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RockvilleBob

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Mother Nature went the extra mile creating Black Skimmers for photographers, high contrast with brilliant orange beak.
Two wildlife panoramas:
A Skimmer that missed the fish
Twister - a Skimmer shaking off water after a skim

Z9 f8 850mm 1/3200

left-one-behind.jpg
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twister.jpg
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Nice shots! I too love skimmers. Just curious, how do you shoot at 850mm (1.7TC plus 500mm?)? And what fps were you shooting?
PS. My goal these days is to try some video of the skimmer coming in but haven't gotten to trying this. Maybe they are too fast for decent video?
 
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ricardo00 said:
Nice shots! I too love skimmers. Just curious, how do you shoot at 850mm (1.7TC plus 500mm?)? And what fps were you shooting?
PS. My goal these days is to try some video of the skimmer coming in but haven't gotten to trying this. Maybe they are too fast for decent video?
Click to expand...
Thank ricardo00. I was shooting from a skiff using a Z9 with 500 f4G plus 1.7TC. mounted on a tripod with Gimbal. The captain of the boat is also a bird photographer and goes the extra mile to steady the boat and get the sun behind use as much as possible. I always shoot at 20 fps - why not? Yes a little more effort culling but FastRawViewer makes short work of the job.
 
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RockvilleBob said:
Thank ricardo00. I was shooting from a skiff using a Z9 with 500 f4G plus 1.7TC. mounted on a tripod with Gimbal. The captain of the boat is also a bird photographer and goes the extra mile to steady the boat and get the sun behind use as much as possible. I always shoot at 20 fps - why not? Yes a little more effort culling but FastRawViewer makes short work of the job.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the info Bob! I too use the 1.7TC with the Z9. However we are fortunate to be able to get closer on the banks to the skimmers without going out on a boat. I also only shoot 20fps, thought maybe you use higher (and shoot JPG), something I have thought of trying since they are so fast.
I have been told that they skim with the beak open and when they feel a fish, close the beak. So if you get a picture with the closed beak, if you look closely sometimes you can see the fish (our fish here are very small).
So if you don't mind I have posted an example of this below:
black skimmer.jpg
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