I also used 30fps with pre capture of 1 sec and have a lot of birds flying just after perch

Colin your photo is a kind of documentary Razorbills don’t have an easy task, very nice!

[Øivind Tøien]

Very  nice sequence Oivid
I always use 20 fps to capture action but I also used 30fps with pre capture of 1 sec and have a lot of birds flying just after perch

Colin your photo is a kind of documentary Razorbills don’t have an easy task, very nice!

Thanks Nasos, yes I need to adapt to the new capabilities of the Z8, I think 20fps is going to be standard for action looking forward.
And very nice documentation on the difficult time of the Razorbills, Colin.