Canadian Goose

[driver_wedge]

I'm a newbie on here and not been into photography for very long but been reading for a while picking up some good advice.

Bought a 70-200mm 2.8L IS from Kerso which arrived yesterday. Took this one today.

 

[tiler65]

It's not from Canada.

 

[driver_wedge]

Sorry?

 

[Martyn...]

It's not from Canada.

What Tiler65 is trying to say is that they are called Canada Geese, not Canadian Geese

Anyway welcome to our section of TP, and feel free to post some more images, not a bad first effort, you would have been better being the other side of the bird so that the sun was behind you, rather than having the subject back lit.

 

[driver_wedge]

Ok, I get it. I stand corrected.

Martyn, good point about the direction of sunlight. The water's edge is just out of shot to the left and they were making their way towards it so I didn't really have time to get to the other side. Whether I would have had the inclination to do so is another matter, however.

I've been reading posts where some people claim to shoot 'wide open' - would this be common practice (in general terms) and what would be the best means of controlling exposure in this instance. Shutter speed? ISO? A combination?

Thanks for your comments. I'm not overly excited by the photo TBH, just thought I'd use it as an excuse for an opening post and it's probably a decent indication of the level I'm at anyway.

 

[Martyn...]

Ok, I get it. I stand corrected.

Martyn, good point about the direction of sunlight. The water's edge is just out of shot to the left and they were making their way towards it so I didn't really have time to get to the other side. Whether I would have had the inclination to do so is another matter, however.

I've been reading posts where some people claim to shoot 'wide open' - would this be common practice (in general terms) and what would be the best means of controlling exposure in this instance. Shutter speed? ISO? A combination?

Thanks for your comments. I'm not overly excited by the photo TBH, just thought I'd use it as an excuse for an opening post and it's probably a decent indication of the level I'm at anyway.

Shooting wide open will reduce your depth of field, thus isolating the subject from the background, more pronounced as the focal length increases.

Trouble with the longer glass that I use is you start to only get a bit of the subject in focus, so I tend to aim at using f7.1 with my 500mm.

With your 200mm f4 should give good sharpness and detail, and still isolate the subject nicely.

For birds you want to be at 1/500 sec for static shots to freeze subject movement (1/250 at a push), and 1/1000 or more for in flight.

Once I am at an aperture I want say f7.1, I would control exposure by using a faster shutter speed, the higher the better.

Now if the light starts failing I will start decreasing my shutter speed, once I hit 1/500, I would then start opening up my lens aperture.