A new type of Hawk landed in my yard this afternoon. This is a Red Shouldered Hawk. He stood in the tree in one tree or a while until he spotted something and darted to another tree. Once he was on the other tree, he caught his lunch.
Edited consisted of Picnik's auto fix, crop, and clarify.
I had my camera on "sports continuous" mode for a lot of the time, resulting in over 2,200 shots. Needless to say, you will see him again.
Hi Melissa, for a camera to fire off 2,200 shots in sports mode, then it has to reduce the quality of the image. You will see that your filesize is a lot smaller in this shot then on the other 2 images of this beautiful bird. But also notice on your exif data, that the ISO is higher here and the shutter speed is quicker.
Instead of opting for sports mode, try manually setting up your camera. Experiment with putting the camera in A mode (A for aperture), hit the ISO up to 800 or even 1600 if your Nikkon isn't too grainy up there. Put the aperture to f2.8 or lower if it can go there, and you should have a pretty fast shutter speed for your birds.
@bobfoto
Coincidentally there are currently no birds in my yard for me to try this on. I was only able to get the aperture to f 2.8, but had no problem getting the ISO to 1600. I will have to see about shooting from a new spot, because normally I would have to zoom, even very slightly. In order to zoom on A, the aperture number changes when zooming occurs. So I will either need to get closer, or figure out a different F #. Thanks for the tips though, I do appreciate them.
@mej2011 - that happens even with the best DSLR, the f-stop if set low to say f2.8 and then you zoom, the f-stop will become a larger number. But you are right, the closer you get the better you and your camera will perform. Bit tricky with birds though, they're sometimes weary of us humans.
Check out my bird flickr, and on "actions" click on "view exif data" and you will see what settings I used. Trial and play around with some of these settings BUT go check out some of the other people linked to my flickr because there are some really talented bird-nerds out there, and they are all happy to share info. See here for more: http://www.flickr.com/photos/birdtown/
@bobfoto
All of the birds in my yard seem to be weary of me, and my wheelchair, except for Mr. Hawk. He scares me though so I have no desire to get closer to him.
Birds nerds? I like it. ha ha. I will check out your flickr shortly. Thanks so much for all of your helpful tips today! I do appreciate them! And thanks for the follow. Hopefully you'll see an improvement.
@mej2011 - Mr Hawk, while an impressive bird and he has decent talons, in reality, he probably sees you as being a bigger animal so he is unlikely to pick you up and take you back to his nest on top of a mountain (like poor Frodo Baggins), but he would never want you in between himself and his escape route. When you watch Hawks at close range, you will see them eyeballing you and also keeping an eye on where he will take off if you get any closer. You are soooo lucky to have such wonderful birds in your garden. Is it a huge garden? Do you do your bird watching from a balcony or along a pathway somewhere?
@bobfoto
Who or what is Frodo Baggins? Just because he won't pick me up and carry me on top of mountains doesn't mean he wouldn't claw my eyes out. Yeah, I know. I have an unrealistic fear.
Um, my yard is fairly small actually, we've got about 1/2 acre of land. However, we are surrounded my a lot of open land as well.
I watch birds from my kitchen. We've got a patio type door that leads from the kitchen to the yard. This is another reason I usually have to zoom out for photos, the screen door shows up rather nicely otherwise.
@mej2011 - Frodo is the main character from Lord of the Rings, a book written before you and yes even I was born. But it recently became a popular movie series before Twilight and Harry Potter took all of the fantasy out of the cinema.
Now shooting through windows is a tricky one and you are right, you need to zoom out in order to not take a photo of the screen. Hmmm? I'm off to think... And 1/2 and acre is a large block here in Australia, we all dream of owning 1/4 of an acre, but most settle for less. I, myself however am a greedy Australian and I have 1.5 acres and I love it! I have lived in gardens only 1/16 of an acre and my neighbours were crackheads so it wasn't the best of times...
November 19th, 2011
Leave a Comment
Sign up for a free account or Sign in to post a comment.
Thanks everyone!
Instead of opting for sports mode, try manually setting up your camera. Experiment with putting the camera in A mode (A for aperture), hit the ISO up to 800 or even 1600 if your Nikkon isn't too grainy up there. Put the aperture to f2.8 or lower if it can go there, and you should have a pretty fast shutter speed for your birds.
Coincidentally there are currently no birds in my yard for me to try this on. I was only able to get the aperture to f 2.8, but had no problem getting the ISO to 1600. I will have to see about shooting from a new spot, because normally I would have to zoom, even very slightly. In order to zoom on A, the aperture number changes when zooming occurs. So I will either need to get closer, or figure out a different F #. Thanks for the tips though, I do appreciate them.
Check out my bird flickr, and on "actions" click on "view exif data" and you will see what settings I used. Trial and play around with some of these settings BUT go check out some of the other people linked to my flickr because there are some really talented bird-nerds out there, and they are all happy to share info. See here for more:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/birdtown/
Oh and I'm following you now :)
All of the birds in my yard seem to be weary of me, and my wheelchair, except for Mr. Hawk. He scares me though so I have no desire to get closer to him.
Birds nerds? I like it. ha ha. I will check out your flickr shortly. Thanks so much for all of your helpful tips today! I do appreciate them! And thanks for the follow. Hopefully you'll see an improvement.
Sorry for all the questions....
Who or what is Frodo Baggins? Just because he won't pick me up and carry me on top of mountains doesn't mean he wouldn't claw my eyes out. Yeah, I know. I have an unrealistic fear.
Um, my yard is fairly small actually, we've got about 1/2 acre of land. However, we are surrounded my a lot of open land as well.
I watch birds from my kitchen. We've got a patio type door that leads from the kitchen to the yard. This is another reason I usually have to zoom out for photos, the screen door shows up rather nicely otherwise.
Now shooting through windows is a tricky one and you are right, you need to zoom out in order to not take a photo of the screen. Hmmm? I'm off to think... And 1/2 and acre is a large block here in Australia, we all dream of owning 1/4 of an acre, but most settle for less. I, myself however am a greedy Australian and I have 1.5 acres and I love it! I have lived in gardens only 1/16 of an acre and my neighbours were crackheads so it wasn't the best of times...