Shooting While Moving?

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Larry S.

Larry S.

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Opportunities to shoot from watercraft, trains, etc, apparently present counter-intuitive settings. The boat was moving 5-10 knots when I spotted a cormorant on a stump. I thought 1/1000 sec @ f/5.6 should be okay. It wasn’t. The bird was moving on the stump as the boat passed by. With camera and cormorant moving at the same time, the resulting image is soft, lacking detail in the feathers. The stump is sharp, bird is not. They are in the same focal plane. Would shooting @ 1/2000-3200 sec or higher give a better detailed image?
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It's hard to see in this web sized image but if as you say, the stump is sharp, then there was plenty of shutter speed to account for the boat's motion. From this image it looks more like the AF system focused on the perch and not the bird's eye which is a bit further away. It could also be heat shimmer with evaporation off the water keeping you from getting a sharp eye and sharp feathers.

If the bird was twitching or quickly looked away a bit more shutter speed might have helped but if the wood piling is sharp enough for your liking in the full sized image then you should have plenty of shutter speed for the fairly static subject.
 
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DRwyoming said:
It's hard to see in this web sized image but if as you say, the stump is sharp, then there was plenty of shutter speed to account for the boat's motion. From this image it looks more like the AF system focused on the perch and not the bird's eye which is a bit further away. It could also be heat shimmer with evaporation off the water keeping you from getting a sharp eye and sharp feathers.

If the bird was twitching or quickly looked away a bit more shutter speed might have helped but if the wood piling is sharp enough for your liking in the full sized image then you should have plenty of shutter speed for the fairly static subject.
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Thanks Dave, Had not considered the “over water” issue which likely contributed to the problem.
 
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