To Christina (Brownbear) and others -- my BIF sort of...

[IzzieK]

Begging for C&C...please...

My first practice BIF for the day. There were only sea gulls around until the pelicans come back when the tide rolls back. At the moment, the water was strongly lapping the shores foreboding incoming rain…it did rain after a few minutes when we there...just in time for me to shelter under one of the restaurants' eaves...while Bill ran for the car with Tucker in tow...

All shots are hand held.

1. Sea Gull -- it is a butt shot!!!



2. Pelican with boat --Did more practice with BIF with more sea gulls…until I thought I got it right and then people around tried to catch my attention -- the pelicans are flying in! they said. Seeing it was too far to get a clear shot, I waited until it reached the boat then shoot.



3. More birdies…all butt shots. I think this has enough contrast to convert it to B/W…



4. BIF improvement…I think…



5. Same bird



6. I know it is not an approaching shot but I got her! She almost plowed up my camera.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, can't control their flight paths.

[FootLoose]

Definitely better, Izzie. Use centre point focus and aim for the eye.

My best results come from sitting and waiting for the birds to come to me. For example, I know the pelicans will start coming into the harbour some time after 4.00pm because that is when the trawlers come in, so I find a comfortable place to sit and just wait for the action. They will begin circling 20 mins or so before the boats arrrive.

[Stagecoach]

Good ones Izzie, No 4 & 6 with some PP will be great and the exposures look pretty good to me.

I look forward to the next ones

Grahame

[deetheturk]

Well done Izzie, you should be more than happy with these as its your first go This is another genre I will have a go at one day!

David

[pnodrog]

Hi Izzie, you are getting them fairly well. There will always be a high reject rate with birds in flight. As you get better you would think the reject rate would reduce but unfortunately it never seems to because we get just fussier.... Actually I think all photography is like that - the better we get the more difficult it is to be happy with the result.

What sharpening are you doing? Some are possibly a bit soft because of focus or movement but I think all of them could be sharpened more successfully. On dull days try ISO 800 so you can stop down a fraction and increase the shutter speed. I know the D300s will have a little bit more noise at ISO 800 but I think the benefit in sharpness will more than compensate. Remember that when you reduce the size for posting you also need to adjust the sharpening.

I have tweaked #4 a bit and will post it if you wish.

[KimC]

Love 3, 4, 5, 6 - great shots Izzie.

[Kodiak]

This being a very cool shot Isabelle, may I suggest this rendition:

[bnnrcn]

I like #4,#5 and #6 Isabel #3 is a nice place to shoot again with different angles. That old wooden pier is a good subject .

[Rita]

4 and 6 are showing that you are getting the hang of it.

[Brownbear]

Hi Izzie,

#4 and #6 are also my favourites. Great wing position in the Egret and the beautiful detail in the front wing. Nice detail in the pelican, too! Greg and L.Paul have given you great advice so all I can add is that I agree that higher ISOs (even in bright light) and faster shutter speeds is very helpful with BIF, as is trying to grab focus on the eye/head area and observing their flight patterns and having the patience to wait for them to come to you. Well done!

PS I adore your pigeon in colour.

[pnodrog]

I see Kodiak put an edit up so I will also put mine up to show that we basically agree on what needs doing.

[IzzieK]

Kim...thank you for commenting. Also to Binnur and Rita, talk about my dog being hard-headed.... Before we took this trip, I was determined to learn BIF and this is a nice place to do it. I am glad you all like it too this time around...

Kodiak, thanks for the edit...

Grahame... I will play around with edit when I reach home. We started our trip back yesterday and we are in a little hotel right now. We have to go back. I will explain later.

John (Shadowman) -- yes ... sometimes birding is as as hard as herding cats.

Christina...I was hoping you haven't gone AWOL as yet so I cropped and uploaded these images as quickly as I can --- I will remember that high ISO, I thought it would be good to start with a much lower one for less noise and just touch (change) EV or aperture to compensate for the blinkies and I practiced with the sea gulls as much as I can before moving to the pier on the other side of Steamers (restaurant). So I kept to my old habit of single exposure, VR on and manual setting, cloudy WB, no bracketing so I do not confuse myself too much with so many changes. Thank you for commenting. I am learning a lot from you and this group for the purpose of my trip.

[IzzieK]

Definitely better, Izzie. Use centre point focus and aim for the eye.

My best results come from sitting and waiting for the birds to come to me. For example, I know the pelicans will start coming into the harbour some time after 4.00pm because that is when the trawlers come in, so I find a comfortable place to sit and just wait for the action. They will begin circling 20 mins or so before the boats arrrive.

Greg, I wish it was that easy that late afternoon...the tide was already in when we reached Dock St. and I was fiddling and worrying about Tucker wandering around the area because there were kids around and he doesn't really like them. I think it is the noise of kids' chatter that he is annoyed about. So I wrapped his leash around the chair I was sitting one and practiced with the sea gulls until I thought I got it perfect.Then I called Bill to pick me up in the car because I saw the storm coming...there wasn't much time to think...just shoot I think...just shoot.

I will try to remember your times to wait and the character of the birds. I am going home for another visit to Oz sometime October (Oh! it is already October tomorrow!!!) and go to Geelong, perhaps stay for there for a day or two before getting involved with my grandchild and my kids. Then continue bird practicing...and gorging on sea food. Man I missed Geelong just thinking of those fishermen on the wharf!! I missed sea food...period. Now I am eager to do some birding.... Thanks for your advice. I truly appreciate it.

[IzzieK]

Well done Izzie, you should be more than happy with these as its your first go This is another genre I will have a go at one day!

David

Hey David...just look up there in the sky...there are more there to practice when you run out of bugs.. And they are bigger than bugs too...BIF is fun too...At least this time around I wasn't dragged to Florida to watch airplanes. This is better... so much better...thanks for commenting. Again. (and also for bumping up my other post...)

[IzzieK]

A long time ago, I thought the same thing about my rejects and blurs and etc and I thought they were that bad when I get a bicycling sports woman's hands blur but her body was sharp. (I still have that shot -- on films) and others. I thought blurred shots were rejects -- only sharp ones are OK...As I grow up (in photography that is...) I think my composition was the next hurdle to jump. The reject box started filling up. Then overexposure, underexposure, etc. came into the shots too. Then the cost of film developing...then life has to take a part too.

DSLR and joining forums like CiC helps a lot. Especially feedback from members no matter how good or bad. (Just gotta have thick skin... if one wants to learn...) Yes, joining a forum makes one discerning so much that I scare myself at times because I am adding "bitch!" to my character as well.

Thanks for the edit. I like it a lot. I used the D300s because it is my crop camera. I read that cropped cameras are good for birding. I left the D800e at home under lock and key. And I will use sharpening and editing properly later on when I get home to my desktop. I am using a laptop here. The image passed ACR because it is an NEF file, I did that sharpening option there a bit that first page. I am afraid that if I do more I would make it worst since the histogram looks good and I have not much black clippings showing and no red underexposure marks either. I just pressed OK for most of my images this time around so I can do the Unsharped filter in Photoshop after cropping it to size. (I do not usually sharpen in ACR...but I did a little this time around for here. then the post sharpening after resizing.)

Hi Izzie, you are getting them fairly well. There will always be a high reject rate with birds in flight. As you get better you would think the reject rate would reduce but unfortunately it never seems to because we get just fussier.... Actually I think all photography is like that - the better we get the more difficult it is to be happy with the result.

What sharpening are you doing? Some are possibly a bit soft because of focus or movement but I think all of them could be sharpened more successfully. On dull days try ISO 800 so you can stop down a fraction and increase the shutter speed. I know the D300s will have a little bit more noise at ISO 800 but I think the benefit in sharpness will more than compensate. Remember that when you reduce the size for posting you also need to adjust the sharpening.

I have tweaked #4 a bit and will post it if you wish.

[Kodiak]

I see Kodiak put an edit up so I will also put mine up to show that we basically agree on what needs doing.

Wow, yours is better than mine… cooool!

[pnodrog]

Wow, yours is better than mine… cooool!

Thanks Kodiak but I think the bird is almost identical in both our edits. The main difference is I did a bit of work on the background.

[pnodrog]

__________ I used the D300s because it is my crop camera. I read that cropped cameras are good for birding. I left the D800e at home under lock and key.

Hi Izzie. Your D800E is going to outperform your D300s even when using the D800E in it's cropped mode. You need to be using a cropped camera larger than 15.36 megapixel to gain any advantage over the D800E and even then its ISO performance will be hard to match. Panning using FX mode for BIF will give you far greater tolerance for position within frame and can help you from clipping a wing etc.

Use the D300s for convenience, save needing to changing lenses or in conditions you are reluctant to use the D800E in but for all other photography I would suggest you use the D800E and become thoroughly at ease with it.

[IzzieK]

Hi Izzie. Your D800E is going to outperform your D300s even when using the D800E in it's cropped mode. You need to be using a cropped camera larger than 15.36 megapixel to gain any advantage over the D800E and even then its ISO performance will be hard to match. Panning using FX mode for BIF will give you far greater tolerance for position within frame and can help you from clipping a wing etc.

This means using my DX lenses for the FX body? I bought the D800e a lit bit before the D810 came out. I am still acquiring zoom lenses for it. I will have to use my D90 and D300s for a long while yet for the weight factor.

Use the D300s for convenience, save needing to changing lenses or in conditions you are reluctant to use the D800E in but for all other photography I would suggest you use the D800E and become thoroughly at ease with it.

Dan...I am mostly a handholding camera person than a tripod using one. The D800e is heavy for my handholding so it stays on the tripod when I am at home. At this stage I use it for my food photography. I thought BIF is too much to plan for using a tripod. If I had brought the camera with me, with the kind of weather we had over at Florida at the time, I would had came home with nothing. I can always go back to Florida whenever I want. It is the little bugs that I bites me crazy that prevents me from going there often. And of course, there is our Tucker issue...