Bosque Del Apache 'Drive By' + Edit

Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
So in driving back from Green Valley, AZ to home I decided to head over to this famous wildlife refuge on my first day of driving, as I was staying the night in Albuquerque. I got there later in the day after about 7+ hours of driving which these days is getting close to my limit. I drove the loop road and ended up at the best location for birds close to sunset. I was originally shooting the birds on the ground mostly and my keeper rate from that was very poor. The RF100-500 showed off its Achilles Heel as my ISO had to be high to get high enough shutter speeds in the dwindling light. Not sure how much of my AF issues were do to the conditions and how much to my technique and/or camera settings. Probably a bit of both... The park was a combo of lots of deserted areas, with a couple of ares chock full of birds in every direction, to the point it was hard to know what to shoot.

After a number of so-so images of birds on the ground I was playing with birds in flight, and eventually racked the zoom all the way to the wide end to get a wider aperture. This is shot at 1/1000th and f/5.6 at 100mm and ISO 800. I am a little amazed at how everything is in acceptable focus. The sun was almost down and the sky colors here are slightly accentuated, as is the foreground brightness to just show a few of the many birds also on the ground. This is certainly my favorite image of the visit and probably the only 'keeper' of the shoot.

I think this one could be named 'Call Air Traffic Control!!!" :D

LRCC_sRGB_FW_CallATC_TAP14163.jpg



Comments and critiques welcome, as I am still a fledging wildlife imager at this point...

ML
 
JimFox

JimFox

Moderator
Staff member
Hey Mike,

I don't shoot birds too much, but I do know there are settings that should be changed to do BIF. Now your ground shots it wouldn't matter, the BIF setting is for moving objects.

One thing I do know is as the light gets less, the images will get worse. :) I think light is everything when it comes to birds. Maybe Eric can add some tips.

With that said, I do like this result. A landscape image with birds flying in it is pretty cool.
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
JimFox said:
Hey Mike,

I don't shoot birds too much, but I do know there are settings that should be changed to do BIF. Now your ground shots it wouldn't matter, the BIF setting is for moving objects.

One thing I do know is as the light gets less, the images will get worse. :) I think light is everything when it comes to birds. Maybe Eric can add some tips.

With that said, I do like this result. A landscape image with birds flying in it is pretty cool.
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Jim,

Well actually, I had better results on all of the BIF shots as far as focus was concerned. The camera did very well on that. Problems came in from continually swapping form ground shooting to BIF shooting and not remembering (or having time) to bump the shutter speed back up. the puzzler is that the R5 has excelled at AF in these type of situations before on the ground based targets but for whatever reason it was a struggle this time. Part of it too was the absolute quantity of birds to shoot - I think I was a little overwhelmed at times. Might have done better if I had been more fresh too, my brain was not running all that smoothly by then :)

ML
 
Mike Lewis

Mike Lewis

Staff Member
Douglas Sherman said:
It could be a dirty sensor. ;) Just kidding, Mike. I hope you shot the morning take-off from the ponds.
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Douglas,

Well I would have liked to, but this was a quick stop over in the middle of a 15 hour drive from Southern AZ where my astrophotography gear is hosted back to CO, so I did not have an extra day, just enough time to stop by in the late day. I will have to try to get back though - I can tell it is a special place!

ML
 
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