Trumpeter Swan in flight

[Andrew Lamberson]

It pays to read, study, practice...practice and practice!

A BIG thank you to Steve for all his super educational information and his willingness to share. I now own ALL his eBooks and each one has been a LOT of help in improving my images and understanding how to do correctly...and why.

Thank you to all of you that take the time to explain HOW to be successful at this difficult hobby!

• Back button focus: Continuous, Group (it works!!!)
• Understanding what shutter speed I needed to get the wings to freeze with good detail. That took a lot of experimentation to figure out especially since this shot was 15 minutes after sunset, but with the Mississippi River bluffs blocking the light!
• Shooting at as many frames/second that my D500 would do! Steve is right.... at least one shot could turn out exactly right!
• Using auto ISO !!!
• 3 days worth of time (and errors) and effort to be ready for that 15 seconds of opportunity!

A Trumpeter Swan in flight. Not 100% perfect but pretty close!
Nikon D500 500mm 1/800 sec. f/5.6 ISO 2851

White Water Game Refuge, S.E. Minnesota just off the Mississippi River at Weaver Bottoms.

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[Callie]

Nicely done. Not to be nosy, but you could and should push your SS. I often go 1/8000. Anything above 1/3200 will render sharper images overall in my experience. I understand the light issue too, with bad light, like you had here, a higher SS would result in higher ISO and noise, but it is not a bad image of this big guy!

 

[Yezdi]

Lovely...

 

[Andrew Lamberson]

Nicely done. Not to be nosy, but you could and should push your SS. I often go 1/8000. Anything above 1/3200 will render sharper images overall in my experience. I understand the light issue too, with bad light, like you had here, a higher SS would result in higher ISO and noise, but it is not a bad image of this big guy!

That's good advice. I need to start pushing the SS up even in poor light and then deal with the noise in post-processing. This was shot just after sunset with the bluff trees in the background I was surprised the 1/500 worked. I am overly cautious about SS when the light gets low. I need to trust the D500 good ISO performance.

Any suggestions on how NOT to blow out the top wing, while keeping the rest of the image? The faster SS would probably help.

I was using continuous, group autofocus and the entire bird was in the focus grid. I did crop this, mainly because a bunch of gray trees with no leaves is not very interesting!

I am going to re-read Steve's book on Exposure and Metering to see what I'm missing.

 

[Callie]

That's good advice. I need to start pushing the SS up even in poor light and then deal with the noise in post-processing. This was shot just after sunset with the bluff trees in the background I was surprised the 1/500 worked. I am overly cautious about SS when the light gets low. I need to trust the D500 good ISO performance.

Any suggestions on how NOT to blow out the top wing, while keeping the rest of the image? The faster SS would probably help.

I was using continuous, group autofocus and the entire bird was in the focus grid. I did crop this, mainly because a bunch of gray trees with no leaves is not very interesting!

I am going to re-read Steve's book on Exposure and Metering to see what I'm missing.

Andrew
I'm no expert but I normally only use the central focus point, or 9 or 25 points and seldom touch same again. Shoot AFC all the time. Been shooting birds in flight over changing backgrounds for 20+ years. White birds like this, normally -0,07 EV. I shoot, check the screen, adjust and shoot again. There is no "work for all situations" setting. I found that a darker image has more to pull out than a lighter one. I am into shooting to get action, not into the technical as to why really. I have been shooting about 90% of what Steve's book tell you for years before I came across his books. The best new thing ever was his Auto ISO and Manual suggestion.
With DSRL vs the old F-bodies, the 1/lens focal length ss does not work too well. I think Steve did touch on this somewhere. If you use a 500 mm lens, your min. ss should be about 1/1600 - "they' say 2x, which is 1/1000. I find, especially since I shoot 98% of my last two years sans any support, that the higher ss allows for more keepers, Again, as per Steve, shoot short bursts, one of them is bound to be in focus! Cropping is personal taste and I do it all the time, to a gut-feel ratio, never a standard aXb ration like print sizes. So you can place the BIF anyplace in the frame, rotate it to have more impact, add canvass etc. When shooting small birds, especially on take-off, even 1/1600 is too slow. So SS is your friend, especially when the light is your friend too! Hope this helps.

 

[Andrew Lamberson]

I must be getting old....I always consider using a - EV when shooting in snow, but for some strange reason, it never dawned on me about using it for the bright white wing!

It's kind of like when my motor went dead on my boat about 5 miles upstream of the ramp. I called a buddy to come to tow me in. When he finally got there, I got up from my seat and noticed the kill switch cord dangling from it!!!! He wasn't too mad...he had done the same thing the week before in a bass fishing tournament!!

Little moments of brain failure!

 

[Icarus]

You might be able to help the wing out in PS by sliding highlights down and taking shadows up to compensate for that. Don't know that it'll work, but worth a try. Anyhow,
it's a very nice image as is.

 

[Irap]

Very Nice