[Theme] Show Birds

[Øivind Tøien]

A kingfisher, Salinas de San Pedro, Murcia.

That is a cute little Kingfisher.

[Øivind Tøien]

Flight paths.
(Z8 500PF)

[Nasos Kosmas]

Nice shots Arturo and Øivind

My swallow mania never ends, shot from the terrace of our house in Piraeus
Z8 180-600 using EVF, 20FPS Topaz DeNoise

[Jürgen Pfeiffer]

oh yes, I know how difficult it is to photograph swallows. Respect for your great shots, Nasos.
I was already happy when I got the swallow inside the viewfinder.

Nikon Zf, 400mm 4.5 TC2x, crop edited with ON1 NoNoise

[Birna Rørslett]

A quarter of a century ago (!), I tried my modest skills of bird photography on swallows swooping down on the water surface to catch small insects. Weather was very dull, wet, and miserable, and I decided quickly that plants offered more opportunities for me as a nature photographer. Plus they tended to stay more put.

Nikon D1 with 300mm f/2.8 ED-IF AiS.

[ARTUROARTISTA]

Manually aiming and focusing on a swallow in flight is difficult.

[ARTUROARTISTA]

This afternoon I captured these insectivores playing. The photo was taken with a very heavy lens, and I was handheld. It's the Nikkor ED 600mm 5.6.

[Øivind Tøien]

Nice shots Arturo and Øivind

My swallow mania never ends, shot from the terrace of our house in Piraeus
Z8 180-600 using EVF, 20FPS Topaz DeNoise

Thanks Nasos, these are really crisp and well composed.

I remember way back attempting manual focus on swallows escaping from their nests at the university's buildings and utterly failing.

[Nasos Kosmas]

oh yes, I know how difficult it is to photograph swallows. Respect for your great shots, Nasos.
I was already happy when I got the swallow inside the viewfinder.

Nikon Zf, 400mm 4.5 TC2x, crop edited with ON1 NoNoise

Thank you Jürgen
With an 800 mm lens practically is impossible to follow in the EVF, I find the optimum is 300-400 mm but you must be lucky to have them near you
After a lot of practice and fail I was able to follow the bird with the lens to 300-400mm and after locating a bird with less erratic movement I zoomed quickly to 600mm and fire, so had a lot of keepers

[Nasos Kosmas]

A quarter of a century ago (!), I tried my modest skills of bird photography on swallows swooping down on the water surface to catch small insects. Weather was very dull, wet, and miserable, and I decided quickly that plants offered more opportunities for me as a nature photographer. Plus they tended to stay more put.

Nikon D1 with 300mm f/2.8 ED-IF AiS.

Birna, its a nice catch considering the years back Now days camera/lens systems are more capable but personally I find them a little behind, AF systems are almost instant but not zero latency

Arturo nice Spotted Flycatcher!

Øivind, I am sure that if you try with AF lens will have success

I think next step is to explore auto capture for this matter

[Birna Rørslett]

The lens was manual focus ... I used the pre-focus technique to get a bird slight less unsharp in 1 out of 10 frames

[ARTUROARTISTA]

When he sings he sounds like an old typewriter.

[Nasos Kosmas]

Very nice Arturo, this Sylvia melanocephala bird is among my favorit

Nice walk around today to mount Parnitha near Athens with ElSid ( a member here) and another friend not a NG member
We found various birds, just posting only this tiny but very beautiful  Common Firecrest- Regulus ignicapilla (male)

Z8 with 180-600mm Topaz DeNoise / Sharpen
Thank you

[ARTUROARTISTA]

Very good, Nasos. Look, in January I photographed this little bird looking for red candies in the pomegranate.

[Nasos Kosmas]

Someone forget to collect this tasteful pomegranate
Very nice capture

Camera/ lens info?