Perigrine with dinner

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You had the chance to eyeball the fastest bird in the world,
that's cool but now you know the next step will be to setup
you camera to optimize such captures!

I can not ID its lunch… looks like a bird!?!?
 
I think the dinner was a Pigeon Daniel. My camera used was Nikon D7100 Auto WB, Manual exposure, reading taken from a grey building, 800 ISO F6.3,Tamron 150-600 at 600mm max aperture hand held image stabiliser on. the images are cropped to about 25% of original. I would be grateful for any advice on setting up. :) There are no settings on my seventy five year old shaky body:ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:

Couple more from the day.

AAA_7632.jpg

AAA_7579.jpg
 
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I see nothing wrong in your settings but
  • use Auto ISO
  • do you use BBF?
  • can you AF Fine Tune you camera / lens combo?
 
You did pretty well against a bright sky Charles ... these events usually take you by surprise and don't last long so can be difficult to prepare for.
I see no major problems with your settings, you possibly could have used f8 to sharpen up a bit but that would put the ISO up (if on Auto-ISO) or possibly underexposed ... I can't remember how the D7100 does with lowlight. The biggest killer here is 'hand-held' ... for a big lens that needs a higher shutter speed.IME, around or exceeding 1/2000 and then you are back to issues of how the camera handles available light
 
Thanks Daniel. I will try auto ISO.........BBF????...........I have been thinking of checking and setting the AF fine tune as I think it can be improved, also thinking to AF fine tune the lens to my D300 as the AF is good on the D300. Thanks for your suggestions.(y):hug:
 
charlychuckchuck said:
Thanks Daniel. I will try auto ISO.........BBF????...........I have been thinking of checking and setting the AF fine tune as I think it can be improved, also thinking to AF fine tune the lens to my D300 as the AF is good on the D300. Thanks for your suggestions.(y):hug:
Click to expand...


Stupid me ... back button focus.......Yes I always use BBF :)
 
Thanks Roger............I think AF fine tuning will probably help as Daniel suggests. I did try a monopod setup before but seemed to get more shakes with that so its going. I think I will have to take and get used to the weight of my Manfrotto tripod with gimbal head.(y)
 
charlychuckchuck said:
Thanks Daniel. I will try auto ISO.........BBF????...........I have been thinking of checking and setting the AF fine tune as I think it can be improved, also thinking to AF fine tune the lens to my D300 as the AF is good on the D300. Thanks for your suggestions.(y):hug:
Click to expand...

Charles, I think its important to understand some of these concepts completely before you try them out - I have a strong feeling they will not help here and only add to confusion.

Auto ISO has its uses, but with shots like these, with a bird small in frame against a bright sky, the camera will see the sky as the main subject and meter accordingly - you will most likely end up with a nice sky and an underexposed bird.

BBF is your choice - I use it as I was told how wonderful it is, but have never seen an improved hit rate for BIF - indeed, many top flight photographers are now reverting back to shutter button focus and using the thumb to changing the AF point.

micro-adjust will make zero difference here - the distance is far too great. If your close up portraits are coming out soft when you've nailed the focus point and have a fast enough shutter speed then maybe look at it then - not before

Mike
 
Thanks for reply mike(y) The last bit of your post confused me a little. Did you mean taking a close up using minimum focus at 600mm to test for softness:)
 
charlychuckchuck said:
Thanks for reply mike(y) The last bit of your post confused me a little. Did you mean taking a close up using minimum focus at 600mm to test for softness:)
Click to expand...

Charles, sorry for not getting back sooner.

Micro adjust is exactly as it sounds - tiny adjustments. If you shoot a subject up close then you have less depth of field than shooting at the same aperture at a distant subject, so with the distance of your peregrine here micro adjust would have absolutely no visible effect. Micro adjusting can quickly get confusing and make things worse unless you're sure you need it and take your time.

As an example, take this kingfisher shot -

View attachment 106632

I use this as I think kingfishers are a good example as they will often sit dead still as opposed to something like a blue tit which is always making tiny movements.

Here, I put focus bang on the eye so I would expect the eye to be the sharpest part of the shot here, which it is. If my set up was out and was front focussing, then you would see the eye on the fish would be sharp and the eye on the kingy would be softer. As always, I would fire off a burst of about 3 frames here, and if all 3 had the fish eyes sharper then I would know I had a micro adjust issue and I would need to take action.

The distance in the focus plane between the fish eye and the birds eye is probably about 1/2 inch, which is quite significant at such a close up shot as this. Now, take that 1/2 inch to a shot of your Peregrine. It really doesn't make much difference. On yours, any loss of detail is far more likely to be down to the size of the crop, and shooting through so much warm air, then finally processing.

It doesn't scream at me that you need to be making any adjustments just yet.

Hope that helps a bit, if not let me know

Mike
 
pooley said:
Charles, sorry for not getting back sooner.

Micro adjust is exactly as it sounds - tiny adjustments. If you shoot a subject up close then you have less depth of field than shooting at the same aperture at a distant subject, so with the distance of your peregrine here micro adjust would have absolutely no visible effect. Micro adjusting can quickly get confusing and make things worse unless you're sure you need it and take your time.

As an example, take this kingfisher shot -



I use this as I think kingfishers are a good example as they will often sit dead still as opposed to something like a blue tit which is always making tiny movements.

Here, I put focus bang on the eye so I would expect the eye to be the sharpest part of the shot here, which it is. If my set up was out and was front focussing, then you would see the eye on the fish would be sharp and the eye on the kingy would be softer. As always, I would fire off a burst of about 3 frames here, and if all 3 had the fish eyes sharper then I would know I had a micro adjust issue and I would need to take action.

The distance in the focus plane between the fish eye and the birds eye is probably about 1/2 inch, which is quite significant at such a close up shot as this. Now, take that 1/2 inch to a shot of your Peregrine. It really doesn't make much difference. On yours, any loss of detail is far more likely to be down to the size of the crop, and shooting through so much warm air, then finally processing.

It doesn't scream at me that you need to be making any adjustments just yet.

Hope that helps a bit, if not let me know

Mike
Click to expand...

Sorry for late reply Mike ( Internet problem) I fully understand about the effects of aperture and distance on depth of field. As I got an improvement in IQ on my 300mm lens and D300 I was thinking that checking the AF fine tune could only improve the IQ. Although I agree with you that the other factors are possibly the major cause, if the lens and body are not properly tuned for AF then I will not get the sharpness for fine detail so I think it best to check and eliminate it being my gear. I have got a lens calibration tool and will use it with my camera coupled to my laptop.
Thanks very much for your input it is very much appreciated.(y):hug:
 
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