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AstroEd

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Supporting Member
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Saw and imaged my first Barred Owl in the wild.
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Well I will post more later, I went back at sunrise and it was nowhere to be seen but an hour later this guy comes over and asks if”I was taking pictures of birds” I said “Yes” He told me he caught a bass and and owl tried to take it. He unhooked the bass and tossed it on the ground for the Owl. I have several hundred images and my first video with my D500 to go through once I finish breakfast, So I might post more. Are Videos allowed here?
 
Super shots. All of mine have sticks across their bodies and faces!!
They are a tad soft, another person took images right next to me and his entire bird is tac sharp. Now he is using a Sony A1 and a $12,000 lens so that might be a little of it but he is definitely a better photographer than I am at this time, BUT I am learning.
 
Very pretty bird. I am still trying to get a good owl picture ( any owl pic) but I guess you need to find them first! I seem to only see at night and when I caught one
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in daytime( actually my son's eyes caught it) it was sleeping and seemed to refuse to awake and there was a flooded field between us so max crop.
 
Very pretty bird. I am still trying to get a good owl picture ( any owl pic) but I guess you need to find them first! I seem to only see at night and when I caught one View attachment 27216
in daytime( actually my son's eyes caught it) it was sleeping and seemed to refuse to awake and there was a flooded field between us so max crop.
Still nice. I would like to find as many species of Owls, Hawks, Birds of prey in general as I can in my short remaining years.
 
Nicely done. I am fortunate to have Barred Owls close to my house (though have lost a few recently to rodenticide poisonings). I always love photographing these guys and have had encounters where they've flown right to my feet...remarkable.

In light of your comments about too-slow shutter speeds, let me suggest a couple of tips for sharper results. This will take some practice and lots of trial and error so you will need access to the owls. If you've found them once, hopefully you will do so again. Anyway, the irony of it is my better perched Barred Owl shots have been achieved with ridiculously low shutter speeds. Owls, of course, will hold themselves incredibly still, allowing this. Therefore, if you can catch them in one of those still moments, you can go very slow. I've had tack sharp images with fully one second exposures but my usual method is with speeds slower than 1/20th, depending on the light . My setup has been to use both the D500 and D850 in live view mode, tripod mounted, with your lens of choice and a remote trigger release (I use a Vello Freewave Micro which is very reasonably priced). I have used both AF-S and AF-F and typically, Normal -area AF. Position the single point over your targeted subject within your composition and then use the remote release to trigger your shot. There are some enhanced advantages using a D850 which I'll hold on as your stated body is a D500.

Given you're frequently working at the corners of the day with Barred Owls, light is almost always a challenge. With shutter speeds typically slower than 1/20th or 1/10th of a second, it allows me to keep the ISO respectably low. When the owls hold still, the results can be magical...they so much as twitch and it's then a blurred mess. I also always turn off the lens' vibration reduction at these very slow speeds as it otherwise introduces motion blur. The following two shots were taken about a minute apart, shortly before sunset, both with identical settings (ISO 180, 600mm, f4), the key being the shutter speed at 1/8th of a second.

Hope this gives you a few ideas and wish you continued good luck with the Barreds.

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