10 bits of ****

[Kaelastreet]

Around my garden is a hedge. In about the centre of the garden, is the home made bird feeder.
I came home tonight and loaded the deck with a couple of handfulls of wild bird seed.

I pushed a peg into the turf, about a third of the way to the hedge from the feeder.

You see, the ****, seems to fly from the hedge, directly towards me until they get to the feeder, eat a little, pick up a seed and retrace their path pack to the hedge.

I reasoned that if I set my focus on the peg, by the time my eyes register a bird is making the dash to the feeder, if I click, I should maybe get the darn critters in focus, in flight.

I know **** are lazy critters, well, power conservative, as they rest for a third of the time they are in flight. Beat a little, rest a bit, beat a little more, rest again.
So, 2/3rds of my shots are going to capture 'wings closed' according to the odds, (and my tuff luck)...

I spent an hour or so waiting, shooting, most captures were unuseable, the light dropped, I stuck it out at iso 400, any more and I knew grain or dots would be the death of any results.

These birds weigh less than an ounce, they are tiny. I was using my new Sigma 2.8 24-60. and a shutter speed of about 1/250 @ F8

Below are ten snaps, samples from the work. I may have run out of light yet I beleive my concept is fairly sound.






So, if you were me, what approach would you use next time. keep in mind I cannot use stuff Idon't have, like IR flash, movement sensors etc.

Look forward to learning.

Kizz

[SmartWombat]

Nice idea. Though one of your **** appears to be a chaffinch
Now you just need practice
Get used to your reaction time, and the camera's lag time.

I'd suggest a higher shutter speed and wider aperture.
Despite that making it harder to get them in focus.

Myself, I'd go out and get a remote trigger, or if I really had to ... warm up my soldering iron and build one. Hard part about that is getting the connector so I'm willing to sacrifice my RS80N3 for the effort.

But you've givem me an idea - I'm going to play with my 1DSmkII sometime and try the auto-shoot function.

"Personal function 16 - automatic shooting when focus is achieved at the fixed point of focus while the shutter button is pressed fully."

That's it, all the documentation you get
And you can't even set the function in your camera without a laptop to reprogram it first !
It might even be useful, but what a cumbersome way to manage it
Why they couldn't just build it into the cameras menus I really don't know.

It has one drawback, you have to keep the shutter buttom depressed all the time so it's going to EAT batteries like there's no tomorrow. But indoors, where I can use the AC adaptor it might work with the long lens.

[Kaelastreet]

Hm, I have a Infra Red button remote, (total waste of effort), What circuitry do I need to build a cable release for my Nikon D70s???
Kizz

[Kaelastreet]

I thought a higher shutter speed would be needed, but I would need a significantly greater volume of light as well. Opening the aperture will help, but as you say, kill any DOF.

My old 35mm camera had in-focus shutter, Was supposed to be good for getting horses over jumps, but I used it to stop fast cars on the track, fast birds on the coast and railway engines on the express line. Darn camera, if I did not have the setting 100% correct, it refused to operate in low light, Grrrrr.

[cyberlord]

These look like small crops out of a huge frame. With a 60mm lens you would have to be like 5' from the bird feeder to get a decent image of any size. I find it challenging with my 300mm lens to get a large shot at 30'. I have moved the feed area closer to the window, opened the glass and removed the screen. I keep the vertical blinds pulled closed across the window but twisted opened so I can fit the camera lens between the blinds and keep semi hidden.

This latest trick has me filling my 300mm to 1/4 frame, but the birds are very leary and do not stay long as they hear and see the camera lens at the window.

Move your feeder closer to the window. With a 60mm lens it will almost have to be right outside the window. Open the window glass as it affects the image quality a lot.

Thats what I've learned so far from taking backyard critter pics.

Tim

[jar_e]

Interesting shots..I wish I could add something but Paul and Time said everything that needed to be said!

Great idea though, and can't wait to see some shots when you reshoot,

Jared

[Kaelastreet]

Thanks everyone, if its dry tonight, I will give it another go.
For Tim, here is one of the originals, I have red-ringed the tit.



In the above, I reduced it 640 wide in PS and then to 8bits to keep the file size reasonable.

Many thanks again

Kizz