She's Mine !!!

Gallery: AvianPosted February 5, 2012149 views6 comments

I was out shooting with my new Nikon 200-400 recently. I was looking for birds in flight when this trio of hooded meragansers floated closeby.

Nikon D300 F7.1 1/1600 ISO 400. Nikon 200-400 w/ 1.4 teleconverter.

The one was quite vocal about competition for his female.

Looking for comments and insight about shooting multiple subjects for maximum sharpness.

Andrew

Comments

6 comments

Comment posted by Hans Overduin on February 5, 2012 at 1:56 PM

Stunning performance of these males, like it ! As to your question, the only suggestion I can offer is to work with high aperture levels i.e f16 and up to enlarge your depth of field. But I trust more experienced members will come up with other suggestions

, cheers, Hans

Registered on August 31, 2011, 491 Posts, 3807 Comments

Comment posted by Craig Strand on February 5, 2012 at 2:57 PM

I love this image of your Hoodies with the raised hoods and squaking action. A wonderful capture, nature in action.... congrats Andrew!

Registered on March 30, 2008, 416 Posts, 2885 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on February 5, 2012 at 3:14 PM

Multiple subjects greatly increases the difficulty of bird photography in my experience. It takes patience to wait for all subjects to be in good positions with catchlights in the eyes, etc.

Depth of field issues are an equally difficult problem. The long focal lengths usually required for birds don't deliver very much DOF, especially qat the wider apertures needed to keep shutter speeds up. the focus in this image seems to be on the hindmost male, and DOF is dropping off already on the other male and completely insufficient for the female.

About the only way to deal with this is boost the ISO and reduce the shutter speed to allow for smaller apertures.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on February 5, 2012 at 3:18 PM

Good action that explains itself. F/8 would probably have gotten all 3 in focus and left you still with a decent SS. I also think you could have gotten a less steep angle, unless conditions prevented it.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Mauro Pasquero on February 5, 2012 at 6:11 PM

Nice capture! Good comments about DOF have been expressed already. A lover angle would have helped as well.
Mauro

Registered on January 21, 2010, 650 Posts, 2500 Comments

Comment posted by Angela McCain on February 5, 2012 at 11:16 PM

Great handling of the black and white exposure. Nits noted, but for me merganserpaluzza!!

Registered on April 19, 2009, 367 Posts, 3589 Comments