Smew

A beautiful species that I'd love to see. Great to get 2 together in the same frame like this. The birds look just a little soft. If you would list your techs and equipment it might help us give you advice as to settings for flight photography.

Hi Nate

Thanks for your comments. I forgot to insert the photo data in the image, so I've just adjusted.

For your reference, I have used a bit "Neat Image" in this case.

Claus

It seems you had enough shutter speed, the bird on the right looks slightly sharper than the bird on the left, so maybe a little higher iso and f-stop would have helped. You could see if it will take a little more sharpening.

Great flight shot but as Nate says a little soft.
I agree with his critique

What an awesome species of waterfowl Claus. I too would love to this bird some day. Your exposure looks good. As mentioned, both birds look a little soft. Given your high SS, this is most likely a result of your panning speed being off by just a bit on the front bird and the back bird going a different speed than the front bird. The difference in speed between birds is one of the things that makes getting close up flight shots of more than one bird very difficult. Moreover, the DOF you need tends to increase a lot too. Very nice attempt here and overall I like the image a lot.

Really like the symmetry between the two birds. Agree it could be just a little sharper.

Claus,

I like the flight poses of the birds, but agree this is a touch soft.

Great photo op. Nice flight pose and catchlite in both

Shutter speed is fine but sometimes even the best top end cameras miss the focus point at just the moment the shutter fires, it's something we have to live with at the moment. Looks like what's happened here, otherwise a super capture, perfect composition and exposure spot on for me.